How to Float a Drift Boat

My cousin came to visit. He arrived Tuesday evening, with a dirt bike securely fastened to the front of his truck and a camper attached to his truck bed.

It was the first visitor I’d had in Swan Valley since I’d arrived in October. He is my Ukrainian cousin on my dad’s side of the family. We’d never been particularly close, but the rugged landscape of Idaho had beckoned to him.

I introduced him to the Hunter. Introduced him to the dogs, the cat, and the Hunter’s brother. I gave him the nickel and dime cent tour of the farmhouse we’d been renting and asked if he was hungry. 

“I’m not that hungry” He replied 

It wasn’t just tradition, it was my Ukrainian grandmother’s gospel. Guests were to be fed, always, even if they insisted they weren’t hungry. Especially then. She never took “no” for an answer, always believing a full plate was the truest form of welcome. And neither did I. 

I made burritos. Build-your-own, because that’s the only kind of arrival ritual I had left in me. Cancer had taken the rest. I laid out the tortillas, the good cheese, grilled peppers, black beans, avocado mashed with too much lime. He piled everything high and asked careful questions. We stayed up past midnight. I told him everything. About this blog, about a screenplay on grief I had secretly been working on, about the cancer diagnosis, about how sometimes the grief felt like a second, larger tumor growing somewhere behind my ribs.

He listened like a craftsman watches clay spin. Just nodded, slow. The way you do when you’re not waiting to speak.

Wednesday: The Onion Farmer

I woke to the smell of coffee, not machine-brewed, but intentional, roasted beans, a moka pot hissing gently, and the clink of my cousin’s ceramic mug. He was a potter. A good one at that. I had never been a fan of pottery until I listened to him speak about his process. He explained the subtle art of centering clay on the wheel like it was a meditation, how the slightest tremor in your hands can ripple into a warped lip or collapsed wall. He’d wax poetic about the magic of glaze, how iron oxide can shift from rust-red to celadon green in the kiln depending on the atmosphere.

We sat at the kitchen table inside his tiny camper, our mugs warm in our hands, and the potter told me a story.

He called it the Onion Farmer, but I knew it better as an old Taoist parable. A Chinese farmer lives a quiet life planting radishes, or onions, in his version. Him and his son are picking onions out of ground they don’t own, barely subsisting. They’re giving seventy percent of their crop income to the landowner and living off of thirty percent. Their whole financial legacy is tied up into this plot of land they don’t own, and the farmer is too old to really work it so he relies heavily on his son. One day, the farmer’s workhorse runs away.

The son runs into the house and shakes his dad awake and says, “Dad, you’re not gonna believe this, this is a travesty we’re gonna die out here. I can’t get these onions to grow, unless I turn this land over and I can’t move that hoe without the horse, and the horse is gone.” 

The old farmer looks at his son and says, “I don’t know what this is. I don’t know if it is a nightmare, I can’t call it.” 

The son thinks his dad’s out to lunch, or ambivalent, or that he’s simply too old to understand the gravity of the situation. 

A couple days later, the kid is chilling on a porch, and he sees the horse running down a hill with fifty wild stallions behind it. The farmer and his son run into the field and the son unlocks the the paddock for the horses and he hits his dad on the back shouting, “Forget onions, we’re rich now. We’re in the horse business, we’re running a horse trading business now, this is a miracle dad! I’m going to tell everyone we’re trading horses now!”

The old farmer looks at his son nonplussed and says, “I don’t know what this is. I don’t know if this is a miracle. I can’t call it.”

A couple more days pass and the son is trying to break these new stallions and domesticate them. He didn’t know anything about horses, he’s an onion farmer. One of the horses ain’t having it. He rears up, and kicks the son in his leg. Now it’s the 1400s in rural China. There is no healthcare, no Kaiser Permanente, and his leg is shattered. The farmer wraps his son’s leg in some tobacco leaves and sprinkles some cement on it.  The son goes to sit in a chair for a while, wailing and eventually the townspeople hear about the incident. The townspeople visit the little shack and ask the farmer, “What are you going to do? You can’t domesticate these horses, you can’t move this hoe, you guys are fully fucked. I don’t know what you’re going to do, but this is pretty much the end right? Like this is a nightmare!”

And the old Chinese onion farmer looks at his son’s leg and then to the townspeople and replies, “I don’t know what this is, I can’t really call it.” 

A few more days pass, the farmers tending as best he can to the onions, his son is still writhing in pain in the shack, when he hears this thunderous noise and they look up onto the ridgeline and they see five thousand Samurai on horseback running towards their little hut. The commanding officer gallops over to the farmer, gets off his horse and says, “Give us your son. We’re going to fight the Maoist army.” 

The farmer takes the Samurai commander to the little shack and points to his son’s leg before looking back at the commander and his army and says, “I would, but he can’t get out of the chair. His leg is shattered. He’s crippled.” 

The commanding officer gets back on his horse and he and his five thousand Samurai soldiers ride off to their death. 

I listened as I stirred the dregs of my coffee, and something loosened.

The farmer’s refusal to label each event as either good or bad highlighted the uncertainty of life. I tried my best to apply this as a reminder, that as I faced cancer, and things felt overwhelming now, I truly don’t know how everything will unfold. Maybe the cancer leads me to some big breakthrough, some unanticipated growth, some deeper understanding, or a shift in perspective, much like how the horse and samurai shifted the farmer’s life in unexpected ways.

My story doesn’t have a fixed ending yet, and I simply don’t have all the answers. The farmer didn’t rush to label his circumstances as good or bad but instead took a wait-and-see approach. There were so many times I’ve felt stuck and in limbo since my cancer diagnosis but my cousin’s story reminded me of the wisdom of sitting with uncertainty. Hadn’t this been what I’d been preaching all along? 

