the Gathering Tree

Welcome to the Gathering Tree where we will share the light and good in the world with you.

The Wedding Day!

Truth be told we tried to get away with a virtual only wedding: a run to the courthouse and then travel the world and send post cards sort of event. The community in Volcano, Hawaiʻi was having none of that! Everyone came together and we had the most beautiful ceremony where we shared our love and combined our shadows. We are excited to share this with you. Enjoy.

Keep an eye on your mail box. If we have your address some amazing letterpress action is coming at ya from Portland, Oregon. We have also decided to keep up with the social medias. You can find us on Instagram for now: @hawaiilitproduction

The Center of Our Orbits:

We have both been married before and existed in worlds where opulence and possessions were cherished and revered. The Universe brought us together in the midst of old sugar cane fields in a small town on the north shore of the Island of Hawaiʻi.

We came together with the promise of always learning and growing together.

Four years later we have pulled out thousands of invasive weeds in the land and in our hearts, built a thriving business, and loved from our depths the people and places in our environment. This union is about possibility and we look forward to sharing the light of possibility with you as we throw off the bowlines and dive deeply into a world we only imagined a year ago. Thank you for being here with us. We love you.

The Braiding of Our Ancestry:

To observe the chaos and decide to become our ancestor’s wildest dreams is a blessing we do not take lightly.

Enjoy a brief exploration of our roots using fancy mapping tools!

The Proposal:

The plan, Stan.

“Where have you been hiding?”

Our dear friend, Dena Maude asked us this question when she found out Krystal began advertising herself as an ancestral researcher for hire. A valid and good question. Our answer to that is to head out into the world, make new friends, find long-lost family, and re-kindle old friendships. Our first stop is the Oregon coast and continues on to Croatia.

In December we make an ancestral homage to Krystal’s family members by arriving in Hamburg, the port where many of her people boarded ships to make a new life in America. We’ll make our way to Berlin and meet with old and new friends before heading down to the Schwarzwald for the holidays to enjoy the pleasures of Christmas markets and spend time with old friends that feel like family. We’ll spend some time in Switzerland as we swing between Germany and Italy, taking train trips through the Alps and enjoying the leisure of public transportation. We’re due for Rome in January to meet with old friends and new kiddos (new to us)! We can begin to slow down in February as we take longer stays in the southern cities and villages of Italy meeting long lost family relations of Krystal’s.

In March we’ll be in Croatia under a Digital Nomad visa to live and work in a new setting for a bit. If there were a good time to come visit us, it would be during our stay here. We invite you to visit and enjoy the pleasures of the Mediterranean with us. We plan to fly back to Chicago in August to meet with wonderful friends free diving shipwrecks on Lake Superior and visiting with loved ones.

In September, we’ll be back in Hawaiʻi, meeting up with our ʻohana so it feels like we never left. :) After typhoon season, we’ll be headed to the Philippines to finish shooting the documentary Mary has been working on about her family’s immigration story.

We made a conscious choice to travel while we’re young.

After Mary had a concussion, we understood something that changed our lives: life is not guaranteed. We asked ourselves, have we made the memories together that will be important when one of us is gone? The answer was no. So we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

For those who are wondering: we don’t have a giant pot of gold bars. What we do have though is a business that allows us to do the work we love from anywhere. Working on the road isn’t a cakewalk. There are some super cranky days, some really lovely ones, and ones where you have to wake up at an ungodly hour to be on a zoom call. But we get to be together and we get to be the Creators of our reality. We’re fortunate to have the opportunity to choose this lifetsyle. We practice gratitude as way to tell the Universe, “yes, more of this.”

Always with Aloha,

Mary & Krystal