“You were.”
I started writing this blog post in October of 2025, after my first summer as a wrangler at the Hunewill Guest and Cattle Ranch.
It is now May 2026, and I am days away from heading back up there. It seemed as though when I arrived back in LA, all the wonderful memories of my summer job were distracted by my career, commuting, working, and life in the city. I’d taken a break from social media, which seemed to help relieve the pressure of living with 9 million people in Los Angeles County. The fall into 2026 felt like my heart had been broken, for so many reasons, and it had.
As I finish up the semester as an Adjunct Professor and prepare to head north for the summer, I can not help but feel overwhelmed. The short Memorial weekend I spent there reminded me how at home I feel at the ranch. Not with just the place, but with the people, nature, and the animals. It has made these two weeks of purgatory between city liv’n and physical days outside feel lonely and tired. So I thought I would look back at what I had started writing in October to remember the same heartbreak I felt in August of 2025 - and welcome the memories of last summer with the excitement of my near future.
This fall, winter, and spring have been solid - but even just reading my journal and written blog post now, I’m simply, warmly, and humbly delighted to be headed back to my wrangler/ photographer job - at my absolute favorite place, ready to be looked after by the Eastern Sierra.
So here it is, my feelings from last fall:
Remember that scene in forest Gump where he’s sitting and talking to Jenny while she’s sick. He is sitting at her side when she asks, “Hey Forest… were you scared of Vietnam?” Forest goes on to describe his serene moments in the last 10-plus years of his life. Tom Hank’s performance, the subtle string and piano filling the air, and the camera calmly reveling in whatever nature the script is describing… It’s perfect … cinema at its finest. She was there… she will always be there.
It creates an emotion and a feeling ... and it’s exactly how I will remember my summer as a wrangler/ photographer at the Hunewill Ranch.
Sometimes I would just sit in the mornings with the side-by-side engine off, watching the herd come in as the sun peaked over the adjacent hills to the mighty Eastern Sierras, and just listen to 100 horses’ hooves hit the meadow.
Every morning I’d feel the warmth and truth radiate from each horse I got to catch and bridle, remembering animals haven’t a single evil bone in their being.
By the end of each week I’d get a comment from a guest that they never looked so good until I photographed them, or this photo of their dad I took might be his last ride, or a photo of a father and his sons is going to get printed big in a home I snapped on fathers day, and I remember that my camera has the ability to literally stop time, light, and feeling.
Every day, the people I met, rode with, and laughed with all made me feel at home.
I can not wait to get back there. The Eastern Sierra absolutely looked after me, in the way you might feel the Universe and pure existence love you.