What I Make When Things Get Quiet

Scenes From the Places I'd Rather Be

Every business has seasons.

Mine are…not subtle.

From about July through December, things are a blur of shows, shipping boxes, laser machines running late into the night, and me wondering if it’s normal to drink this much coffee.

And then January shows up.

The orders slow down. The emails get quieter. No, not just quieter: the pace drops off a cliff.

For a long time that made me nervous. Slow seasons feel dangerous when you run your own business. The little voice in your head starts whispering questions like What if it never picks back up? What if this is the beginning of the end?

But over the years I’ve learned something important about slow seasons: they are when the making happens.

Sure, I’m still asking myself what if this is the beginning of the end? But I’m learning to do things that are more productive than worrying.

When things get quiet, I go out to the shop, turn on the laser, and start experimenting. I try new ideas. I make weird things. Some of them fail spectacularly (I am still working on a topographical map of the Kettle Moraine 100 race, but I’m still in the “fail spectacularly” phase on that one).

But some things turn into products people end up loving.

Lately, what I’ve been making are these little rustic outdoor scenes - tiny windows into the places I’d rather be: mountains, campsites, winding trails, the glow of a campfire.

Here are a few of them, along with the little stories behind them.

Mountains have a way of rearranging your priorities. When you’re standing in front of something that big, the emails, the deadlines, the bills, the little annoyances of daily life all shrink down to the size they probably deserved all along.

I like making mountain scenes because they remind me that the world is still enormous.

I’ve noticed that almost everyone has a camper story: A childhood trip. A grandparent who parked one by a lake every summer. A road trip where things went gloriously wrong. For me, it’s my childhood friend Becky and her family’s spot at Riverbend Campground. I wonder if they know how many beautiful core memories were created there.

This piece started with a simple question: how do you capture that feeling of wandering around the country with nowhere urgent to be?

Apparently, the answer is a tiny yellow camper.

One of my favorite sounds in the world is a zipper opening on a tent just before sunrise.

There’s that cold morning air. The smell of damp pine needles. Coffee water goes on the stove. Someone stirs the fire back to life. Nobody is in a hurry.

This little piece is my attempt to freeze that moment.

Every time I make one of these little scenes, I wonder what people see in it. Maybe it’s a trip you took ten years ago. Maybe it’s a trip you keep promising yourself you’ll take someday. Either way, the outdoors has a way of sticking with us.

When things get quiet, I make things.

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If you’re new here and haven’t seen my work before, it is available here. I am celebrating spring with a sale this month.