The Vignettes


Walk with me down the trail.

For two years, we lived in a tent trailer while traveling the American West. To document the kind of adventure I’d never have again, I told our stories through weekly vignettes.

We’ve left the RV life for now, but still continue to recount adventure’s ups and downs, our relationship with the outdoors, the wonderful disaster of parenting, and the struggle to catch lightening in the creative bottle.


Limber Pine
Beth Downing Beth Downing

Limber Pine

Being bendy can mean survival in the strangest, oddest, and most difficult of circumstances. Bowing to and with the storm is the practice for hovering over that cliff and then snapping back to where you were.

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The Vanishing 29th
Beth Downing Beth Downing

The Vanishing 29th

It’s a day that does exist consistently but intermittently; it comes along every four years only to go into hiding afterwards. Maybe that’s why it’s fresh enough to perform the re-alignment. To do Atlassian work but with a four-year breather.  

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Color in the Growth
Beth Downing Beth Downing

Color in the Growth

Before it seems possible, feasible, or wise, it’s sending out new growth. Those branches are smooth and shiny with a hint of optimism. They reach directly for what they want – the sky – and their path is straight.

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Morning Dynamite
Beth Downing Beth Downing

Morning Dynamite

“Look,” I said to my group-mates, while pointing up with my pole, “that’s where they bombed.”

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Time Traveler
Beth Downing Beth Downing

Time Traveler

You are a time traveler of your own life but it requires no complex magic, only riding the waves of memory as long as you can. When the time comes they break over your head, know that you’re getting to see your life in a way you never have before and never will again.

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