Hitting the road, Merriam sought to escape the devastating reality of 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic by road tripping through the American West, photographing the perfectly peaceful serenity of nature. Returning to the terrain he had visited early on in his career, the photographs in Eyes of Storms like Nodes of a Net capture the awe-inspiring beauty and stillness of the natural world within the turbulent and traumatic context of the pandemic. “I liken each image in the series to a moment of calm in the eye of the storm that was 2020.”