Connecting with and Accepting Death
-a message from Between the Sky and Dirt-

Nature has always spoken to me, sometimes she whispers, sometimes she yells.  

My brother, Zach, and I were always dirty little kids, and I mean DIRTy. We spent those long summer days running through the woods, squishing our feet in the sand as the lake waves washed over them, and dancing through the dusky glow of late summer fireflies. As time passed, those dirty kids grew up, changed a bit, and forgot some of the important lessons nature had taught them. But as all people do as they grow, they change and change and change and change some more. Slowly, we started listening again. We started exploring again.  

Zach moved to Peru to study night monkeys and spent months in the rainforest, enjoying a new adventure. I began listening to the flowers, the forest floor, the calmness the trees brought. I could hear nature again, I remembered how to listen.  

Though we were different, we were made from the same earth. Zach loved the wildness of nature. He would go out looking for her danger, her uncertainty. I, on the other hand, took comfort in her safety. I would wrap myself in the sweet smell of her forests, grounding myself in her earth.  

In the late and hot summer of August 2017, I cursed nature for the first time. I blamed her for taking my brother away from me. It wasn’t fair. He had just turned 23, had his whole life ahead of him, and just like that he was gone. Looking back, those days are a blur. So much happened so fast. I was spinning and I thought I would never stop. My best friend, my brother, the only person who understood the whole of me, and knew what I was thinking with just a look, was no longer physically by my side.  

I would sit outside at night for hours, watching the stars, wondering where he was. Sometimes I would talk to him and he would, in his own way, answer me. I started going off in the woods alone again. I started stumbling across death. A lot of death. Every form of death you could imagine you’d find out in nature. At first it made me cry, and I would leave a flower, a stone, a tear, and hope the once living creature didn’t feel pain during it’s last moments. I was afraid of death, I was worried it was going to claim others I loved. And it did, like death does.  

I started listening closer when I would find death, instead of letting myself feel sorrow, grief, or pain. My feelings started changing. I realized both Nature and Zach were helping me heal by showing me the circle of life and how it continues on after death. Death does not take life, it changes life’s form. The spirit moves on, the body feeds new life to come.  
I found myself picking up old bones, stumbling across beautiful skulls, and wandering into a mycophile’s dreams. Mushrooms, I realized, were the earth's last hurrah when death came. Her last little party. Mushrooms would slowly dance, sway, embrace, and convert death to new life. Flowers would grow, bees would pollinate, animals would eat, the cycle would continue.  

Creating art and this business from the ashes of a once beautiful life has helped me mourn my loss. It helps me embrace the things that once shook me to my core. Loss, death, changing. I chose the name Between the Sky and Dirt because that’s where life flourishes, that’s where we shine. With my toes in the dirt and my mind in the sky, I am alive.

Working with animal remains and mushrooms (deaths best friend) has become a healing process for me since my brother passed on to the other side. Bringing new life and joy through my art has been so healing and has helped me connect with life and death, the beautiful and the ugly. Every day is a challenge, and I miss him every second. Everything I create is in honor of Zach, and the wild life he lived. 

Thank you for being here.