Cancer. From diagnosis to death was a matter of months, and by November of 2015, she was gone. My mom’s sister and best friend, the aunt who was like a second mother to me, whose name – Sue – my mom frequently used to call me, sometimes by mistake, sometimes as a means of showing her affection for us both. As I prepared to return home to South Carolina for Sue’s funeral, my dad and sister insisted that it was also time to confront mom’s struggles with memory. In the months that followed, a diagnosis: (likely) Alzheimer’s. The ground beneath my feet began to shift.

From the moment we met, JD and I began planning for me to “retire” early. Having completed a distinguished, 33-year career with the National Park Service, he understood my dedication to public service and conservation. Yet, he never hid his hopes that I would one day be ready to prioritize our time together over my career ambitions.

That day came sooner than we expected. As I continued my work with the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) – an agency, a mission and a workforce that I will forever love – mom’s confusion, anger, and denial, and my father’s isolation, grew clearer with each visit back East. As Thanksgiving 2018 approached, my father proposed a family reunion in Montana, where JD and I had recently purchased a house, and JD’s two daughters Anika and Kara live with their families. My sister Patricia and I recognized this as Dad’s yearning for one more big adventure, possibly sensing that he and mom may never be able to make that sort of trip again. It was miraculous, momentous – my parents, Patricia, her husband and three kids all arrived safely; we – 16 in all – feasted on turkey and cornbread stuffing; visited the Museum of the Rockies, learning about dinosaurs and the northern lights; and visited Yellowstone National Park, where niece Mackenzie and nephew Wyatt trudged with JD and me through knee-high snow to watch gray wolves through spotting scopes, standing silently, reverently with eyes closed, as they howled. Despite the winter temperatures, my father enthusiastically joined JD and his girls for a Montana State University Bobcat’s football game. Back at the house alone with mom, I savored this quality time, choking back my tears as she pleaded to go home, fighting to hide her confusion and fear from me, and herself. We sat on the edge of my bed, gently affirming our love for each other and talking about how hard it is to be on opposite sides of the country from each other. I was also trying, at Dad’s request, to gain her acceptance to hire an in-home caregiver. She said she’d think about it, and insisted we drop the subject.

Less than 48 hours after landing back in South Carolina, Dad suffered a retinal stroke, and was advised never to fly again. Meanwhile, another friend of ours was dying of cancer. Mitch was just a few years younger than JD, and played on JDs softball team. Our lists of friends and acquaintances who had died prematurely, or were otherwise suffering from incapacitating illness, continued to grow. Slowly, steadily, the many varied reasons I had been holding up for continuing to work, and postpone quality time with JD, my parents and our families, weren’t good enough anymore.

Early in 2019, it felt like the universe was compelling me to change course. Mitch had died, a few days before Christmas. During the federal government furlough in January, we received an unsolicited, solid offer on our Reno home, creating possibilities I could not see before. As we discussed what we would do with our time, JD offered to take our camper and park it in my parents’ driveway. When I flew home to visit again in February, mom had no memory of her sister’s Sue’s death three years prior, or visiting me in Montana a mere three months ago. On an overnight trip to Litchfield Beach, where we spent our summer vacations when Patricia and I were children, mom tearfully asked dad and me to take her home the first morning. She nonetheless rallied, indulging us for two days, walking the street markets in Charleston and strolling the beach with me hand in hand, before again insisting that it was time to go. As I drove us home, my exhausted dad sleeping in the backseat, mom turned to me and asked, sheepishly: “Have we eaten?”. We had, just an hour before. Back at their house, she pointed to a photograph of my 12-year old niece, Ansley, and asked me: “Is this you?”. She was slipping away. Who knew what she would remember when I saw her next, or how much time we had until she would no longer know us at all. My soul cried out to me: “Now. Now! NOW!”. On my return home to JD, I told him that it was time.

And so, I resigned from the USFWS at the end of March 2019, declaring my need to focus on time with JD, my parents, and our families. The outpouring of understanding and support that I received from my superiors, staff, and partners was humbling, beyond my wildest imaginations. Yet, as enthusiastically summed up by my dear friend and mentor, Ted, when I informed him of my choice: “love wins!”. And so, with the help of numerous generous friends, within a week of my last day at work, and two months after JD’s shoulder surgery, we managed to pack our Reno house into a Uhaul. On April 6, we were headed to Montana, and by late April, we were headed back south to our house in Baja, with friends Bob and Kit, who had almost single-handedly packed our U-Haul in Reno. It was there, on the Sea of Cortez, that JD and I fell in love – so it was fitting to return there to decompress and take stock of the present moment.

