My relationship with California is a very complicated one. My family moved there when I was 12 and I spent the 9 years that I lived there thinking about when I could leave.

One of my more vivid memories of living there was the week my grandpa died. It was during the Camp Fire in November 2018 was taking place. All that smoke from Northeastern California was dragged down and gathered in the San Francisco Bay, trapped by the mountains. For two weeks, the sky was beige and the air smelled like burning tires. The sunlight turned everything a pale yellow color. The sun would also look twice as big as usual because of the smoke particles it was reflecting off it. When it set in the evenings, it looked like a giant red eye, probably three times the size it usually was and the color of tail lights. The weirdest part was just going on with your life, as if that smoke wasn’t the particles of an entire region burned to ashes, including the town of Paradise and several other towns that were caught in the fire.

That same week, my grandfather admitted himself to the hospital with chest pains and was in the ICU four days later. My family and I would be inside that clean, white hospital and look outside to see Doomsday. The thick skies, brown mountains, dark sunlight, like an obvious visual of death. It’s not the picture of California we usually think of. My grandpa died on November 16th, that Friday. I drove his car back to his apartment complex and crossed over I-85, where you get a big, wide view of the valley. I was angry at how many times I looked at those mountains, full of fury and feeling trapped. It felt like the latest addition to a list of bad things California did to me. I guess all teenagers blame where they live for their problems, but the brown mountains were something to blame at the time. A week later, a rainstorm passed over the entirety of Northern California and put out the fire in a few days. It was over; life went on until the next wildfire season.

I’m making it sound very bleak. In retrospect, California is such an expansive, rich place. You truly get everything there; literally fire and water. Cold and heat, high and low, brown and green, death and life. I’ve never been somewhere that can be so many things at once. I didn’t really care at the time. My family moved to Maine in 2022 and, at first, I was so happy that I’d never have to go back. But, suddenly, I had nowhere to go. I hadn’t quite established myself in New York and the only other place I had to go was a small town in Maine that I didn’t know at all. I never, ever thought I would miss California, but suddenly I did. I don’t feel that way anymore, but at the time I realized it was the only place I felt familiar to, all the bad aside.

Photography allows me to distance myself from something, like I’m stepping back and just paying attention to its beauty. Art has a way of making things so simple. When I look at these pictures, I don’t remember the upset. I remember my sister growing up, getting our dogs, going to the beach. It all becomes very, very simple. Frankly, I don’t know if I would’ve learned to use art in such a conductive way had I not lived there. Whenever I feel trapped, I like to create something. I cannot ignore how important that is to me, so I won’t ignore where it came from.