More Than a Rock, 2nd Edition

51Working from Home

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I create most of my work in the landscape that is now my home—the high desert of the Colorado Plateau. People who visit the town I live in often are surprised to realize how small and remote it is, and they wonder how I ended up here. It is, in fact, a long and convoluted story, but I think it’s worth sharing some of its highlights. How I came to live and work here is, in more ways than one, a love story.

In another life I was a soldier. This was not by choice. I grew up in a country where military service is mandatory. The experience changed me in ways too numerous to recount, but little did I suspect at the time how one seemingly ...