Wintercount 2023

Faithfully feral and relentlessly raw, the folks that I had the pleasure of sharing space with at Wintercount Skills Gathering were some of the warmest and wildest creatures that I’ve encountered during my dusty days.

As one of the largest ancestral skills gatherings in the country, the event brings over 600 people to a special stretch of the Sonoran desert to share knowledge, trade stories, and continually deepen their relationship to past, present, and future notions of how people can live in community with both the land and one another.

It’s a place where children can take better care of themselves than most adults that I know, wildcrafted anything is currency, and, by decree, anyone and everyone is welcome at any fire that is burning.

From the basics of bushcraft to the countless ways one can use the products of our plant and animal kin in our everyday lives, the sheer scale of educational offerings was staggering. Equally impressive was the incredible collection of instructors that came from every corner of the states to sit in the dirt and bestow their knowledge upon eager members of their community.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I was offered a chance to shoot it, but the lessons I learned will stay with me until I’m just a pile of bones and I’ve found myself enthralled by the prospect of a continued exploration into the ways of living that our species seems to have forgotten.

Endless thanks to all those that played with me in the dirt, taught me a new way to look at the world, or traded a story in the glow of a fire pit.

I’ll see ya when I see ya, somewhere wild, covered in blood, mud, or buckskin.

Stay fierce…
The world is better for it.

You can see the rest of my images from Wintercount here.