the.writer.and.the.artist

Ashley is incredibly gifted with the pen and the brush.

My mom and I had the pleasure of photographing her and meeting her sister as well.

{hiya, Sage!}

Lovely, lovely women, I tell you.

The following poem was written by her

and it's one of my very favorite poems of.all.time.

Yeah, it's that good.

Ode to my Range of Mountains

The mountains live in my backyard

pressed tight against this valley—

a mother wearing an apron of snow

father with a jagged beard

little sister burned in summer—

Tell me, mountains that raised me,

why didn’t you warn me

when I was going to make a mistake?

Still, thank you,

for many things:

for long grass in springtime,

the red fox who darted out,

the deer and the steep path,

the stream and beaver dams,

for the time I hiked to your top at night

and lost the trail coming down,

for the way the weeds glowed like gold

under the navy sky as I came down through them—

the way I felt that I too had been alive a thousand years.

{Ashley Mae Hoiland}

For more of this yummy goodness, check her work out here and thank me later.