Why is this the place I’ve chosen to plant my flag?

Proximity to extremism is important for those challenging its narratives. In North Idaho—one-time home of the Aryan Nations, ground zero for Ruby Ridge, current heart of the American Redoubt—there is much work to be done. I’m here because the stakes are high. I’m here because there’s another story to tell of this place. 

I’m also here because I know Idaho in my bones. Prior to my narrative activism, I spent a decade running chainsaws in its forests as an arborist, learning the seasonal rhythms and moods of this place. I know this terrain intimately; I’ve sweat and toiled and bled in these soils to help make a home for my family.

Because of this, North Idaho has my heart. I’ve known no wilder home. I’ve watched Lightning Creek at flood stage, carrying entire trees downstream, and stood beneath Western red cedars that have held their ground for centuries. This place offers constant perspective on scale, change, and endurance. 

I stay, too, for community. My family and I are held in an intricate web of connection. The people here mirror the landscape: wild, rugged, complicated, and often deeply generous. Idaho is more than the negative headlines suggest. I stay because I understand “home” as a practice, not a place, and this—among my neighbors—is where I choose to practice.

My work within that practice is storytelling. On the surface, it appears innocuous, but it is, in fact, subversive, tectonic in force. Stories have the power to challenge, expand, or erode existing cultural narratives, building the complexity and resilience necessary to advance policy changes and sustain justice.

Idaho does not have a fixed story. None of us do. Our identities as people and places evolve with the choices we make about what is spoken, where there is silence, and who remains to tell the stories of homeground. I stay to be part of that telling.