Initially, the farmer’s son was upset about the loss of the horse, but the very loss he perceived as a misfortune ultimately led to his acquisition of more horses, a chance at wealth, and the possibility of a new life. Maybe all the grief I have endured by losing my mother to suicide, my father to dementia, my belongings to an apartment flood, the cancer diagnosis, maybe they were are orchestrated, maybe even divinely so to bring this blog and my story to the surface. 

The story of the onion farmer’s indifference to label events as good or bad reminded me of the importance of perspective. The townspeople, in their panic, viewed the son’s broken leg as a crisis, yet the farmer maintained his calm and perspective. He understood that each moment is fleeting, and the future will always carry unknowns that might change the way we view our current situation. 

I didn’t have a choice in how the cards were dealt to me, but I did have a choice in how I framed what happened to me—and as a photographer that moral was not lost on me. The story my cousin told me that second morning he was visiting reminded me to live in the present without judgement. The farmer’s response revealed a kind of equanimity—an ability to accept life as it comes without the emotional attachment to how it “should” be. 

For the first time, I let go of the question I’d been asking since the PET scan: Why me? The answer wasn’t why. It was a redirect. It was now what? And that’s the question I’ve been trying to answer since I first heard the words, “You have cancer.” 

I didn’t have the answer. I was still searching for what the answer was, but this blog in part is the catalyst, the only answer I can give currently. 

My cousin and I talked for hours the second day he was visiting. We talk about God, about this blog I was creating, about the meaning of life and life itself here in a small town in Idaho—uprooted from everything and everyone I had known. When we were finished my cousin went for a ride on his dirtbike to see the falls and I headed into town to get provisions for the next few nights that he would be in town. 

That night, I grilled ribeyes from the local butcher. Salted the fat cap, let it hiss and sear against the cast iron. I baked potatoes and a small arugula salad with crumbled cheese to accompany the steaks, and we ate outside. Soaking up the beautiful Idaho weather, forks scraping against our plates until we wiped them clean. No phones. No evidence but memory.

Thursday: Art That Doesn’t Overlap

The next morning my cousin and I continued our morning tradition. I had mostly given up coffee entirely, but there was something to be said for the art and craftsmanship my cousin poured into a cup of joe. It was anything but ordinary. He dry roasted the beans himself, used a modified Italian moka pot and a funny little contraption I would later learn was a bicycle tire pump to get the perfect amount of crema foam on the top. He poured us each a cup in one of his handmade ceramic mugs he’s fired up on his kiln and we continued our conversation from the previous day. 

We covered politics, philosophy, psychology, ancestral history and relationships. The conversation was more edifying than the coffee itself. I had missed these kinds of conversations. The Hunter in all his simplicity was not much for deep conversations and I had been craving this kind of connection for months. 

We took a break in the afternoon, so I could go into town to meet my therapist for my weekly appointment and I couldn’t help but wish that my therapist could evoke the same kind of rabbit holes that my cousin and I explored. My therapist sat in the corner of his office and mostly listened, taking notes. Or what I hoped was notes. Maybe he wasn’t listening, maybe he was surfing the web, or checking facebook? I would never be quite certain. All I was certain of, was that when he did pipe in to offer up something, it never seemed to be about the thing that truly upset me. He’d latch on to the last thing I brought up that week that plagued me, which was never really the thing that bothered me. Just the bottom of the list of grievances I was angry with God about. 

I met my case manager that day, and for a moment felt a sliver of hope. That I was no longer fighting cancer and the subsequent financial ruin of my diagnosis alone. I finally felt like I had someone's hand I could hold through this experience. 

When I returned from town, my cousin and I decided to drive into Jackson. We took the pass, one of the most breathtaking valleys in the country. We winded through the gentle slopes of the Teton Range, with mountains looming in the distance, their jagged peaks still dusted with snow from the lingering winter. We drove past streams running alongside the road, rushing with the runoff from the snowmelt. We took in the small waterfalls scattered throughout the landscape, sparkling in the sunlight as they cascaded down the mountainsides, bringing the landscape to life in its own quiet way. Fluffy clouds drifted lazily overhead and the trees had just begun to bud. 

Once in town, we skipped the local tourist traps and searched for art galleries worth their weight in salt and spent the next few hours devouring the local art scene as if it were food itself. My cousin and I shared the same eye. One for art that told the story of the west, but did it in a way that didn’t overlap. Most of the galleries in town all told the story of the west from the same vantage point and brush. Like if I handed you a paint brush and told you to draw a picture of the rugged west, and you handed me a painting of an Indian riding bareback on a horse. 

After a few misses, we found Altimira. The art at Altamira in Jackson Hole captivated me with its authenticity and meticulous curation, setting it apart from other galleries in the city that felt forced and contrived. Unlike the disjointed displays elsewhere, Altamira centered on a cohesive western theme, yet each artist offered a distinct vision. From the energetic equine depictions in "The Pursuit" and "Alliance" to the vivid landscapes of "Mountain View Motel" and the creative flair of "Yellowstone Crayons: Grand Canyon," the gallery wove a diverse narrative of western heritage. I fell in love with the sculptures Ewe and Me by Kevin Box. Of course they were $90,000. I have expensive taste. I’m a taurus after all. 

We went to the Healthy Being Café and Juicery before we met up with the Hunter. The Hunter had just gotten done with work and offered to take us morel mushroom picking with his son—the Quiet Twin and his brother. It was a ritual of sorts, rooted in patience, observation, and the quiet connection you share with the land.

