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WHERE ALLY GOES PHOTOGRAPHY

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THE WILD WEST COLLECTION

The story behind The Wild West Collection:

Back in 2019 and early 2020, I lost my partner and love of my life, Tyler. About 9 months after that I lost my first love, my dad, Terry. There truly are no words to verbalize the pain I felt during that time, so I won’t try. All I knew was that I needed to find a way to heal my broken heart and completely immerse myself in nature and doing it alone was the only way that made sense.

I found the perfect teardrop camper on Denver’s Craigslist. She had a bed with wheels and that was pretty much the only requirement. I called her “Windy”, short for the “fart in the wind” nickname Tyler lovingly gave me, as he would say I “go where the wind blows”. He and I had always talked about doing a trip like this; I just never imagined I would be doing it alone. Now or never was the only thought that kept coming up. So away Windy and I went…

We hit over 30 national parks, monuments, forests, and state parks all over the Wild West in the span of about 8 months. I could sit here all day and tell you the stories from living in that tiny trailer. From the countless beautiful souls I came into contact with along the way to the bear scares, rattlesnake encounters and sketchy Walmart parking lot nights. An absolute insane ride that needs a bigger text box.

But the hardest part about telling this story has been figuring out how to put into words how it changed me. It gave me the time I needed to finally exhale after the hardest year of my life and brought me closer to who I was and how I was going to pick myself back up. It showed me that I was stronger than I ever thought possible, and I could do hard shit…reminding myself every single day that I was strong, capable and I was going to be okay. And even though I was alone in that camper, I never actually felt alone. I had two guardian angels watching over me every step of the way.

It’s taken me several years to get to a place where I could even look back through these photos. They represent some of the darkest and heaviest moments of my life mixed with some of the most heart opening and healing. It’s a very deep contrast of emotions that feels so good to finally release. Selfishly, there was a part of me that never wanted to share these photos. But recently, the more I thought about it, the more it felt like keeping them forever on a hard drive didn’t feel right either.

So here they are, I hope they make you feel something…

Dedicated to Tyler Grimm and Terry Cole, my angels.

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