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Austin Lammers

@austinrlammers

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??? taken in Wyoming by @austinrlammers

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5 days ago

Spent a lot of time on the highways between Colorado and South Dakota this summer. Miles and miles of quiet asphalt through the great brown expanse. Ample opportunity to think, to cry, to laugh, to sing. To ponder what this area is supposed to mean to me as years and people pass.

Last time in Caputa, I saw my grandpa had slapped these big old Johnson Hay Moving magnets on his beer fridge. They were once affixed to the cab doors of the truck, and spent 30 years in a shed before he’d dug them up earlier this year. The phone numbers belonged to him and his father, the first and only owners of Johnson Hay Moving.

Since moving, a strange feeling comes over me when I cross into South Dakota. I pull into some field for a piss break and the song of a Western Meadowlark is enough to ruin me. I hear its chupp and am 7 years old again, picking plums on the edge of my grandparent’s place, or driving golf balls into the neighbor’s field, or running to meet my grandpa’s Ford pulling into the lane at dusk.

I don’t know what that feeling is. Maybe it’s the fact that all I once knew is just a small part of what I know now. Or that we change so much quicker than the places we grow up in. Or that the things that feel far away sometimes aren’t. Maybe it’s knowing that my grandpa spent so much time with a trailer full of hay on these highways, and I can always return to hear a Western Meadowlark sing.

What I do know is that I decided to turn that magnet into a shirt because I thought it’d be funny and now I have 30 of them taking up space in my room. They’re Comfort Colors. Printed by the fine folks at @pineprintshop. And they’re a relic of something I hold dear.

DM me if ya want one ❤️ taken in Caputa, South Dakota by @austinrlammers

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a month ago

Ego death in martin, south dakota by @austinrlammers

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a month ago

Look what the cat dragged in by @austinrlammers

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3 months ago

Out and about by @austinrlammers

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5 months ago

Just over yonder taken in Colorado by @austinrlammers

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5 months ago

A few years ago I had a dream. One of those rare ones that sticks with you.

I sit with my grandpa at his kitchen table as we thumb through a collection of old coins. He goes through them one-by-one, pointing out small details, explaining to me how they came into his possession. These dream coins are not real, but the scene is derived from a time he brought out our family heirlooms — old currencies, jewelry, his grandfather’s pocket watch, even a saber from a relative further up the bloodline who served in the Civil War. (Union, don’t worry.)

Anyway, we’re sitting at the table, and he suddenly turns to me and says, “no matter where you are or what you’re doing, you’ll always miss someone.”

In December, I made the trip to my grandparent’s place in Caputa, SD. I brought my new (old) film camera to play around with and to document a place where I spent so much of my childhood. A place that, even now, I close my eyes and conjure when my soul craves solitude and slowness and serenity. My grandparents trailed as I made some pictures, and my grandpa suggested we go take a look at his old ‘68 Ford, which he plans to revive this summer. Their trio of orange kittens — Colby, Jack, and Cheddar — followed.

My grandparents are still here, on this lovely piece of land six hours away, in their late 70s and active and healthy. Yet, I’ve been sitting with these images and that dream lately, thinking about what it means to miss them. To miss people, places, and things that are still here with me now, but won’t be forever.

On its face, the meaning is simple: what is here today may not be tomorrow. Appreciate it while you can. Duh.

But I’ve been chewing on another thought, one about loving and longing. About how longing is love from a distance. Of the many forms love can take, longing is one of the warmest and most selfless. Longing asks nothing of you but to reflect and to feel.

I love you, therefore I miss you, therefore I find ways to be with you, even when I can’t.

If I could go back to that dream, that’s what I’d tell my grandpa. My grandma, too. To everyone I’m in a constant state of missing. Hell, as luck would have it, I can do it in real life instead. taken in Caputa, South Dakota by @austinrlammers

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7 months ago

western nebraska / south dakota taken in Nebraska by @austinrlammers

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8 months ago

things and stuff by @austinrlammers

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9 months ago

2025 iphone finds by @austinrlammers

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10 months ago

clocked in by @austinrlammers

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a year ago

sleepy in seattle taken in Seattle, Washington by @austinrlammers

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a year ago