all things flow into one, and a river runs through it

I was packing some last minute things for my hitch Monday night. Jack and John were around the house. The coolness of evening had finally settled in. In the dark, the bedroom lamp cast friendly warm shadows on my packing and preparatory tasks. All and all I was feeling calm and excited to be going back to work after a long break.

Then the phone rang. It was my old supervisor, Julia. I didn't think much about her call. In retrospect maybe I should've- she doesn't call often. For some reason I didn't hear much of what she said. It felt incomprehensible. Hearing her upset made me upset and between my heartbeat, suddenly drumming in my ears, all I could hear was "worst news ever" and "Paul drowned." I was struck by relief at not knowing this "Paul" and then reoriented myself, realizing that Julia did.

I handed the phone off to Jack and sat on the bed, listening while he extracted tidbits of information. I'm not sure what part of their conversation struck me but it finally occurred to me that Paul was one of our wilderness rangers at Swan Lake and almost the moment that this dawned on me--that I did in fact know this Paul--I put another piece together: his was the body pulled from the clark fork that I had just read about in a yahoo news reel.

I felt strange. I decided to text Garth and Erica my condolences, Erica being Paul's current supervisor. I immediately thought of Jeremiah, one of my crew members- Paul was his MCC crew leader. The web of of people and connections that made up my community, I suddenly realized, also made up Paul's. I felt like I was carrying something delicate. Heavy. Tragic.

I attended an outdoor BBQ hosted in Paul's memory- more to support the people who I love, who loved him, than to remember a person that I really did not know. His death, nonetheless, was a tragedy to me. It reminds me of my own vulnerability, naturally. Of the nearness of my own fate. Of the darkness of Norm MacClean's closing words, "All things flow into one, and a river runs through it."

But at his service--where I stood with my boyfriend, my old friends, my new friends, my co-workers, my old supervisors, my new supervisors, and as the sun left its final traces glowing on the mountain peaks--my heart swelled. This is what Paul loved. This place, and these people. He loved my place. And my people. Much of what I have loved about my life since college, my life as an adult, converged in that place. Paul had a full life and his death gave me the gift of seeing all rivers flow into one. I saw the confluence of all of the beauty in my life. I hugged his mother, and told her I'm sorry and thank you for such a wonderful celebration of his memory. I told her that everyone there would go on to live the life that Paul loved. That everyone there shared his love of dipping your toes into a cold mountain stream; of getting to the top after a peak scramble, of sleeping under an immensely starry sky. I'm grateful for that night. Grateful for the wild and beautiful life that I have.

Love,

Zoe