I’m writing this from Monte Vista, at the start of the 43rd Annual Monte Vista Crane Festival. The air is cold, and our coffee is hot. The sound of Sandhill Crane calls rolls across the valley in waves - or maybe that’s the call of excited birders gathered to witness.

There is something powerful about gathering with people who wake before sunrise to see migrations. Birders. Conservationists. Photographers. Biologists. Families. People who understand that watching birds is never just about watching birds….

And being here, in the San Luis Valley, listening to cranes lift into the morning sky, I’m contemplating my own “why.”

Long before highways and fences, the sky itself held pathways. Cranes rising from southern wetlands. Monarch butterflies lifting off from milkweed and riding thermals across a continent. Salmon pushing upstream, guided by memory written into their bodies. Even plants migrate. Seeds catch in fur, float downriver, travel in the bellies of birds, or wait patiently for fire to open their cones.

Movement is not chaos in nature. It is an intentional pattern of remembering and survival. It is a relationship to the ebbs and flows of energy and resources.

Migration is how ecosystems stay alive.

When cranes leave the San Luis Valley, they carry nutrients between landscapes. When geese graze one field and roost in another, they redistribute energy. When herds shift with the seasons, grasslands regenerate. Motion and stillness exist in rhythm.

Seasonal migration shaped entire cultures. I think of my own ancestors, many of whom also moved with the flow of resources and seasons across the Great Plains before Colinists arrived. People followed bison across the plains. Families moved with planting cycles. Trade routes braided communities from the plains through mountains and deserts.

For most of history, mobility was not criminalized. It was necessary.

Today, we live in a time of fences and paperwork that determines who is allowed to cross and who is not. In a country shaped by migration, there is a strange tension around movement itself. Many of us feel divided, siloed, disconnected, even as cranes dance freely on many lands without passports.

Birds do not recognize borders.

Rivers never stopped at checkpoints.

Seeds do not ask permission to enter.

And yet migration in nature is not reckless. It is relational. Cranes return because this valley sustains them. Freedom and responsibility are intertwined.

That’s what draws me to the animal world. Not control. Not ownership. Kinship.

When I watch cranes, I see trust in a larger system. I see cooperation across landscapes. I see an ancient memory that says: go where life is supported. Return when it is time. Travel together.

In a moment when the country feels fractured and rigid, migration reminds me that life thrives through connection and flow. That belonging stretches across distance to a large and beautiful ecological web. That the sky has always been wider than the lines we draw beneath it.

Maybe that is part of why so many of us stand in cold fields before sunrise, to watch birds, and to remember something.

Stay boundless,

Founder, CEO

If you’re here ain Monte Vista or nearby, come find our corner booth #61 at the Crane, Craft, & Nature Fair. I would love to hear which birds have your attention this season.

If you’re not in the San Luis Valley, the Mountain Messengers are available online in limited quantities.

This weekend I’m featuring the three Mountain Messengers released so far, each printed on 100% USA-made organic cotton in small, intentional runs.

Ancient Migration
Endurance. The ancient rhythm of return. Woven with grains, frogs, and snails common in their diet, a web of ecology alive in their mysterious dance.

Kingfisher Clarity
Inspired by the Belted Kingfisher’s precision and patience along riverbanks. Stillness, then decisive action. Featuring Yarrow, an ancient wound-healing plant rooted in resilience.

Magpie Mystery
A nod to the Black-billed Magpie’s intelligence, social bonds, and unapologetic presence. Curiosity as strength. Featuring the resilient local Primrose.

All three designs are sewn, cut, and dyed in the United States and screen-printed in the Front Range. Produced in limited batches.