Your Cart is Empty
TEXT RINGS TO +1 (833) 993-0491 TO GET 15% OFF YOUR NEXT ORDER
There are places I love visiting, and then there are places that seem to live somewhere inside me. Northern California has always been the latter. The foggy hills, eucalyptus-scented mornings, winding coastal roads and chilly Pacific air have been woven through some of the most formative years of my life.
More than two decades ago, I boarded a flight West with a single suitcase, 400 bucks, a degree in Industrial Design and a gut feeling that California might just be the place where I’d figure some things out. I certainly didn’t know that I would eventually spend nearly twenty years there, or that a few sketches, a lot of tinkering at the bench and a healthy amount of blind ambition would eventually become Colleen Mauer Designs.
I’ve written quite a bit about that chapter, including the story of how CMD grew up in San Francisco. This story is a little different. It’s really about what happens when I return, why I keep going back and the role travel continues to play in my life.
Back in 2001, fresh out of college and full of ambition, I moved to San Francisco without much more than a few bucks and some very big dreams. Finding relevant design work wasn’t exactly easy, so I juggled jobs at a small furniture design company and waited tables at beloved San Francisco restaurants including Greens and Zuni Cafe.
Eventually, I saved enough money to leave again, this time for a six-month solo backpacking trip through Tonga, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. That trip changed me. I came back to the Bay Area braver, more independent and much more willing to trust my creative instincts. Not long after, CMD began taking shape.
I think that experience permanently changed my relationship with travel. Getting away from the familiar has a way of shaking things loose in me. I notice more. I think differently. I remember what I actually care about, and I usually come home carrying some new idea, even when I wasn't consciously looking for one.
San Francisco and the surrounding coast became the backdrop for almost two decades of my adult life. I built my business there, made lifelong friends, fell in love, made mistakes, learned how to be a designer and slowly figured out who I was becoming.
When I relocated to Asbury Park in 2020, leaving California was incredibly bittersweet. The East Coast brought me closer to my family and eventually gave CMD a completely new chapter, but I don’t think the West ever stopped feeling like home.
Whenever I go back, there’s an almost physical familiarity to it. The smell of eucalyptus mixed with ocean air, the fog, the cliffs along Highway 1 and the strange golden light all do something to me. I wrote more about that feeling in I’ll Always Love My City By the Bay, because apparently I have a lot of feelings about California. Ha!
Mostly, though, returning reminds me that a place can belong to several versions of you at once. I can drive down a road I knew in my twenties and experience it now through completely different eyes. The landscape stays familiar while I keep changing.
In the summer of 2025, I flew West, rented a van and spent several weeks traveling around Northern California. The year before, I had driven more than 8,000 miles across the country with Migs on what became a deeply personal cross-country healing journey. This time, I wanted to slow down and spend more time in one region rather than racing across the map.
I saw chosen family. I revisited places that inspired some of my earliest work. I drove the coast, lived out of the van for stretches and brought CMD along for a few West Coast gatherings. There were plenty of familiar faces, but also new customers, new conversations and new little reminders that the community I built there is still very much alive.
One of my favorite drives is still the stretch of Highway 1 south of San Francisco through Pacifica and toward Half Moon Bay. The road hugs the cliffs while the Pacific seems to stretch forever beside you. I always catch myself looking for whales and taking huge breaths of that cold salty air. It is dramatic and beautiful and somehow manages to clear my head every single time.
Trips like that remind me that returning somewhere doesn’t have to mean moving backward. Sometimes you go back specifically so you can see the distance you’ve traveled.
Of course, California isn’t only landscapes and nostalgia for me. A huge part of its pull is the people. So many of my chosen family and longtime CMD customers are still scattered throughout the Bay Area and Northern California, and getting time with them fills my cup in a way that is difficult to explain.
That community was there when CMD was barely more than me making jewelry in a Hayes Valley apartment. They came to street fairs, showed up at Secession, walked through the doors of my Valencia Street shop and supported this strange little business while I figured out what it wanted to become.
Returning now, more than twenty years into this journey, is a completely different experience. I get to reconnect with people who remember very early versions of both CMD and me, while also meeting customers who discovered the work years after I moved East. Past and present overlap in a really beautiful way.
I’ve noticed that creativity often returns when I give it some room. Sitting at the same desk and staring harder at a problem rarely works as well for me as walking somewhere unfamiliar, driving with no real urgency or having a long conversation with someone I haven’t seen in years.
Travel creates space between me and my routines. That distance helps me see things differently, whether I’m thinking about jewelry, CMD, relationships or simply what I want the next chapter of life to feel like.
The funny part is that traveling also makes me appreciate coming home. These days, home is Asbury Park. The CMD Shop & Studio is here, our production team continues making jewelry by hand in Upstate New York, and my life has roots on this coast again.
I don’t think loving one place has to diminish another. San Francisco gave me space to become a designer and build CMD from the ground up. Asbury Park gave me somewhere to bring everything I learned and begin again. And traveling between places continues to remind me that home can be more expansive than a single dot on a map.
When I first moved West, I had absolutely no idea where any of it would lead. More than twenty years later, I’m still not particularly interested in knowing every turn before I take it.
I want to keep traveling. I want to keep visiting the people and places that shaped me, while finding new ones along the way. I want CMD to keep showing up in unexpected places and meeting people in real life whenever we can. Most of all, I want to remain curious enough to let a trip change me.
There are plenty of roads I haven’t driven yet. But somehow, every so often, one of them seems to lead me back West.
See you somewhere out there,
Colleen
© Colleen Mauer Designs. All rights reserved.
Published: July 9, 2025
Updated: August 24, 2026
Comments will be approved before showing up.
I love seeing CMD jewelry out in the wild. When I first started making jewelry back in my tiny Hayes Valley apartment in San Francisco, I wasn't interested in creating pieces that only came out for special occasions. I wanted to make jewelry that became part of people's everyday lives. The kind of ring you absentmindedly twist while you're thinking or having [...]
One of the questions I get most often during Reconstruction consultations is: “Will my exact gold be melted down and turned directly into my new piece?” It’s a completely understandable question, especially because reconstruction work is so personal. People are often bringing in wedding rings, inherited [...]
There is something worth noticing about the world we live in now. We expect almost everything to happen immediately. We can order dinner with a few taps on our phones, have groceries delivered to our front door and buy just about anything online without ever leaving the couch. Convenience has become [...]