We broke out into pairs, and as my cousin and I hesitated, scanning the forest floor, the Hunter crouched low, his hand sweeping over the ground like he was searching for something buried beneath the surface. “Look around the base of decaying trees, around dead elm, ash, or sycamore trees. They thrive where wood has begun to break down.” he said, his voice steady, and low. “They’re small at first. But once you see one, you’ll start seeing more. They’re like ghosts hiding in plain sight.”

He reached out, fingers brushing a patch of fallen leaves, then gently lifted it back. There, nestled beneath, was a perfect morel, its honeycomb cap just starting to peek through the earth.

“Here,” he muttered, almost to himself, but his voice was sharp enough to carry. “You’ve gotta slow down. It’s all about patience. They don’t just appear in a perfect spot. They blend in. You have to be willing to move slowly, like the land’s got its own rhythm.”

He stood, eyes scanning the ground again, looking for another clue, a whisper of life in the forest.

“When you’re out here, don’t rush. The ground talks to you, if you listen. They like south facing slopes and patches of forest where it’s flooded” The Hunter was the kind of person who found comfort in the act of searching itself. He wasn’t about the catch, the kill, or the prize—it was the process. His pursuit of elk, deer horns, or morels wasn’t driven by a need for success, but by the rhythm of the hunt itself. This was something I was learning about the Hunter. 

He was a man who lived between moments of discovery, the satisfaction coming not from the finding, but from the searching. His life, like his hunts, was a quiet pursuit of something just out of reach, whether it was the perfect set of antlers or the elusive shape of a morel, hidden beneath layers of soil and leaves. He wasn’t hunting for answers, he was hunting for the hunt. It was as if he knew the real treasure wasn’t the thing found at the end, but the stillness in between.

We spent a good hour that afternoon hunting for morels, and to my surprise I found one. Back home I made ribeyes again but this time I chopped up our fresh morels delicately and fried them in butter and made a side grits with goat cheese and thyme. We stayed up talking until my eyes could no longer stay open and I had to reluctantly retire for the night. 

Friday: Green Pastures, and the Rock

Friday morning I wiped the sleep from my eyes, and barreled down the stairs eager to talk with my cousin more about God and to savor another cup of coffee. That morning we dissected Psalms 23. It was a verse I’d come home to when my father was dying slowly of dementia. My aunt had sent it to me a week or so before he passed. 

We talked about the green pastors about restoring our souls. What our cup runneth over meant. We dissected the passage, the one I’d heard from childhood and my cousin interjected, "Well, ya know, there's this shepherd, right? And he's got a whole flock a' sheep, but there's always that one stubborn bastard in the bunch. Ain't listenin' to nothin', just off doin' his own thing, wanderin' around. And that shepherd, he doesn't have much choice but to toss a rock at 'im to get his attention. Not too hard, just enough to get the point across, y’know? He’s gotta do somethin' to make that sheep listen or they all end up runnin' wild."

Was cancer my rock? My name Rachel meant Ewe or little lamb in Hebrew after all. It seemed fitting for God to try to get my attention this way.  I wondered if this diagnosis—this burning in my gut, this war in my cells—was my stone. Why would God allow my suffering to get my attention? Why would God use something so harsh, like cancer, to guide me? Maybe the stone wasn’t a punishment at all. Maybe it was an intervention, a way to bring me back from the edge, to wake me up to what’s truly important. Had I wandered off the path, chasing after things that look good but weren’t meant for me, drifting away from the safety of the shepherd’s care? Was I merely being redirected back to what really mattered? The layers of Psalm 23 came alive for me in ways that seemed almost tailored to what I was facing now. 

I grew up believing that the green pastors of the bible were lush fields of grass, but historically where the 23rd Psalm originates, the landscape was predominantly dry and mountainous, with limited natural grazing areas. Shepherds would have had to lead their flocks through harsh terrains with sparse vegetation. The idea of "green pastures" in the Psalm doesn’t necessarily mean lush meadows but rather a place where sheep could find enough to sustain them, even if that meant patches of grass growing in rocky soil, or even areas where water and grazing were more scarce. 

The "green pastures" from my childhood were more likely to be places where the sheep could find just enough food to survive, even if it wasn’t a perfect, verdant paradise. The shepherd’s role in leading them to these spots was critical, as the land was often dry and could be dangerous without the right guidance.

So, the imagery in Psalm 23 is not about a luxurious, easily accessible pastures but about a place of provision — a good, nourishing spot amid a harsher environment, and a symbol of care and direction in a rough world. It’s an evocative metaphor for how life can be difficult and challenging, yet still offers just enough sustenance when we’re guided in the right direction.

We chewed on the line He restoreth my soul. There was an inherent distrust I had in the idea of being "restored" when I felt like I was beyond repair. Life had worn me down in my thirties, when the weight of grief from my mother’s suicide and my father’s dementia, my illness, and all the loss I’d endured made me feel irrevocably changed. What does restoration even look like? I wondered. Maybe the restoration doesn’t come in the form of curing my cancer, or fixing all the broken pieces, but rather it comes in the form of learning to live with the brokenness in a new way. If anything, having my cousin around for a full week to bounce ideas off of had been the closest thing to restoration I’d felt in a very long time. 

And then there was the line, my cup runneth over. I’d always assumed it was in reference to some abundance of blessings. My cup was not running over. My cup was dry and empty. But as we deconstructed the verse some more, I learned the true meaning of that line. Historically, in ancient times, particularly in the context of hospitality in the Near East, serving guests was a highly regarded practice. If a host wanted to show deep respect and generosity, they would pour a drink into a guest’s cup and continue pouring until it overflowed. An overflowing cup symbolized abundance, generosity, and the host’s willingness to provide lavishly. It was an act that communicated not just satisfaction but an excess of care — the host's willingness to give more than enough.

