How Glacier National Park Became Nine Handmade Necklaces

It started with an itinerary.

My friend had put together our trip to Glacier National Park and the Canadian Rockies, and I was doing what any reasonable person does before a big trip: reading through the plan, looking up the places, trying to get a mental picture of what we were about to walk into. I had never been to Glacier. I had never been to Banff or Jasper. I didn't really know what to expect.

And then I started seeing the photos.

I don't know exactly when the shift happened, but somewhere between looking up the Icefields Parkway and reading about the lakes–Moraine, Louise, Peyto, Josephine, Grinnell–I stopped preparing for a trip and started designing a collection. The blue of those lakes, the specific, almost unreal turquoise of glacially fed water, made me think immediately of amazonite. I knew Moss agate and labradorite had to be in the collection, too. The more locations I researched, the more stones started attaching themselves to places in my mind. By the time I closed my laptop that night, I had the bones of something.

I made a list of the materials I already had on hand and the gaps I needed to fill. Luckily, the Gem Faire was in town, so I was able to pick up most of what was missing there. When I got home and started laying everything out, it came together faster than anything I'd made before. The collection had a direction, and it knew what it wanted to be.

Going-to-the-Sun Road, Day One

I won't pretend I was calm about any of this.

We were driving Going-to-the-Sun Road on our way to our first trail, and I was watching the wildflowers blur past the window and getting chills–literal chills–because the colors I had chosen for Wildflower weeks before, while sitting at my desk looking at photos on a screen, were a perfect match for what I was seeing in real life. The internet had not overstated it. The flowers were exactly that vivid, that abundant. I knew that my first instinct had been right.

Later that same day, after hiking the Hidden Lake Trail, I held Ridge up against the mountains at Logan Pass. That feeling intensified. There's something about seeing a piece you made in the place that inspired it; it's a kind of confirmation that's hard to describe. It was one of the most special creative moments I've had with this work.

The Lakes (Oh, the Lakes!)

I need to talk about the lakes.

Photos do not fully prepare you for the color of glacially fed water. It is so blue. Unreasonably, almost disorienting blue. The first lake where it really hit me was Josephine, deep inside Glacier. Standing there looking at that water, I understood immediately why amazonite had been the first stone that came to mind when I was planning this collection. That color match is that direct. And then we kept seeing it: Swiftcurrent, Grinnell, Upper Grinnell, Moraine, Louise, Peyto. Each one its own shade of impossible blue.

Lake is the hero piece of the Glacier Collection for that reason. The amazonite rondelles and freshwater pearls, the asymmetric construction, the way the strand splits — it was designed to hold that specific color, that specific place. 

Two Things I Didn't Plan For

Here's what I didn't expect: by the end of my long hike to and from Grinnell Glacier, I had two more pieces in my head that hadn't been there when I left.

The first was the color of the rocks you see in the rivers and lakes, especially at McDonald Lake. The argillite riverbed was visible through shallow, clear water in this warm, earthy mix of reds, greens, purples, and tans that doesn't read as "mountain" the way you'd expect. Indian agate was the match, with its natural color variation across a single strand, and I could see it immediately. That piece became Current.

The second was the lichen. Bright yellow-green lichen growing on layered gray shale rock faces along the trail; one of those colors that seems too vivid to be real, growing on something that seems almost ancient. Lemon jade was the stone that came to mind with that color, and that became Ledge.

I went into this trip with seven pieces planned. I came home with nine.

The Collection

The Glacier Collection is nine necklaces, each named for a specific place or moment from the trip. 

Lake — Amazonite and coin freshwater pearls, designed to mirror the impossible turquoise of the glacially fed lakes along the Icefields Parkway.

Ridge — Labradorite and smoky quartz with a gold compass charm toggle clasp, inspired by the ridgeline of the Highline Trail at Logan Pass, where the mountains stretch in every direction.

Sky — Blue lace agate rondelles with freshwater pearl accents and a rectangular agate focal bead, drawn from the open sky and overcast mountain light above the Icefields Parkway.

Trail — Moss agate with a clear quartz donut pendant, designed to capture the deep, layered green of the Trail of the Cedars in Glacier National Park.

Snow — Rainbow moonstone rondelles on a gold satellite chain with a moonstone teardrop pendant, inspired by the white-blue stillness of the snowfields at Logan Pass and the Athabasca Glacier ice face.

Wildflower — A cluster of gemstone drops (green aventurine, amethyst, yellow jade, golden healer quartz, rainbow moonstone, fuchsia-dyed agate, and freshwater pearl) on a gold paperclip chain, inspired by the wildflowers that line Going-to-the-Sun Road.

Larch — Golden rutilated quartz with a single baroque freshwater pearl focal bead, designed to capture the warm gold of the larch trees as they turn along the Icefields Parkway in late summer.

Current — Indian agate in full natural color variation, inspired by the multicolored argillite riverbed of Glacier National Park, visible through shallow, clear mountain water.

Ledge — Lemon jade, inspired by the bright yellow-green lichen growing on layered gray shale rock faces along the trail.

The collection drops August 14th, 2026.

Every piece in the Glacier Collection is available in limited quantities, with no guarantee of restock. Shop the collection at aureaddesigns.com.