Rock Hunting is in my blood.

I was raised in a family passionate about rock hounding. My mother often recalled that my first rock show happened when I was just three months old. Our family vacations took us across the Western United States, searching for agates, petrified wood, turquoise, geodes, moss agate, jade, and countless other gemstones. Over the years, my mother became a skilled silversmith and lapidary artist, transforming our finds into beautiful jewelry.

As a child, I was energetic, curious, and adventurous. To keep track of me, my mother dressed me in a bright red sweatshirt and told me I could go anywhere as long as I could see a family member. Unintentionally, she gave me the freedom to explore, and I took full advantage—following game trails and discovering new places in the desert and mountains. While rocks didn’t interest me much back then, I cherished the freedom to roam in nature.

My interest in rocks didn’t spark until 1997, when Mom and I visited Sedona for the first time. We were captivated by Hopi and Navajo stone fetishes and soon found ourselves buying books about them. Inspired, we decided to try carving our own. We researched soapstone carving, visited a local carver, and bought some soapstone and files to get started.

That’s when I discovered my love for carving—creating small fetishes of wolves, horses, mountain lions, cats, bears, and more. Friends began buying them and gifting them to others. I even received a special request for a pig, which I carved from pinkish soapstone. Eventually, I had to pause my carving to focus on running a business, and my tools sat unused for about a decade. Later, I began carving selenite knives. When I brought my first knife to an angel meditation, the participants loved it so much that I left with orders for three more.

That first knife opened the door to creating ever more challenging knives, daggers, and swords. I rarely repeat a design, letting my imagination and the unique shape of each piece of selenite guide me. Even when I use the same pattern, every piece is distinct. My creativity feels limitless, and I enjoy expressing new ideas through innovative designs.

The pictures below are of myself and Mom digging for soapstone at Soapstone Ridge high in the mountains northwest of Yosemite National Park. The first time we tried to find this spot, we followed directions Mom had received from a member of the gem and mineral society she belonged to at the time. We went up a mountain and down the other side only to encounter the middle fork of the Merced river. She made me walk across it to see how deep it was. So, I pulled of my boots, rolled up my pant legs and walked across and then back again. It was only about a foot and a half deep, not too deep for my Grand Cherokee jeep. We eventually found the site but not before Mom called us "two lost loonies in the boonies. Once there, we dug up enough soapstone to keep us busy for a while. We drove out by another way only to discover it was shorter with no river crossings.