And it was also an act where guests could read the room so to speak. If the servant came and filled your glass to the rim it meant that you were welcome to stay and fellowship. If they poured your glass like they do at a fine dining restaurant it was a queue to wrap it up, that your time was drawing to an end. That your host was tired and it was getting past their bedtime. For my cousin, the glass was still overflowing. I hadn’t grown tired of our philosophical conversations yet. 

The afternoon faded into the evening and when the Hunter returned from work, he asked if my cousin and I wanted to go pick wild asparagus. “Asparagus grows in the wild?” I asked in disbelief. We climbed into the Hunter’s truck and headed towards Ririe, Idaho to a little plot of land the Hunter had known to be full of wild asparagus stalks. 

My cousin and I had no idea what to look for until the Hunter spotted some, long and pompous, poking through ditchwater like green knives. It wasn’t a delicate hunt. We weren’t bending down carefully, plucking perfect shoots from well-manicured rows. This was raw, untamed.

The spears were long, almost arrogant, pushing their way through the swampy mess, half-hidden by reeds and thorns. Each one a victory, a green beacon standing out against the waterlogged ground. You had to have a sharp eye. Sometimes, the stalks were only visible by their tips, a burst of green jutting up from the wet earth, trying to blend in, camouflaged by the clutter around it. But once you spotted one, there was no mistaking it.

The hunt felt like a slow chase. You’d crouch down, eyes scanning the ground, your hands brushing through the wet weeds and grasses, searching for the sharp, tender tips that hadn’t yet fully matured. A good stalk, one that hadn’t been passed over or ravaged by critters, was a prize. The asparagus didn’t want to be found, didn’t want to be picked. You had to earn it. 

And when we finally found a tall, green shoot breaking the surface, a triumphant moment hit. We'd carefully snap it off at the base, holding it in our hand like a trophy. It was an experience in and of itself—connecting with the earth, working for that small, hard-earned victory in a world that often feels more about ease than effort. And for once, I felt connected to the Hunter. To the thing he loved most. And I wished for more experiences like this with him. 

For dinner that night, I roasted the asparagus with garlic and olive oil and made an elk roast the Hunter had shot the winter before. We grilled cabbage until it wilted like paper and ate by the bonfire and had s’mores with the Hunter’s nephews like one big happy family. 

Saturday: Ammunition

On Saturday morning, the air was crisp, the kind of morning that made you want to roll out of bed and wander aimlessly through the streets, chasing a feeling of something larger than just the day ahead. My cousin was restless, the kind of energy that only comes when something has been brewing in your bones for a while. He had been talking about Altamira for days; we'd spent a few hours on Thursday picking the owner’s brain about art, about the kind of work that really caught his eye. My cousin had casually mentioned that he was a potter, and the gallery owner, without a hint of pretense, had asked to see his website.

I remember our conversation that day so clearly, how my cousin was trying to play it cool, but there was that flicker of excitement in his voice, the quiet pride he carried when he talked about his craft. The gallery owner was anything but the typical art world snob. He was the kind of guy you could picture in a backyard, beer in hand, listening to NPR, tossing burgers on the grill. No airs, no pretense, just an openness to the things that matter. When he pulled up my cousin’s website, I could see the shift. It was like the room changed when the owner saw the work. He was instantly drawn in. The way he talked about it, the genuine curiosity in his eyes — it wasn’t just about the pottery itself, it was the story behind it that captured him.

So, there we were, back at Altamira, my cousin had wanted to go in and gift the owner with one of his mugs. Not because he wanted to plug his work, but just because he likes handing them out on his travels when he meets really cool people. I watched him nervously clutching a piece of his pottery in his hands. I could feel his excitement, mixed with the usual artist’s self-doubt — the nagging thoughts that come with putting your work out there, knowing how vulnerable it makes you.

I let him go alone. Let him have this moment to himself. I stood outside, feeling that familiar nerdy pride, a grin tugging at my lips. I’d watched my cousin struggle with the vulnerability of sharing his art. To see someone as genuine and open as the gallery owner truly get it, to recognize the depth and soul in his pieces, it was a huge deal. The pieces weren’t just pottery, they were a reflection of him, the way he viewed the world, the way he spoke to the clay. It was about more than just form and function — it was about a connection to the earth, to tradition, to fire.

When my cousin came out of the gallery, the look on his face told me everything I needed to know. He didn’t say much — a quick smile, his eyes a little wider, his posture a bit lighter — but I could tell that moment had shifted something inside him. There was a quiet confidence there now, the kind that comes when you’ve put something deeply personal out into the world, and someone truly sees it.

We took the canyon back to Swan Valley, the roads stretching ahead of us, winding like the curve of a deep breath. The drive back was a slow descent, the kind of drive where time seems to stretch and contract with the rhythm of the tires on asphalt. The sun had started to sink lower, casting everything in a softer, golden light, and I watched the world pass by through the window, the shadows growing longer in the distance. 

When we pulled into the driveway, the Hunter was already there, his truck idling nearby. “Let’s go shooting.” He said.  Without a word, my cousin grabbed his Taurus 22, the Hunter grabbed his Remington bolt-action rifle with his Nightforce ATACR scope and his Colt AR-15 and I grabbed some empty milk cartons and gatorade bottles to fill with water so we could have some targets to practice on. We loaded up the Hunter’s truck. The wheels kicked up gravel as we headed out towards a desolate plot of land that would be our shooting range for the night as the sun started dipping behind the horizon. 

