I had to practice on boulders before I could move mountains.

feats of strength: the formative years

I think I'm 2 years old (?!) when my mom (Nance) took this, at Lummi Island in the San Juans. wearing signature purple-on-blue. amazing. my g-rents have a cabin there, and one summer a walrus washed up on shore with a bullet wound in it. other than that, it was always very serene and fun to light off illegal fireworks we bought on the reservation (please see below: "people who get it").

I think what I'm really looking for here are the starfish that year after year I harvest, along with my siblings and cousins, from under these huge rocks. Yeah it's messed up now looking back on it, but when you're small and there's a star shaped creature that clings to rocks and has a beak, you must harvest as many as possible and dry them out on the rocks as souvenirs. that's the way loves goes (janet jackson). 

every summer my extended family climbs up on this boulder and has a photoshoot, and it's fascinating to actually track annual progression in my unfashionable but confident childhood (looney tunes and winnie-the-pooh being a common theme in my wardrobe for all of my formative years. I'm a better person for it though, it could be much worse. I could have been forced to wear something with rhinestones that was designed by some clown like hannah montana).

either way, I loved that my mom let me wear tutu's and leotards on a daily basis. if they want, my future children won't have a closet, they'll have a costume trunk.