Windy afternoon.

I'm a winter person, no doubt. I've always liked cold weather. Snow? Bring it on.

Ice? I can handle that too as long as there's plenty of firewood and some hot cocoa.

As a child we ate ice pieces off of frozen magnolia leaves.

In my first job after college, I fed pigs in deep snow when water lines were frozen solid for days. I even had to walk to work a couple of times because the snow was too deep for my little Dodge Colt. I loved it. Nothing better than a steaming mug of coffee after a morning outside in weather like that. Better yet if we lost power at the house and had to heat the coffee in an old porcelain coffee pot on top of the wood stove. Once we warmed up, the pot was replaced with a big cast iron Dutch oven full of p-nuts to boil. Walk down again to make sure the power wasn't off in the farrowing house and then spend the afternoon bundled up, reading.

But, Lord, I hate the wind.

So how did I get here?

The furthest thing I could imagine myself doing was publishing a book, but I'd promised my father.

And suddenly there it was. Almost the first day of Covid lock down. No where to go. No one to see. Scrolling on the internet, shopping on ebay. Suddenly this picture popped up. My dad was former military, I grew up hearing stories of Native Americans and my great-grandfather. I loved "Indians" because they were noble and rode horses.

This drawing spoke to me..,called out to me over and over. I only had to outbid one other person. I"m sorry for them but I love this piece and it hangs proudly in my home. A few days later, I contacted Quinton Maldonado, the artist whose work this is. I thought I needed to apologize for being white, but he laughed and offered his help with anything I needed.

And so began the journey.