For anyone who’s never shot a gun, it’s hard to explain how much it can make your heart race. When we started with my cousin’s Taurus 22, the first thing I noticed was the weight of it in my hands. The cold steel felt unfamiliar, heavy with the reality of what it meant to hold a firearm, even if it was just a .22 caliber. The recoil wasn’t bad, but the sound — that sharp, percussive crack — it rattled me more than I expected. You don’t just hear it; you feel it deep in your chest, like a punch of raw energy that you can’t quite shake off.

I fumbled with the trigger at first, my finger hesitant, eyes squinting down the sight, trying to focus on the distant milk cartons. When the shot finally rang out, I wasn’t sure what I’d hit, but I knew I’d missed. My cousin was the same. We both laughed nervously, but you could feel the tension in the air. 

Then we moved on to the AR-15. The Hunter made it look effortless, of course. His movements were fluid, the kind of practiced ease that comes from years of experience. When I pulled the trigger on the AR, the sound was more intense, louder, deeper, and the recoil, much stronger. It was like the gun was alive, kicking back with each shot, and I had to brace myself against it. I was still petrified, heart pounding in my chest, but also kind of amazed at how powerful it felt. The targets seemed so far away, and hitting them felt almost impossible. 

The Hunter was on another level. His shots rang out with precision, each one landing squarely on the targets. I watched in awe, even as I struggled to hit anything. There was no hesitation in his stance, no second-guessing. He was in his element, and you could see it in the way his body moved with the rifle, how his eyes stayed focused, how he made it look so effortless.

By the time we got to the Remington bolt-action rifle, the night was starting to fall, and the sky above us was a deep purple, the last traces of light fading. I let my cousin shoot the rifle. I was content with the other two guns and the two milk jugs and one gatorade bottle I had hit. 

We probably shot off 20 rounds in total, each one leaving me a little more wired, a little more pumped up. I didn’t hit nearly as much as my cousin or the Hunter, but there was something thrilling about it — the steady rhythm of breathing, aiming, and firing, each shot sending a jolt of energy through my body.

The air was cooling as the evening stretched on, and the secluded spot we’d found felt like we were the only ones in the world. It was quiet except for the sound of the shots and the wind rustling through the brush. We only saw one other ATV the entire time, a brief flash of movement in the distance, but other than that, it felt like we were alone, the world outside of our little shooting range fading away. The smell of gunpowder hung in the air, the ground scattered with the remnants of spent rounds and plastic bottles. The night was setting in, and we packed up, still buzzing from the energy, from the rush of the shots, from the stillness of being out there together. It was a strange kind of peace, surrounded by that rush of adrenaline, the raw sound of the rifles, and the quiet that settled in as we made our way back to the farmhouse. 

Sunday: How to Float a Drift Boat

We had planned to go drift boating that day, something I had been looking forward to for a while. But the morning had already started to feel off. We were out of food, and I wanted to stop at the store to pick up some things for a picnic, plus dinner for the next couple of nights before my cousin had to leave. I knew the drive to Brolin’s, in Alpine, Wyoming, would take a good 35 minutes one way, and I didn’t think it was smart to waste that time. Instead, I suggested we stop at the general store in Swan Valley. The Hunter wasn’t thrilled with the idea but agreed.

From the moment we walked into the store, it was clear he didn’t want to be there. His body language said it all — tense, impatient, wanting to leave before we even grabbed a cart. I had a list of things I needed — some charcuterie, stuff for dinner, and things I could make for my cousin before he left. I wanted to treat him to something nice. He’d done so much for me, and the time we were spending together meant a lot. But the Hunter was already annoyed, the energy shifting into something I wasn’t ready for. He kept trying to rush me, looking at his watch and sighing, like every minute in that store was a personal inconvenience.

I snapped at him, maybe harder than I should’ve, but it came out. “We’ll leave when it’s time to leave,” I said, a little sharp, hoping he’d get the point. But he didn’t. We weren’t even there for 10 minutes. I grabbed a few things for our lunch on the boat and for the next two nights and headed to the checkout. When the total came up to $100, I could feel the irritation settle in.

When we got back to the truck, it erupted. The Hunter started yelling, his voice sharp, telling me that when we go to the store, it’s just for the basics, milk, butter, eggs. Nothing fancy. He couldn’t understand why I’d spent so much. I wasn’t even sure what had set him off so badly, and I didn’t understand why something so simple, getting food for the next few days,  had turned into such a battle.

I hit back, the frustration bubbling up. “If you don’t like shopping so much, why don’t you just give me the money and I’ll go alone? It’s such an inconvenience for you, clearly.”

The words hung in the air for a moment before he shot back with something I wasn’t expecting. He told me about a vet bill, $750, that had come up because my dog had bitten one of his brother’s dogs during our campfire a couple of nights before. I hadn’t even known about it. The shock hit me hard. I felt bad, guilty even, but the weight of it felt strange, like it wasn’t entirely my fault but still thrown in my lap.

Then he said something that stopped me in my tracks: “I don’t want to get to a point where I have to kick you out. So I’m letting you know now that we need to be cautious of every dime we’re spending. I’m trying to save money to buy a house.”

My stomach tightened. I hadn’t expected this. He’d never mentioned the possibility of me being too much or needing to leave. Until now, he had always made it seem like my not working and prioritizing my health and cancer treatment was understandable. That it was expected. That I didn’t have to contribute in the same way in a town and state I was still new to. For the most part, it had felt like he was okay with being the provider while I was more of the stay-at-home girlfriend. He didn’t seem to require a fifty-fifty arrangement like so many men I’d known in the city. I didn’t question it, because honestly, I thought it was just temporary. I thought things would even out. That one of the million pitches I’d sent out into the void would land, and I’d start pulling my weight a little more soon, once I started treatment and my health had stabilized. But now, with him talking about being cautious with money and even “kicking me out,” it felt like the ground was shifting beneath me.

