It was, oh, several years ago when I saw the owl.  An owl, in daylight.  It’s not something you see all that often.

After five days backpacking and camping, I was coming down a trail out of the Flattops Wilderness when a raucous noise led my attention to a flock of jays.  Steller’s Jays are pretty, with their black feathers that reflect prisms of blue, but they’re also loud, raucous, aggressive birds that fear very little.  If they catch an owl in the daytime, out of his element, they gather in numbers to taunt him.  This bunch had caught a Great Horned Owl in the lower branches of a spruce, and they were mobbing him.

A Great Horned Owl is a formidable predator in the nighttime woods that are his element, but in daylight this owl sat blinking helplessly as the jays screeched at him from the trees all around.  The sun was too bright, the jays too numerous and quick.  The normally frightful predator was impotent to resist their taunting.

I’d seen it happen before, of course.  Jays and crows love to mob owls.  I watched the ruckus continue for a few minutes, and then moved on down the trail.

I didn’t think of that owl again for a long time.  Then, one summer, I got a letter from a small college in Vermont. 

Vermont is a long way from Colorado, and not just geographically.  I must have read the invitation a dozen times before I called my agent, Doug Maxwell. He had forwarded the request to me.

“Doug,” I asked, “Are these people serious?  They want me to teach a class on nature writing at – what is it, Hamilton College, in Vermont?”

“They asked for you, didn’t they?”

“They asked for Owen Bradley, Doug.  They don’t know who the hell Nick Eldridge is.”

“Well, I suppose that’s why I got the letter, Nick.  But they want the man behind Owen Bradley, and that’s you.  You’re not the first person to use a pen name, Nick.”

“Yeah, but Hamilton College?”

“It’s good for the career, Nick.  Think, Nick!  It’s been two years since the last book came out.  You’ve been having a pretty quiet time, lately, but you need to think about getting yourself some ‘face’ time again.”

“Vermont, though…” I was stalling, and I knew it.  The hard fact was that Hamilton College was offering me a paying job, and I needed the paying job just now.  In the end, I knew what the answer was going to have to be.

“I’ll have to come back for a week in September,” I told Doug.  “I’ve got elk tags.”

He laughed.  “I’m sure they’ll work that out, Nick.”

And that’s how, on the fifteenth of August, I ended up with my old green Bronco packed up and rolling east on Interstate 70, headed for a four-month stint as a guest lecturer at Hamilton College in Hamilton, Vermont.

I’d allowed four days for the drive.  Most people would allow two, three tops, but my old Bronco is geared for climbing up steep mountain trails, and not for travelling long distances on interstate highways.  Its top speed of fifty-five miles an hour made a lot of people unhappy.

Still and all, at the end of four days, I rolled into Hamilton, Vermont, as planned.

In case you haven’t been there, let me describe the setting.  Hamilton is a little town, really, about thirty thousand people; the college is the heart of the community.  Downtown along the Winooski river there’s a main drag with coffee shops, stores, and so on; the college sits on the north side of town, also on the river, with a couple of walking and bike paths that make it easy for students to get downtown.

The Winooski river valley is pretty open.  The town has beech and willow trees all along the river, and the hills on either side are covered with pines.  It’s a beautiful setting.

I arrived on a Friday afternoon.  Friday night I had supper by myself – as usual - at a lovely little café downtown, and passed the night in a cheap but reasonably clean motel on the edge of town.  Saturday morning I met James Anderson, the Assistant Dean at Hamilton College.  Dean Anderson (who insists on being called Jim, so I will) had, to my surprise, arranged an apartment for me in a building above the very cafeteria where I’d had supper the night before.

“Apartments of any kind are at a premium here,” he explained, “but you’ll like this one, I think.”

I did.

The apartment was a studio, in fact the entire upper story of the building.  There was an outside stairway in the back of the building, leading up to an old oak door with a frosted glass window.  Inside, there was a tiny entryway and then a huge, open area.  A hundred-year old oak floor, a small kitchen area at one side, and a tiny enclosed bathroom at one side only served to kind of frame the big open area. 

“I don’t have any furniture,” I told Jim Anderson.

“Already in the works.  We’re renting some basic stuff – a bed and dresser, a couch, a desk, table and chairs, some little stuff – from a store down in Montpelier.  Should be here this afternoon.”

Jim’s daughter was in a soccer game that afternoon, and so he left me at the apartment after an apology.  He didn’t understand the mentality of a chronic loner like me, I suppose.  I needed some time to myself anyway, to get my bearings and make some notes.  I had my first class to teach at ten o’clock Monday morning, and I really was not prepared at all. 

The first week of classes went pretty well.  I was amazed by what bright, articulate young people were in my class, Creative Writing 204: Nature and the Outdoors.  Hamilton is a small, private college, rather expensive, and I gather that has a lot to do with it.  I spent a lot of time the first day or so talking about my own experiences, and working that into examples of how I turned experiences into stories, stories into books, and books into a living.

The week went by fast.  On Friday afternoon, I was sitting in my tiny cubbyhole of an office, watching two squirrels playing on the lawn outside my window, when Dean Anderson – Jim – walked in to hand me another surprise.

