Snowflakes, no two are the same.
Snow falls. Each flake is different. You can see it if you look closely enough.
The snowflake is not an object but an event.
Each begins as particulate anonymity, dust, until conditions of atmosphere compel it into form. Temperature and humidity do not merely shape it; they enact it. Nature does not mass-produce. It improvises.
No two are the same. That’s not poetry. That’s physics.
What emerges is not repetition but occurrence—singular, irreducible. This project extends that principle into the realm of action.
With blade and compass, I carve into linoleum, resisting the sterile perfection of machines. The carved linoleum is not a matrix for reproduction but a site of engagement. Each print comes out a little different. It has to. Pressure changes. Ink shifts. The hand is never the same twice. Every single print comes out with its own personality—its own noise, its own distortion. Every print is a gamble. The image mutates. Good. That’s where the truth is.
These aren’t copies. They’re performances.
The outcome refuses duplication.
The system won’t allow it.
Photographed and sequenced, these acts accumulate without resolving into sameness. They echo the fleeting storms that inspired them. A reminder that beauty lives in variance, not uniformity.
They remain discrete, finite manifestations of an ungraspable multiplicity. Like snowflakes themselves, each piece exists as a singular manifestation—brief, precise, and unrepeatable. Thus, the work becomes less about the image of the snowflake than about the condition it exemplifies: individuality under the pressure of impermanence and the complexity inherent in natural and creative systems.
Regarding the physical works, the following items are currently available:
- 8"x10" Prints: These are numbered, dated, and signed, and can be provided either framed or in acid-free sleeves.
- Signed Notecards: These include 4"x6" envelopes and are available in sequential six-packs.
"The question is not what you look at, but what you see" Henry David Thoreau
Steep and Deep
Morning cracks open cold; sharp, invasive, borderline hostile. The kind of cold that reminds you you’re alive whether you asked for it or not. Breath is visible proof that you’re still alive, as it curls like campfire ghosts. And it’s already hitting you; the cold, the anticipation, the raw hum of something about to go down. A confrontation between body and environment.
We ascend; because up there is where things still make sense.
Sun lifts and spills over the ridgeline like a quiet blessing. White terrain ignites, untouched and unapologetic, awaiting inscription. Sky screaming blue stretching into something dangerously infinite. The wind is light. It touches the face. It is good. Hawks riding thermals suggests a freedom not yet attained, like they’ve got the whole damn sky on lease, circling like aerial journalists, documenting the madness. Just vibing overhead like they’ve seen it all before.
Thread through trees, rise above them exposed, electric, leaving the smallness behind. Wind brushes the sweat from our foreheads; nature’s way of saying keep going. The ascent is not merely physical but existential. Each step resists abstraction: it insists on immediacy. No hesitation. Commitment is the only currency that matters here. The self becomes acutely aware of its placement within space. Step. Then another step. You do not think about the rest. Only the one you take. One does not climb the whole, only the present motion.
Step. Another step. Don’t think about another step.
And then, contact. You click in. That’s when things make sense. This is the drop. This is the chorus. Bindings snap shut like a loaded weapon. Gravity takes over, becomes a partner instead of an enemy. You drop. It is weightless. The fall line pulls you. It is steep and deep and true. Descent transforms intention into action. Every turn is an act of rebellion against inertia. Speed distorts reality—steep, deep, unhinged. Weightless, ripping through powder like it’s the last great sound on earth—steep, deep, and absolutely alive.
You carve it up, leave your scratches behind. Nobody cares.
That’s the good part. It is behind you upon the mountain, temporary marks, yet fully authentic. Steepness and depth become conditions of expression. You smile, do not say it, but the feeling sticks. That quiet grin, you can’t fake that, is not performance but residue; evidence of engagement. Steep and deep, yeah, that’s the deal.
And yet, the experience does not conclude. There is an inherent pull, a magnetic insistence that demands repetition, that calls you back up the slope to begin again. The cycle is both literal and symbolic, ascent and descent mirrored in the body, mind, and perception, as if the mountain itself has authored an unending lesson in persistence. Each climb teaches something new, each descent confirms skills, instincts, and courage, while the rhythm of movement becomes almost meditative. Motion and effort are inseparable, and the snow, the slope, the wind, and the light all participate in this dialogue, returning attention, commitment, and energy in equal measure.
