I was at Sawmill Ponds on a recent Sunday with my partner and our two dogs. The air was that perfect in-between — not too cool, not too hot — the kind that makes you forget you have a body at all. And then it rained.
Everything opened up at once. That smell that only exists in Colorado wetlands — a flourish of scents so fresh and aromatic your senses ring inside your body, released all at once by the cool, cleansing rain. Green and alive and a little wild. I stood there in it and just let it happen.
I take pictures on every hike because the trail always has something to say. That day it was saying something about aliveness. About what it feels like to be a body in a place that is fully, unself-consciously itself.
That’s what I design toward.
Art that starts outside
Every piece in the breathemovedivine catalog begins as original hand-drawn artwork — no templates, no stock, no shortcuts. But before the drawing comes the living. The hikes. The wetlands. The rain. The way light moves through a Russian olive tree when everything is wet and silver and still.
I’m a late-diagnosed autistic person, and being outside regulates me in a way almost nothing else does. The sensory input of a trail — the smell, the texture underfoot, the sound of water — isn’t overwhelming the way a lot of environments can be. It’s clarifying. My nervous system knows what to do with a wetland. It knows what to do with rain.
So when I sit down to draw, I’m drawing from that. From what my body remembers.
Designed for people who love outside
The new summer collection exists because I wanted breathemovedivine to show up on the trail, not just on the wall.
Beach towels you actually take to the water. Tumblers that go in a pack. Totes that carry real things. Camping mugs for the mornings when the coffee has to be perfect because everything else is uncertain.
Original hand-drawn art on products built for use. For movement. For the ones who take their whole self outside — sensory needs, big feelings, and all.
Colorado made me this way
There are smells you can only experience in Colorado. Wetlands after rain. Pine after lightning. The particular dry warmth of a high desert afternoon. I’ve lived here long enough that these things are in my body now, woven into the way I see color and line and form.
When I design, I’m not thinking about trends. I’m thinking about what it felt like to stand in the rain at Sawmill Ponds while two dogs were very good boys on the leash and the whole world smelled like something ancient and alive.
That’s what I want you to carry with you. On your trail. In your hands. Against your skin.
The new collection is live now at breathemovedivine.com. Come find the piece that feels like yours. 🦚
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