“What’s this?” I asked as he handed me an envelope.

“Tickets, directions, and all that.  It’s our annual faculty mixer, Hamilton Country Club, tonight at seven.  I’d be delighted if you’d come, Nick.  We don’t have a very big group here, and everyone wants to meet you.”

“I’m not much of a social type, Jim.”  I pulled the neatly printed invitation out of the envelope.  There was a picture of the Club’s dining room – it probably cost more than my two hundred and ninety acres of land out on the Uncompaghre.

“So I’ve noticed.  You keep pretty much to yourself, don’t you?”

“It’s a habit.  I’ve lived alone since I was eighteen.”

“Well, not this evening,” Jim laughed.  “You’ve become quite the mysterious character here at Hamilton.  I’ll never hear the end of it if I don’t talk you into showing up.”

“Well,” I said, looking at the invitation.  “I guess I’ll show up.”

So, I showed up.  At fifteen minutes past seven, and judging from the lights and the laughter emanating from the country club, everyone was having a good time already.

The parking lot was almost full, but I found a spot between a gleaming new Lexus and an equally new Volvo.  I got out and had to grin at the incongruity of the two shiny new cars on either side of my almost forty year old, battered, dented, rock-chipped old green Bronco, with the scars of a thousand mountain trails on its timeworn flanks.  I patted the ancient truck on the hood as I walked past.  “You may not be shiny and new,” I told the old veteran, “but I’d like to see any of these get up over Mosquito Pass when it’s been raining.”

Unusually for me, I’d dressed with some care.  I had put on black trousers and a black turtleneck, dark gray, tooled cowboy boots, and a black and gray Western-patterned jacket I’d bought at a western clothing store in Denver years before.  Since it was a New England faculty, I reasoned that it made sense for me to look rather obviously Western, even if I am originally from Minnesota.

Jim Anderson met me at the door.  “Nick!  I’m glad you decided to come,” he smiled.  A very genuine person, Jim Anderson; when he said he was glad to see you, he really was.  “Come on in, let me introduce you around.”  I stood for a moment, looking into the brightly lit clubhouse, blinking like that owl I’d seen, as out of my element as he was.

I’ll never remember half of the names of the Hamilton College faculty, but I’ll remember the first moment I saw Jan Timmons until the day I die.  Jim introduced us as she stood, alone for a moment, watching the band scratching away at something that sounded like jazz. 

She was tall, willowy, with long ash-blonde hair beginning to streak silver at the sides.  Her eyes were jade-green – reminding me suddenly of someone else, someone married now and practicing medicine in St. Paul.

“Jan,” Jim Anderson explained, “is the head of our Biology Department.  She’s been here at Hamilton for, what, twenty years, Jan?”

“Twenty-four,” she said, her voice deep and resonant.  “Since graduate school.  You’re our visitor, aren’t you?  Our Artist-in-Residence, as it were?”

“That’s me.”

She took my left hand in both of hers.  Her hands were soft and warm, and so were her eyes.  “Well, then, tell me about Colorado.  I’ve always wanted to see the Rockies.”

It was easier to make conversation with one person I didn’t know then several, and the topic was at least one I was familiar with, so I spent the better part of the evening telling Janine about my corner of the Rockies – the Uncompaghre, the Holy Cross Wilderness, all my favorite places in the high country; the way the aspens turn the mountainsides golden in the fall, how the squeal of a rutting elk makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, how quiet the woods are on a winter night.  I guess I must have made a good first impression, because she invited me to her house a mile outside Hamilton for dinner the next night – and looking down into her smiling face, I suddenly forgot my earlier discomfort and accepted.

A chronic insomniac, I’ve never in my life slept well.  I sure didn’t then.  That night, I spent a long time sitting with my elbows on the sill, looking out the apartment window over the little town, over to the river valley and the hills to the west.  Around two o’clock, the moon hit the river at an angle that stuck sparks of blue-white across the valley, and a breeze whispered through the curtains, softly. 

I didn’t know it at the time; I didn’t realize it until much later, but I’d seen something in Jan’s eyes that evening that I hadn’t seen in years.  Maybe that was why I agreed to the dinner.  Maybe that was what made me break the addiction to loneliness that I’d lived with for most of my life. 

I almost decided not to show up.  Looking back and seeing her eyes, I couldn’t bring myself not to.  Saturday night promptly at six o’clock, I walked up the narrow, shrub-lined walk to Jan’s white colonial house, which stood by itself on a large plot of land a mile outside of town. 

Jan answered the door, the same smile on her face.  She wore faded blue jeans, a white blouse, sort of frilly and lacy.  Her ash-blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail.  She looked casual, comfortable and utterly lovely.

“Nick,” she said, her eyes warm.  “Please come in.”

The house smelled wonderful.  Jan must have seen that I noticed, because her smile widened.  “Roast beef brisket, herb bread, and sweet corn,” she said, “And a salad.  Are you hungry?”

“I am now.”  I took a look around.  “Your house is beautiful, Jan.  How long have you been here?”

