Summer                                                               Most Heat Moon

Under what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Jon’s recent brush with pulmonary hypertension pushed him into dark territory and he came out from his excursion with some light. First, he said, he was ok with dying, mostly he was sad about leaving the kids behind. It frightened him, too, but not in a paralyzing way. The unknown has its terrifying side and he looked into that, realized its inevitability and said, all right. That’s seeing the face of life’s most troublesome enigma and smiling back at it.

Too, he said, he thought about what he might change if his life had a shorter horizon than he imagined. His answer? Nothing. His Colorado life, one created by his love of skiing, now includes his family, his home and his teaching. He’s been at the same school for 15 years and has just completed renovating his home.    He did the finishing work almost completely, from plumbing and tiling to building cabinet tops and a dining room table. It’s a good thing to learn at mid-life, that the way you are in the world is the way you want to be in the world. Not everyone can say that.