Peace, love and happiness don’t just happen.
These qualities arise from a life of intent, purpose and passion.
Passion leaves scars. Scars are not bad. Scars are proof.
Imagine the scars of love on the risen Christ while walking the road beside Thomas.
“Reach here your finger, and see My hands; reach here your hand, and put it into My side; and be not unbelieving, but believing.”*
Proof that it is He.
Passion leaves a legacy.
Consider the statues of Easter Island. 
Long thought to be created using slave labor, researchers now believe the Moai were fashioned as part of a community ‘Passion Project.’ Many generations hauling and carving stone, raising the giant heads all to honor those who had gone on before them. Passion to make those they loved ‘known’ beyond their short time on earth.
Peace, love and happiness don’t just happen.
Passion is not without its costs.
Passion leaves scars. Scars are not bad. Scars are proof.
*John 20:27
Credits: Photographer Peter Steele’s latest body of work, Passion Scars Peace, Love and Happiness documents the carving in aspen trees from Steamboat Springs to Telluride, Colorado. Steele has identified four groups of people who carve in the aspen trees: sheep herders, elk hunters, the casual car camper, and homesteaders.Steele’s image of the oldest carving in the collection, dated 1922, was taken in an old growth aspen grove outside Telluride, CO. While Steele does not condone the act of aspen graffiti, and does not carve in trees, he enjoys searching and documenting these sacred messages that people have passionately expressed on the smooth canvas of the bark of the aspen tree. Peter Steele’s collection consists of 2000 tattooed aspen photographs recorded while hiking hundreds of miles of trails throughout Colorado.