Ascend, descend, repeat, a loop without closure, without finality, yet full of meaning. The absurdity of repetition does not diminish its significance; it reinforces it, highlighting both endurance and experience. Motion becomes its own statement, each iteration a living proof of engagement, skill, and freedom. The mountain remains constant, indifferent yet instructive, while the skier returns again and again, participating in a dialogue that is at once physical, mental, and profoundly human. There is no end, only continuation, only the act itself, repeated until fully known and fully felt.
Steep and Deep by Brian Howard
Waking up, Getting stoked. Heading out to hike the bowl
Air is cold, Breath is smoke. We ascend to a higher goal
Sun reveals, Gift of white. Bluebird skies, hawks delight
Through the trees, Above them now. Wind is gentle and it soothes our brow
Another step, Another step, Don't think about another step
Another step, Another step, Don't think...
So,
I'm clicking in, follow me, I'll meet you in, The North Woods trees
Weightless now, can't you see, freedom turns, Steep and Deep, Steep and Deep
Vibrations created, Left in snow. Smiles give away our inner glow
Air is cold, Snow is deep. There's powder turns for us to reap.
Climb back up, On the ridge. Take a step and breathe out again
Another step, Another step. Don't think about another step
Another step, Another step. Don't think...
So,
I'm clicking in, follow me, I'll meet you in, The North Woods trees
Weightless now, can't you see, freedom turns, Steep and Deep, Steep and Deep
Ski Bum Blues
The town was quiet in the cold. I encountered him unexpectedly, as one does with certain truths. He sat there, as though stationed there by some quiet authority in that little municipal compromise they call a park, He sat on the bench with his skis beside him, perched above the sledding hill like some alpine outlaw prophet. Steel edges resting. The scene hit me sideways; some telemark mystic hammering out a subterranean blues line on a guitar tuned like it had a grudge against reality itself. Guy’s sitting there like he owns the damn mountain. What I witnessed was not merely a performance but an act; an existential gesture staged atop a modest incline. The musician, seated yet dynamically engaged, transformed the banal setting into an arena of meaning.
His boots tapped wood in time, pounding out percussion like some DIY rhythm section from hell. The guitar was low and deep, tuned down into this swampy, growling register that made the whole hill feel like it had a pulse. Growling like an animal that refused domestication, sounding like it crawled out of a bar fight. It sounded like something working. He sang like a man who knew the hill. I liked him immediately.
He wasn’t just playing music, he was detonating it. He was broadcasting from the edge of gravity.
He sang about going downhill, but not like surrender, more like acceptance of gravity as the last honest law. Up is work. Down is grace. There was no complaint in it. Only fact. Snow makes it honest, he said. Snow gives you something to do. “My life is going downhill” he says it like a manifesto, like a declaration of allegiance to the slope, to speed, to the reckless covenant between man and mountain. He talked about earning turns. About the climb. He’s singing about life going downhill like it’s the only thing that ever made sense.
He sang of descent. Not as failure, but as inevitability. To climb only to return. To repeat this motion endlessly. It felt less like sport and more like condition. The refrain “my life is going downhill” operates as both metaphor and declaration. The descent is not passive; it is enacted, chosen, repeated. The climb is labor; the descent, expression. And the lyrics; pure dirtbag poetry. “My life is going downhill” yeah! That’s the hook! That’s the anthem! Ski bums finally get their blues and it rips.
Face shots. Total immersion. Oxygen deprivation as a lifestyle choice. Snow in your face, can’t breathe, need a snorkel. Even joy demanded adaptation. Yeah. That tracks. That’s nature reminding you who’s in charge. Even the imagery, snow immersion, the necessity of a snorkel, suggests the artist submerged within his medium, struggling and thriving simultaneously. Face shots, snorkels, gravity as religion,this is the kind of stuff that should be blasted out of every broken speaker in every mountain town dive.
And then cougars at the bar. Of course. That’s the reward system. Survive the mountain, get hunted afterward. Predators everywhere. No safe zones. Bars. Strangers. Pursuits that seemed both absurd and required. Hell, that’s just another ecosystem, it’s a lifestyle thesis.
He finishes. Doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t need to. The song already said everything. It was field reporting from the front lines of alpine insanity. I’m telling you, if this had a record, I’d wear it out in a week.
I drifted into Colorado in 1991, chasing winter and postponing whatever respectable life was supposed to come next under the noble pretense of taking a transitional year before pursuing graduate studies. Which is to say I had no plan whatsoever and a healthy distrust of anyone who did, yet what unfolded was less a delay than an initiation into a different mode of engagement. That’s what we all say before the thing grabs us.