I had still paid the majority of my own bills—my phone, the internet—and bought most of my own food with the EBT card that I had. The only thing he had really contributed financially was not asking for rent in the farmhouse we shared with his brother and helping with my car loan. He had given me some money outside of this in the course of eight months. But even then, I didn’t feel like I was relying on him for everything. I was downsizing, living simply. And in the end, I felt like his contribution was barely enough, given the way the relationship played out. There were no dates, no real time spent on what I wanted. It was always about his plans, his family, his kids. I still gave him my time, my body, but it didn’t feel like the balance was ever really there. And now, hearing him talk about being cautious with money, it felt like a blow to my chest. I didn’t want to feel like I was a burden, but I also didn’t want to be made to feel like my presence was something that needed to be justified.

So I apologized, not because I thought I was in the wrong, but because I didn’t want to ruin the day. I wanted to go drift boating without this hanging over us. We set about loading up the drift boat his brother had let us borrow, and I pretended for my cousin’s sake that everything was fine. 

We put in at Husky’s boat ramp just after the fog had started to lift. No guide. No big sendoff. Just three people and a dog climbing into a fiberglass shell and pushing off into one of the most unpredictable rivers in the West.

The Snake River isn’t dramatic. It doesn’t need to be. Cold, wide, and ancient. It moves like it knows better than you. Like it’s already decided how the day ends.

My cousin and I had never floated this river before. We climbed into the boat, me in the front, my cousin in the back and the Hunter and my dog Arley sandwiched in between us. We sat quietly taking in the scenery, the only sound was the soft current of the Snake River lapping against the boat. On the right, the hills rose steep and ignorant, God’s country as the hunter liked to say, so full of attitude you almost admire them. On the left, pastureland broke up the wildness with little fences that never quite held anything in. Wild rose, willow, quaking aspen. A few fat squirrels that looked like they’d gotten into someone’s cooler.

We passed other drift boats, each passing slowly by with the river’s current. The water lapped against our boat. And for a while, that was the only sound. I grabbed my film camera, wanting to document Baldy, the silent sentinel of the valley and the way the river was a perfect mirror of her reflection. Like she was watching over us, steady and unwavering, even as life and the river moved around her.

Above us, golden eagles circled. Not just one or two, dozens, maybe. My cousin and I watched them while the drift boat glided, quiet as a sigh, and that’s when the hunter’s voice broke the silence. He spoke in a slow, laconic drawl, the kind of voice that didn’t rise for panic or performance, just steady, deliberate, like a man used to walking into a burning building and saying, “We’ll figure it out.”

He pointed to the sky, to the wide wings cutting through it. “Y’know,” he said, “I have a funny story about those. This one time, my old man and I were up hunting elk in the hills. Shot a cow one winter, but we had to leave her overnight 'cause of the snow. The weather was unpredictable that night, and we weren’t gonna drag her out through that mess. We figured we’d head back at first light, and get to work. But when we got out there the next morning, snow had dumped about a foot and a half overnight. Everything was blanketed in white. I knew we were in for a hell of a tracking job—blood trail was gone. Just white on white.”

He paused, letting the memory settle before continuing, eyes distant, almost lost in it.

“Still, I could make out the tracks from the night before—just faint impressions in the snow. You gotta remember, we were in the hills but we traced our way back to where we thought we’d left her.”

He looked over at us now, his eyes narrowing slightly as he relived the moment. “And then I caught it. That smell. Sweet, sick, unmistakable. I said to my old man, ‘She’s close. I smell her.’” He chuckled under his breath, a soft, gravelly sound.

“We started circling, kicking through the snow like idiots. Every lump, every drift, thinking we were gonna find buried gold. Finally, one of the snowbanks collapsed a little. That’s when I saw it. Her head, buried under the drift. We’d found her.”

His voice dropped for a moment, the tension of the story building.

“And then we saw him.”

He pointed toward the eagle again, his face lighting up with the memory.

“A golden eagle. Right on her gut pile. Sitting there like he owned it. Not scared of us one bit—just glared at us, like we weren’t even worth his time.”

The Hunter’s lips twisted into a grin.

“This son of a bitch—he’d eaten so much he couldn’t fly. I’m not kiddin’. Flapped once, twice, like he thought he could make it, then just gave up. Started hopping away through the snow, like some fat, feathered goblin. I swear, it was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen.”

He shook his head, his eyes twinkling with humor.

“Wingspan must’ve been five feet, easy. Stood as tall as a toddler. And he looked like he could carry one off if he hadn’t just gorged himself stupid. It wasn’t majestic. Hell, it wasn’t even impressive. It was just...perfect in its own way.”

We drifted down the Snake River, the sound of the current mingling with the occasional chirp of birds in the trees. As we passed houses nestled along the riverbank, the Hunter would casually point them out, his voice as steady as always, but with an edge of something I couldn’t quite place. “What do you think about this one?” he’d ask, eyes scanning the homes. “Is this a place you’d ever live?”

His question wasn’t just about the house—it felt like he was trying to build something with me again, trying to weave me back into the conversation like we were making decisions together, like we were laying the groundwork for a future. It felt natural, like something you do when you’re dating, when you’re imagining a life with someone. He wasn’t just asking about the house itself; he was asking me to engage, to offer my thoughts, to see where my head was at.

