Nicole Vaunt and Amber Rose McConnell in Austin
Added 2017-06-11 16:16:00 +0000 UTCI don't really feel the need to escape winter in the North West the same way I did Pennsylvania, or Chicago. Even though it does get cold out here it is not the crushing kind. For four years I had the same daily routine when home. Wake up, walk down to the basement to thaw our pipes with a hair dryer, make coffee, bundle up in a snow suit, slide into the World War II sleeping bag on my computer chair, edit until I couldn't feel my hands, run up stairs and try to thaw myself in front of a small space heater.
When we got our place in Philly we didn't know that it had no insulation, or that the gas pipes running into our house for heat were broken, and clogged with dirt from a water repair job the city had done a few months prior, but we did learn that it was cold, so we started an annual thing where at least for one month we would leave.
We went to California, we went to Mexico, we went to Florida, We went to Texas. This winter we went back to Texas not to escape, but to enjoy a place we all love just for a little bit. It was beautiful. We hiked into the green belt, drank a cider by the water, hopped in and created photos in the shade of a beautifully large boulder.
I used to have to be on the road for months. Now thanks to all of you I can get to a place create, and not feel the intensity of being away from home for half the year. Knowing that I can be back to home because everything is closer, and knowing that my home is somewhere I want to be is pretty incredible.
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