Landed in a ski shop in Frisco, a retail circus of wax fumes and half-baked mountain prophets, surrounded by gear and talk. But what caught my eye was one man’s refusal to conform. I didn’t “discover” telemark skiing so much as it detonated in my brain like a feedback loop I couldn’t turn off. I encountered telemark skiing not as equipment, but as gesture—an improvisational act inscribed upon terrain.
His setup looked like junkyard poetry—leather boots, cables, salvaged skis—but the way he moved? Total groove. This was some kind of back-alley mechanical heresy. Leather boots with Frankenstein cuffs, cables flapping around like improvised restraints, and skis that looked like they’d been liberated from a pawn shop.
It looked strange, like rebellion, yet the skier moved with an authority that transcended the materials. Smooth. Clean. He could go anywhere. It was not technique alone, but a form of expression. He skied like water flowing downhill. Flowing like he’d made a private deal with gravity. Like watching someone who understood rhythm at a molecular level. I didn’t try it right away. Big mistake.
My own initiation came a year later in Breckenridge, lousy snow year, morale questionable. A friend drags me out after a dusting, a couple inches of fresh over something hard and honest, just enough texture to feel something. I drop into this awkward, lunging stance and suddenly; boom, there’s this connection, felt the mountain breathe.
The snow gives, responds, talks back, the yielding surface, the tactile dialogue between body and mountain. I feel the snow collapse like a bad political system, and suddenly the whole thing makes perfect, deranged sense. In that moment, telemark ceased to be an alternative and became a necessity. That was it. Hooked. Abandoning alpine gear was less a decision than an inevitability. I ditched the fixed-heel orthodoxy within weeks. Burned the ships.
Later that season I watched the Telemark Nationals, proof that this lunacy had a method. I saw the truth of it, discipline inside freedom. Not the lazy sprawl of the backcountry pose, but something coiled and deliberate. I recognized a crucial evolution: the transformation of an ostensibly free form into a disciplined practice. It’s like hearing a band you thought was sloppy suddenly lock into something impossibly tight. Compact stance. Power. Control. I saw how it could be done on hard snow. Tight stance, brutal weighting. Strong on the back ski, control where there should have been chaos. Not loose like we had been doing. I was all in.
The compact stance, the weighted rear ski, these were not constraints but refinements, evidence that freedom acquires meaning through structure. This wasn’t just style, it was discipline disguised as freedom. Telemark became not just a way to ski but a way to stand in the world—unlocked, adaptable, suspicious of rigidity. Telemark isn’t just skiing. It’s a permanent state of controlled instability.
I came for winters. Stayed for summers. Over time, telemark skiing became one axis among many. It has been a good life.
But life here isn’t one note. Always trying something new, badly at first, obsessively after.
The mountains gave me everything and took some back. Friends lost. Days gained. Lessons paid for in both directions.
I find the pattern persists. figuring things out the hard way. Same as telemark, really. One engages, adjusts, perseveres.
These days I’m learning how to live with less and fix what breaks. Tried to keep my hands busy and my mind unowned.
Which feels, frankly, like the only sane response left.
Steep and Deep
Morning cracks open cold; sharp, invasive, borderline hostile. The kind of cold that reminds you you’re alive whether you asked for it or not. Breath is visible proof that you’re still alive, as it curls like campfire ghosts. And it’s already hitting you; the cold, the anticipation, the raw hum of something about to go down. A confrontation between body and environment.
We climb anyway; because up there is where things still make sense.
Sun lifts and spills over the ridgeline like a quiet blessing. White terrain ignites, untouched and unapologetic, awaiting inscription. Sky screaming blue stretching into something dangerously infinite. The wind is light. It touches the face. It is good. Hawks riding thermals suggests a freedom not yet attained, like they’ve got the whole damn sky on lease, circling like aerial journalists, documenting the madness. Just vibing overhead like they’ve seen it all before.
Thread through trees, rise above them exposed, electric, leaving the smallness behind. Wind brushes the sweat from our foreheads; nature’s way of saying keep going. The ascent is not merely physical but existential. Each step resists abstraction: it insists on immediacy. No hesitation. Commitment is the only currency that matters here. The self becomes acutely aware of its placement within space. Step. Then another step. You do not think about the rest. Only the one you take. One does not climb the whole, only the present motion.
Step. Another step. Don’t think about another step.
