Susan, 79 - Rooted & Radiant

Susan has the kind of energy that fills a room. Warm, direct, and quick to laugh, she’s someone who makes people feel welcome almost instantly — especially if there’s good conversation and a glass of wine nearby.

Susan’s independent spirit showed itself early.

When she was twelve years old, her mother — who was learning to fly at the time — prepared to take off for a solo flight in stormy weather. Before leaving, she turned to Susan and said, “Don’t forget, you’re in charge if anything happens to me.”

Moments like that leave an impression. Looking back now, it’s easy to see how experiences like this helped shape the strong, capable woman Susan would become.

Susan has a simple philosophy about life. “You create the meaning in your own life," she says with a smile, "and it helps to keep your sense of humor along the way." She admits she has never been very good at sitting still for long.

Susan and Kern - partners in life for fifty years. "Humor keeps me going,” Susan says. “A good laugh can cure just about anything."

Susan’s hands tell the story of a full life — cooking for friends, creating art, and managing the many moving parts of a journey that has taken her through Texas, Florida, New Mexico, North Carolina, Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado.

Susan’s story has never been short on adventure.

Over the years she and Kern built cabins, raised draft horses, drove wagons, and competed in chuckwagon cook-offs that once earned them first place in a televised Food Channel competition. One of Susan’s chuckwagon recipes — an Apricot Fried Pie — even made its way onto the Food Network. For Susan, chuckwagon cooking was one of the greatest adventures of all — outdoors, racing the clock, carefully building the coals just right. She laughs remembering the many moments she and Kern shared there. “It was the most fun ever.”

In Victor, Idaho, their restaurant, the Knotty Pine, became a gathering place for locals — complete with line dancing lessons led by Susan and a group affectionately known as the Solid Gold Knotty Pine Line Dancers.

Life in the West also meant trail rides through the mountains of Idaho and Wyoming, building an authentic teepee beside their cabin, and the kind of unexpected moments that become family legends — like the time Susan stepped on a rattlesnake and leapt away just in time.

Dogs have always been part of Susan’s world. She says a home never quite feels complete without one — or two. These days, Blu and Ozzie, her spirited Corgis, happily make sure of that, and they rarely allow a quiet morning for very long.

Susan laughs that if it were entirely up to her, she’d probably have ten dogs.

Color suits Susan well. Whether it’s the clothes she wears, the flowers in her garden, or the paintings in her studio, she gravitates toward beauty and expression in everyday life.

Susan laughs that she tries “not to dress like an old lady,” preferring color and light wherever she can find them. For her, creativity isn’t limited to the studio — it shows up in the way she lives, dresses, and finds joy in the everyday.

Artist and photographer working between Texas and Montana, Susan has always kept creativity close to her heart. She moves easily between drawing, painting in oils and watercolor, and photography — always curious, always exploring.

For Susan, creativity is simply part of how she moves through the world, always looking for something new to learn, try, or bring to life.

For Susan, making art isn’t about perfection. It’s about the joy of creating and the quiet satisfaction that comes from bringing something new into the world. Susan’s curiosity has always led her to try new things, including teaching herself to draw and paint using books and practice. One of the mediums she enjoys most today is colored pencil, and she has created many portraits of dogs — often for friends remembering beloved companions.

Like many artists, she admits she’s very critical of her own work. “There’s always something I want to change,” she says, but eventually she’s learned to step away and let the piece be finished.

Family and memories are woven throughout Susan’s home. One photograph on the wall is especially meaningful — a portrait of her grandmother as a young bride. Susan is the only one in the family who carries her grandmother’s likeness, a quiet reminder that pieces of those who came before us live on in the generations that follow.

Another treasured photograph nearby captures a very different moment in time — Susan standing beside the legendary racehorse Secretariat during a visit to his Kentucky farm. For Susan, it’s one of those unforgettable moments that becomes part of the rich collection of memories that shape a life.

At the center of Susan’s life are the people she loves most - her husband Kern, her daughter Shannon, and her granddaughter Ansley, who remain her greatest joys.

Susan first discovered fly fishing during a visit to Yellowstone. Watching someone cast a line across the water, she thought to herself, “I’m going to do that.”

She took lessons, learned to tie her own flies, and soon found that fly fishing offered something more than sport — quiet time in nature and the kind of deep concentration that feels almost meditative. Susan has become a masterful fly fisher!

Susan has never been one to sit on the sidelines of life. Whether building a business with her husband Kern, creating art, or welcoming friends around a table, she has always approached life with curiosity, energy, and a personality that’s impossible to miss.

Susan’s life reflects the richness that comes from decades of living, creating, loving, and building a life with the people who matter most. Through creativity, family, friendship, and a life shared with her husband Kern, she continues to approach each day with curiosity and heart. Stories like Susan’s are exactly what Rooted & Radiant celebrates - women whose lives are full of experience, wisdom, and the quiet confidence that comes from truly knowing who they are.

At seventy-nine, Susan continues to create, explore, and enjoy the life she and Kern have built together.

Her story is a reminder that the years don’t diminish a life’s richness - they deepen it.