And so we did, judging every house we passed with the precision of architects and the cruelty of reality TV stars. We were architects of some imagined future, scrutinizing the windows, the rooftops, the layout, as if every house was a blueprint for what still could be waiting for me in Swan Valley. 

“Would you live in that one?” he asked, pointing to a sprawling cabin with weathered wood siding.

“I don’t know,” I’d reply, eyeing it. “Maybe. It’s a little too close to the river for me.”

“What would you change?” he asked, already knowing I’d have an answer.

I leaned forward, considering. “Well, that roofline looks like it’s apologizing for something,” I joked, nodding toward the sloping roof that seemed a bit too low for the house’s height. 

He chuckled, but I could tell he was listening, taking in my words. There was a certain rhythm to it, the give and take, the back-and-forth of imagining what could be, the way you do when you’re not just talking about homes, but about lives, futures, and maybe even about relationships.

We floated past more houses, some rustic and grand, others simple and unremarkable, and with each one, his questions felt like an invitation. He wasn’t just asking about the house; he was trying to gauge how we would fit into this world together, as if each house was a test, a moment to see if we could still imagine a life side by side. It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but the longer we drifted, the more I realized that with each house he pointed to, he wasn’t just asking for my opinion, he was asking if I could see a future with him in it, built not from grand gestures but from the quiet, shared decisions of everyday life.

And though the landscape was peaceful, the questions felt like they carried weight, each one a brick in the foundation of something we might be building, if only we’d known how to lay the groundwork.

We pulled the boat up onto a gravel bar so the Hunter could take a break from rowing and we could have lunch. I’d packed cold lemon soda. Mascarpone on rosemary crackers. Huckleberry jam. A tin of fish I can’t name but would eat again before I die. Sardines. Cheese curds with jalapeños. Asiago and fontina cheese. Blue cheese stuffed olives. Dry-cured salami. All of it good enough, none of it precious.

My cousin called it a picnic. The hunter didn’t call it anything. We ate. We fed Arley scraps. We drank what we brought. No photos. No prayers.

After lunch, we drifted again. We passed islands thick with cottonwoods and stopped wherever the river slowed, playing hopscotch with land masses and foraging for mushrooms. We found one false morel, poison in disguise, and nearly brought it back before the hunter caught it. You don’t forget a mistake like that. We left it there, half-buried in pine needles.

Near the falls, my phone died. I’d run out of film an hour earlier. I watched the last of the day through my own eyes. The way people used to.

We were all burned by then. Faces red, arms hot to the touch. I got the worst of it. Sunlight hits differently when your body’s working overtime to survive something else.

When we reached the bank, the Hunter went about securing the boat while my cousin and I started packing up the gear. It wasn’t until we were ready to go that the Hunter said, in that same slow, gravelly tone of his, 'I got somethin’ I want to show y’all.' It wasn’t an invitation to a grand adventure, more like an afterthought, something to break the quiet.

He started the truck and drove us back toward the farmhouse, the road kicking up dust behind us. As we approached, instead of pulling into the driveway, he turned off onto a side road. I could feel my stomach twist slightly, like the shift in direction meant something, but I couldn’t quite place it yet. My cousin glanced at me, and I tried to read his face, but he was just as confused as I was.

We passed the turnoff to his daughter’s house, and instead of taking a left, he went right. The gravel road stretched ahead, the wheels crunching against it, and I braced myself for whatever this detour was going to be.

After a few minutes, we slowed down, and the Hunter pointed out a house in the distance, a small, quaint structure with a front porch that had a view of Baldy. He looked over at us and spoke again, but there was a certain edge to his voice this time.

“See that house?” he asked, nodding toward it. “I saw it this weekend, when I was working on Saturday. I went ahead and put in an offer.”

I blinked, trying to process what he’d just said. He had put in an offer on a house I had never seen, without consulting me. Without even mentioning it. The weight of it hit me, but the confusion tangled with something deeper, something I hadn’t expected to feel. Even though we were technically broken up, we were still living together. Still sharing a bed. Still having sex every night. I thought we were just going through a rough patch, not fully apart. We’d talked about him buying a house, sure, but I never imagined he’d make the decision without me, without my input, without even discussing it first.

The words stung more than I expected. We’d spent the whole day on the river, talking about homes, imagining futures together. He’d asked me for my opinions, made it feel like we were building something together. And now, here he was, making a decision about buying a house without so much as a conversation with me. It felt like a door slamming shut. All that talk, all those questions about where we could live, how we could live—it wasn’t real. I wasn’t part of it. I was just a spectator in his plans.

I sat in the truck, the silence between us feeling heavier than the dusty air outside. We were still driving, but it felt like we were already miles apart. The house, a physical structure on the side of the road, stood there as a symbol of everything I thought we were building—and everything that was now crumbling. I didn’t say anything to the hunter. What was there left to say? I just smiled and nodded politely. 

And just like that, the river had already decided how this day was going to end.

Monday: The Grand Tetons

I hadn’t slept much the night before. Sunburned, nauseous, and rattled by the weight of the Hunter’s decision to buy a house without me, my nervous system felt completely fried. The sunburn, though painful on its own, was a different kind of wound when you have cancer. It felt like my body was failing me in yet another way. And the emotional toll—the betrayal I felt in that moment—left me tossing and turning through the night, violently throwing up in between trying to quiet the storm inside me.

But the morning came regardless. The Hunter was already up at 5 a.m., getting ready for work. My cousin and I had made plans the night before, despite how I felt, to drive to Jackson Hole for the sunrise, to take some photos of him with the Teton Mountains and his dirt bike, a way to thank him for the support he’d shown me during his visit. The idea of getting out, even for a few hours, felt like a small way to reclaim something normal.