And then, contact. You click in. That’s when things make sense. This is the drop. This is the chorus. Bindings snap shut like a loaded weapon. Gravity takes over, becomes a partner instead of an enemy. You drop. It is weightless. The fall line pulls you. It is steep and deep and true. Descent transforms intention into action. Every turn is an act of rebellion against inertia. Speed distorts reality—steep, deep, unhinged. Weightless, ripping through powder like it’s the last great sound on earth—steep, deep, and absolutely alive.
You carve it up, leave your scratches behind. Nobody cares. That’s the good part. It is behind you upon the mountain, temporary marks, yet fully authentic. Steepness and depth become conditions of expression. You smile, do not say it, but the feeling sticks. That quiet grin, you can’t fake that, is not performance but residue; evidence of engagement. Steep and deep, yeah, that’s the deal.
And yet, the experience does not conclude. There is an inherent pull, a magnetic insistence that demands repetition, that calls you back up the slope to begin again. The cycle is both literal and symbolic, ascent and descent mirrored in the body, mind, and perception, as if the mountain itself has authored an unending lesson in persistence. Each climb teaches something new, each descent confirms skills, instincts, and courage, while the rhythm of movement becomes almost meditative. Motion and effort are inseparable, and the snow, the slope, the wind, and the light all participate in this dialogue, returning attention, commitment, and energy in equal measure.
Ascend, descend, repeat, a loop without closure, without finality, yet full of meaning. The absurdity of repetition does not diminish its significance; it reinforces it, highlighting both endurance and experience. Motion becomes its own statement, each iteration a living proof of engagement, skill, and freedom. The mountain remains constant, indifferent yet instructive, while the skier returns again and again, participating in a dialogue that is at once physical, mental, and profoundly human. There is no end, only continuation, only the act itself, repeated until fully known and fully felt.
Steep and Deep by Brian Howard
Waking up, Getting stoked. Heading out to hike the bowl
Air is cold, Breath is smoke. We ascend to a higher goal
Sun reveals, Gift of white. Bluebird skies, hawks delight
Through the trees, Above them now. Wind is gentle and it soothes our brow
Another step, Another step, Don't think about another step
Another step, Another step, Don't think...
So,
I'm clicking in, follow me, I'll meet you in, The North Woods trees
Weightless now, can't you see, freedom turns, Steep and Deep, Steep and Deep
Vibrations created, Left in snow. Smiles give away our inner glow
Air is cold, Snow is deep. There's powder turns for us to reap.
Climb back up, On the ridge. Take a step and breathe out again
Another step, Another step. Don't think about another step
Another step, Another step. Don't think...
So,
I'm clicking in, follow me, I'll meet you in, The North Woods trees
Weightless now, can't you see, freedom turns, Steep and Deep, Steep and Deep
A moment of clarity...
Sometimes all it takes is seeing a heel. A familiar friend who inspired my dreams for years suddenly looked different. It wasn’t the light or location that had changed. Maybe it was me. It was definitely me. Had to be me. I could understand not fully appreciating what I was looking at in college, but after all of these years of living in Colorado, and learning to telemark ski; I was amazed it had taken me this long to see the heel.
It was free.
That wasn’t snow covering up an alpine binding. It was snow on the ski, and the shadow confirmed it. The badass backcountry skier that taunted me in college in Texas, and eventually got me to take a year off before never going to grad school, was in telemark gear!
The title is “Chute Out” at Ellery Lake Bowl, Yosemite. It also says Chouinard Equipment for Alpinists, Box 90, Ventura, CA 93002 and I had asked for it, as well as a tee-shirt, as a birthday present my senior year in high school. It was above my bed in college and has received a prime wall position ever since.
Chouinard Equipment was Yvon Chouinard’s company that created hex nuts and stoppers for rock climbers before the end of the 80’s. The legal landscape encouraged him to make the decision it was easier to sell his designs to Black Diamond Equipment, and concentrate on making clothing via his other up and coming company Patagonia.
Bela and Mimi Vadasz, Alpine Skills Institute is the photo credit, and for all these years I had looked upon it with admiration. The slope is steep and the granite walls behind the skier highlighted the snow being thrown from the skis due to a jump turn. The image captures the skier in flight. That moment the skis are pointed straight downhill while in rotation before landing in the sun draped snow.
It’s an athletic and dynamic movement which, when linked in succession, creates a wonderful vibration known as skiing. A vibration that is unique to each individual but still there are rules. Rules about snow consolidation, and I could tell it was a spring day. The snow tends to stick to skis during the spring and the skier was dressed in a light top with a baseball cap.