We lingered a month in Baja before starting our cross-country drive to South Carolina to my parents. Along our route across the desert southwest, we listened to Craig Childs’ “House of Rain” on audiobook, tracing the origins, places, and fates of the ancient puebloans. Camping, hiking and star-gazing in Gila Cliffs National Monument, Chaco Canyon, and Mesa Verde, we pondered the meanings of home and place, family and tribe, ceremony and ritual, celestial migrations. We visited several of JD’s friends from his early NPS days, including Rick, the friend and mentor who hired JD into the agency; Patty, from the glory days at Grand Canyon; Phil and Memi, NPS friends from days at Petrified Forest; Pat, from Grand Canyon and Alaska; and Jim, another distinguished NPS friend and mentor who is still suffering from a head injury in an ATV accident years ago. With each reunion and farewell, we savored the bittersweet juxtapositions created by re-living the reverie of youth with old friends.

We arrived in the hot, humid south just in time for the heat of summer, pausing in Memphis to see Fred and Taffy from JD’s days in Yosemite; in Knoxville for visits with with Carolyn’s cousin Brad and wife Kathy and other friends Stan, Chrissy and Joan, from college and graduate school years; Peggy, Pat and JR from my days at the University of Tennessee and the Tennessee Valley Authority; and Kyla, Leigh, Gary and Molly in Asheville, North Carolina – friendships spanning college, graduate school, and my first job with the USFWS in Asheville. JD and I made it to South Carolina for my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary celebration. Dad had made all the arrangements himself at a local restaurant, footing the bill for 30-some friends and family. Dad, ever the story-teller and entertainer, thanked mom for their 50 years together, and shared poetry to convey his gratitude for his life and marriage, children, family and friends. Mom, to our joyous amazement, navigated the room with aplomb. Not surprisingly, just days later Dad succumbed to exhaustion and a nagging cough, rushed by ambulance to the hospital where he spent weeks being treated for pneumonia. I credit JD’s jovial bedside manner, honed from years as a medic, with my dad’s amazing recovery. Although I had no doubts, the six weeks we spent with them last summer strongly reinforced my decision to resign.

Upon leaving the Carolinas, JD and I spent the rest of the summer working our way out to the Atlantic coast, up through the Great Lakes, and back to our new home to Bozeman, Montana. Truck and camper fully loaded, we visited our sisters – my sister Patricia in Ohio, his sister Gail in Michigan – before arriving back in Montana in late August. We spent the last days of summer and fall settling into our house in Bozeman; with the long-distance help of my boat-builder cousin Brad, buying and restoring a long neglected, 19-foot O’Day Mariner sailboat that we named Vishnu, and learning to sail; hosting and reconnecting with some more of JD’s NPS friends; attending the annual rendezvous of the Association of National Park Rangers, of which JD is a founding member; and, most of all, treasuring time spent with JD’s daughters and their families, and being grandparents to their amazing children. As the year came to an end, we celebrated mom’s 80th birthday; completed a return trip to South Carolina for Thanksgiving in which all of my first cousins were in the same place for the first time in some 20 years; and my dad’s 78th birthday on New Years Eve. And increasingly, JD and I resolve each day to savor every minute – because, one way or another, we know that one day, our time will also come to an end.

Therefore this blog. One of my (Carolyn’s) passions is writing. It helps me to capture memories, while challenging me to play with words and language until the experience is worth sharing. And those of you who know JD, and have followed his earlier travel blogs, can rest assured that he will find a way to keep you entertained. Many friends and family have asked us to keep in touch with them, and this gives us both a platform to do that – we plan to take turns posting updates here. As for the blog’s title, it reflects our belief that, indeed, we are lucky enough. To be alive. To live near the mountains and the sea. To love, and be loved. We all need to believe, and take time to recognize, that there is still good in the world. This is our attempt to capture, savor, and share some of ours.