The Shape of the Hills

Some places shape the people who walk them.
Others shape the tools they carry.

The Black Hills do both.

This land is older than most remember.
Volcanic granite and ponderosa pine.
Snowmelt that carves quietly through canyons.
Winds that speak in no particular direction.
Here, you learn to listen, not to noise, but to what remains after it.

It’s where we draw our rhythm.
Not from production schedules or launch calendars,
but from the hills themselves.

If there’s a season to build, it begins when the elk descend—
those wapiti, watchful and deliberate,
who move like they already know the terrain.
We’ve watched their trails. We’ve followed them.
Their movement is never hurried, but it is always sure.

That is the spirit we honor.

The shape of our irons may be born in fire,
but it is finished here, on ground that demands presence.
The lines we polish. The leather we choose.
The way an edge rolls from one form into the next
it all reflects what the hills teach:
that restraint is not absence. It’s intention.

Even the forge itself slows down in winter.
The steel takes its time. So do we.
But the work does not stop. It deepens.

When we speak of “craft,” we do not mean mere assembly.
We mean listening.
To the terrain. To the steel.
To the silence between strikes.

The Black Hills are not just where we build.
They are the reason we build as we do.
And if the wapiti never rush, neither will we.