About a Dog.
When partnering up with Filson, they asked me to answer the question: “What makes you love the outdoors?” Should be an easy question to answer, right? The outdoors have mountains, waterfalls, cheetahs, fresh air, and pretty much everything else you could ever want. Any of those answers could have worked. I also could have said I liked the open spaces that you can only get outside. I could point to all of the wildlife and nature VHS tapes I binge watched growing up, watching Wild America over and over until I knew every scene by heart. It could have been the fallen tree in our forest that 7 year old me claimed as a fort, fighting off my sisters in a bloody turf war (Poison Ivy was a horrible peace offering, Annalise). Or maybe it was the canoe trips down the Flambeau River with my dad, taking the canoe over that one small waterfall, which at the time seemed like we were going over the edge of Niagara. Whatever the reason was back when I was younger, at some point life caught up and pushed all of the stuff that I loved to the back burner. Then towards the end of college, a dog happened.
Meet Boo.
Getting out and letting Boo live his best dog life became a full time excuse to pull up the map and pick a dot of green to explore. Since then we’ve shared too many bags of beef jerky to count, exploring anything and everything we could find, from hiking through blizzards in the Grasslands to swimming in the Mississippi during the dead of winter. Boo turned into a gateway back to all of the stuff I loved, but had forgotten about since I was a kid.
For most of the photographs I’ve taken, Boo has been right there out of frame, probably eating something he shouldn’t, or looking for something to make friends with. Always the constant companion, ready for whatever was up next. These days you can find him lounging around the house, sprinting for the door whenever someone grabs a backpack or puts on a pair of boots. Every time, thinking that whatever we are about to do, it’s going to be the funnest thing he’s ever done, even if it’s just walking around the block.
So, in reality, there are too many reasons I love the outdoors to name, but I owe them all to a dog named Boo.
In partnership with:
