the niki download

Soaking My Bones

#83
Niki Williams
Palo Alto, CA
10/3/2025

I have returned to the Bay Area of California after three months of summer time in Detroit…

Work wise, I sort of took a sabbatical. I spent all summer riding a used road bike and ended up racking up 1198.13 miles from June to September.

I wanted to soak up the social scene of Detroit, filling my days with pedaling and portrait sessions with friends.

I was also kept busy working alongside my partner, Summer, filming content for her Knight Foundation funded audio project called Mirroring.

We gathered over 2,000 field recordings which she is using to create a concerto, utilizing a custom composing AI which she coded herself and trained purely on her own music from her entire career. It will be premiering in Detroit in the spring!

When it was time to pack up the Honda Fit and return to Palo Alto, Summer’s wisdom teeth exploded, she’d been putting off the extraction surgery for years. It was time.

While she healed, it was my mission to drive our 8 year old German Shepard Whiskey and our stuff back west. I knew exactly where I wanted to go along the way, but first, I had to blast out 20 hours of driving through corn.

I was destined to soak these bones…

As we are criss crossing the country of late, I make it a point to hit as many natural hot springs as I can. You never know who you will meet, but I have found they are most certainly going to be interesting.

Take Kavid for example, who was visiting Penny Hot Springs in Colorado and entreated me to join him in Hawaii to walk from the Pacific Ocean to the top of Kīlauea.

As we steeped our bodies he told me, “the only way to understand the island is to make the trek from water to fire. Across the earth, which of course, was shaped by fire, and to stand up there and to feel the wind in your whiskers… Brother, it is elemental”

We sit, we soak, we inhale sulphuric fumes, we contemplate the primordial bubbling that pushes heat and life out of the bosom of mama earth.

Because I had my trusty wing man Whiskey with me, I opted to soak at either sunrise or sunset.

He was relegated to confines of the Honda during soaks, and I did not want him to overheat. My boy is not a big hot tub guy. We did share plenty of walks, all be it short ones, because he is experiencing Degenerative Myelopathy, a spinal condition common to his breed.

Whisky is pleased to know that he is somewhat of a celebrity on r/germanshepards.

I came across a man, hanging dong, wearing only a baseball cap. When I approached he hopped into the concealing waters of South Canyon Hot Springs, Colorado.

He told me, “They call these springs, Hippy Hot Springs, but I am no hippy! No! I am most certainly not a hippy.”

I chuckled along with him but I am pretty sure that being naked in a natural pool meets all the qualifications of being a hippy.

I did not get in South Canyon’s waters, they looked pretty gross. Maybe they were extra healing, but I was not taking the risk. I would not be showering for another four nights.

Unsurprisingly, I was not the only media man out in them hills. In Mammoth Lakes I shared a campsite with legendary rock climbing videographer Justin Bastien, who recorded the VR experience for free soloist Alex Hunnold.

What seems pristine now, was not always the case, but maybe there is hope for our planet.

When I met Sarah in Bend, Oregon driving from San Francisco to Detroit in the early summer, she told me about how the salmon have surged back in higher than expected numbers after a successful indigenous led movement to tear down the Klamath River Dams…

Synchronistically, when I texted her the photo I made, weeks later, she replied that it was her birthday.

I thought that was beautiful and served as a reminder that a personal photography practice can conjure magic, seal memories, and monumentalize the everyday.

I seem to need those reminders a lot… Lucky for me my biggest support, Summer, and I are reunited. She’s all healed up, and we are ready to take on the west.

Updates

Just before leaving California for the summer, I photographed and filmed content for Human NYC’s redesign of Perricone Farm’s website. Perricone owns Natalies Juice and Spin Drift water, two of my favorite liquids. For real, they didn’t sponsor this… The work is on the web now and I am very pleased.

When I was back in Detroit I fired off a still life/hands shot for 1906 by request of Nice Handwriting. I wrote about their cannabis elixir in a previous newsletter. I was honored to have worked with a hero of mine, Zach Vitale, who retouched the photo.

Right now, my main hustle is working for Ultimate Fighting Robots (UFB) and will have a bigger newsletter on the wild and dramatic world of underground robot boxing leagues very soon…

The next match is TODAY 10/3/25 at 7pm Pacific Time, check it out here!

See you soon! I am open for assignments, commercial, editorial, or extremely long bike rides in the roads or mountain!

-Niki