I begrudgingly got up, feeling like shit, but I owed him that much. He’d done so much for me, just by showing up, just by being there.

We drove out to Jackson, the roads still sleepy and the mountains standing like silent witnesses to our little adventure. We found a perfect spot in front of the Tetons, the peaks rising jagged and untouched in the morning light. My cousin pulled out his dirt bike, and I set up my camera to capture the moment—him in front of the mountains, the sunlight just starting to kiss the top of the peaks. I wanted to give him something meaningful to take back with him, a tangible memory of his time here.

Then came the coffee.

The whole ritual of it was oddly grounding, something I hadn’t anticipated but deeply appreciated. My cousin didn’t just make coffee; he made coffee. He explained to me that he only bought fair-trade, organic beans, preferring a chocolatey flavor profile. He roasted them to a medium-dark roast, taking care to make sure the beans developed properly. He then used his modified Italian moka pot to brew it, but it wasn’t just any moka pot, it was equipped with a bicycle tire pump to add pressure, set between 100 to 130 psi, the same pressure as an espresso machine he would tell me. He used about 16 grams of coffee to 250 grams of water, giving us about 230 grams of a finished cup, basically a strong Americano. The whole process was so meticulous, so nerdy, but in the best possible way. It was more than just brewing coffee, it was a ritual, something I had never seen anyone else do in all my prior years of working at coffee houses.

As I snapped photos of the process, I realized how much this simple act of making coffee felt like him. Like it was his way of slowing down the chaos of the world and finding some order in it. It felt intimate in a way, like it wasn’t just coffee he was making, it was a moment to be savored.

We sat down in folding chairs, the Tetons looming behind us, drinking the coffee and watching the world wake up around us. My cousin pulled out his Bible, and we read a verse together. Isaiah 40:29-31 "He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."

Afterward, we packed up and headed back to the farmhouse. I made dinner one last time for my cousin. Ciabatta bread, some leftover mascarpone, the wild morel mushrooms we’d foraged the day before, with fresh rosemary, and a dollop of the remaining huckleberry jam. I roasted the mushrooms with the cheese and spread them over the bread, letting everything meld together. I made a salad, with fresh tomatoes, onions, herbs, and mozzarella. And chicken breasts I glazed with a mustard sauce. It wasn’t much, but it felt like the kind of meal you share with people you care about. 

Homegrown, the Hunter’s youngest daughter, came over, and we all sat outside, eating and talking. Homegrown asked if I wanted to go with her to the Idaho Potato Museum, a sweet gesture, but my heart sank in my chest. It was a place I had always wanted to go with the Hunter on a date. I could already feel the finality of everything. That moment, that question, made it clear. We were never going to build anything together. It was never going to happen, no matter how much I wanted it to.

​​The sadness lingered, the inevitable grief I felt about my cousin leaving was already creeping in. He had revitalized something in me, given me a sense of life and connection, even if just for a short time. And now, with him leaving, I knew I was heading back into complete isolation. I’d be facing my cancer diagnosis alone again, stuck in a life with a man who had just bought a house without me, even though he had moved me to Idaho to be with him. I was on my own. And no amount of pretending could change that.

Tuesday: No Ordinary Moments

The next morning the house was quiet again. My cousin packed his camper up while I sat inside at the dining room table staring at the mug he left behind. One of his matte-finished white ceramics, the lip slightly uneven in a way only the human hand can shape, a faint fingerprint pressed into the clay where he’d once steadied it on the wheel. 

Before he left, he’d gifted me, the Hunter, and the Hunter’s brother each a mug from his collection. No ceremony, no speech. Just a quiet moment where he held each one in his palm, turned it over as if asking it a question, then set it down in front of us. Each mug was slightly different, reflecting our vast personalities. The Hunter’s was earthy and solid, the glaze a restless mix of copper green a vessel that could take a beating and still hold warmth; his brother’s was a matte finish, slender and tall shaped for his long boney fingers; mine was the lightest, almost delicate, but its form settled perfectly into my hand like it had been waiting for me.

He’d once told me a good mug isn’t about aesthetics or even utility alone, it’s about intimacy.

“The perfect mug should feel like a second skin,” he said, running his thumb along a curve. “It should disappear into your hand, like it was made for no one else. The lip should meet your mouth the way a river meets rock, inevitable, unforced.”

To him, pottery wasn’t just form and function, it was a kind of prayer. A dialogue between maker and clay. Between the clay and the person holding it later, years later, maybe long after he was gone. Every fingerprint, every slight warble in the rim, every variation in glaze was proof of human touch. “Imperfection is where the soul gets in,” he’d said.

I held my mug, thumb resting in that faint dimple, and I realized then that my cousin hadn’t just given us mugs. He’d given us a piece of himself, a reminder that beauty isn’t perfect, and utility doesn’t preclude connection.

I sat there with the mug in my hands, staring out at the stillness of Swan Valley, the farmhouse felt cavernous again, stripped of my cousin’s energy, the way he’d imprinted on this place, on me. He hadn’t just shared his pottery, his coffee, his stories. He had offered me a way to hold all of it: the grief, the cancer, the isolation, the beauty. Like clay thrown on a wheel, during a moment in my life when everything felt like it was spinning and shapeless. The onion farmer had known there was no sense naming a thing good or bad, only living it. The shepherd had known the only way to bring the stray lamb home was with a well-aimed stone. And my cousin, in his quiet, deliberate way, had taught me that even the most ordinary objects, a mug, a meal, a morning, could become sacred if you let them.

To check out my cousin’s pottery click the link here

A blog post by Rachel Smak on grief, loss, and lessons from stage 3C rectal cancer