“Almost ten years,” she answered.  “The house was built in 1824.  It belonged to my grandmother, and I bought it from the estate when she passed away.”  She motioned toward the back of the house.  “There are ten acres of woods behind the house.  I spent all my summers playing out there when I was a little girl.  I couldn’t bear the thought of strangers living here.”

“I can understand that.”  I remembered my Mom’s little white house in Prairie Ridge, Minnesota; I hadn’t seen it in well over thirty years.

Dinner was as good as it smelled.  Afterwards, we went for a long walk down a path that wandered through the back of Jan’s property to the river, and down the riverbank.  Quite a few people were out enjoying the cool autumn evening, walking dogs, strolling, stopping to chat.  Jan seemed to know everyone, and I was introduced to more people than I’d met in the previous year.  I finally commented on it.

“Everybody seems to know you.”

“It’s a small town,” she laughed.  “Everybody knows everybody.  Didn’t you grow up in a small town?”

“I did.  Is it that obvious?”

“Well, not really.  Want to hear a confession?”

“I guess so.”

“When I heard you were coming here, I did a little reading about you.  I’ve got three of your books, you see.  You’re a private sort, but I stumbled across an interview you did for Outdoors Magazine a few years ago.”

“Outdoors Magazine?  I’d forgotten all about that.  They never did stop asking questions.”

“Well, I certainly learned about you, Nick, even if they did give your name as Owen Bradley.  They even had a picture of you, in your little cabin out there in the Rockies.”

I stopped walking, then, and looked at Jan.  “You really wanted to know all that about me?”

“I did, Nick,” she answered.

“Why?”

Jan turned to face me.  “Your books, for one reason.  I think you and I are more alike than you might realize.  The others?”  She blushed, just a little, and didn’t say any more.  I didn’t press her.  We walked on in silence for a little while.

“We’ve both walked alone for a long time,” she said after a while.

“It gets to be a habit, doesn’t it?”  I wasn’t sure what to say.  I felt awkward, like a teenager on a first date.

“It does.  I’m not sure it’s a good habit.”

We talked away that evening, on a walk that stretched out for two hours, and then on Jan’s couch in front of the fireplace.  We talked about our pasts, our present, but not about the future; I’m not sure why. 

It was well past midnight when I left.  Jan walked me to the door and took my hand; she leaned forward, giving me a feather-light kiss on the cheek, and then she said goodnight.

I must have walked ten miles that night.  Walking helps me think, and I had a lot to think about.  Jan was right; I have made a habit of being alone.  I was fifty that year, I’d lived alone almost all my adult life, and I had things pretty well organized.  My cabin on the Uncompaghre, a magazine article here and there, working on my next book; everything was neatly sewed up.

And then came a semester in Vermont, and Jan.  As I walked that night, I thought of that owl, caught out of his element, blinking painfully at the bright light.  As I walked, I realized that I knew exactly how he felt.

Monday came all too quickly.

That morning, in my ten o’clock class, we were talking about describing scenery.  One of my students asked a question that caught me off guard:

“So,” she said, “what you’re really looking to portray, at least in that setting, is a sense of isolation?”

“Could you repeat that?” I asked after a moment.

“You’re looking to portray a sense of isolation.  Is that right?”

I had to think about my answer for a moment.  I shouldn’t have – it was, after all, a topic with which I was all too familiar. 

“Isolation.  Well, isolation is one word.  It’s a powerful word.  Solitude is maybe more appropriate.”

“But you’re still portraying a sense of loneliness.”

“Yes,” I admitted.  “To some extent.  See, there’s more than one kind of isolation.  Some people, like poor old Robinson Crusoe, are isolated by accident, and there the sense of loneliness may be appropriate.  But some people isolate themselves on purpose, and those people may never feel lonely; they may desire and seek out isolation, solitude, for reasons of their own.”

“And those are the kinds of people that the mountains attract?” another student asked.

“Originally, at least,” I told them.  “It’s not so much like that any more, of course, but there are still places where you can live and feel pretty isolated.”

“Don’t you live in a place like that?”

“I do,” I answered, honestly.  “But not as long as you’re stuck with me here.”

There was a little polite laughter, and then we moved on with the class.

I thought about that later.  I was still thinking of it late that afternoon, when my hand seemed to pick up the telephone of it’s own accord.

“Hello?” came the voice on the other end.

“Jan?  Nick.  I was wondering if you’d like to take another walk this evening?”

Her voice was warm.  “I’d love to.  Six o’clock?”

“I’ll be there.”

We walked into town that night, had supper at the same sidewalk café I’d visited my first night in Hamilton.  We had supper outdoors as the sun went down and the air grew chilly, and walked back to Jan’s hand in hand.  Our goodnight kiss was a little more prolonged – and repeated twice – and I walked home feeling like I hadn’t felt in years.

Too many years, I admitted.  I realized that I was tired of being alone.

Jan and I fell into the pattern of walking every evening, sometimes to supper, sometimes after a quiet supper either at her house or my loft.  Saturdays we went on long drives, to Lake Champlain, even into Canada, usually finding a small hotel or a bed and breakfast to stay the night before heading back to Hamilton.

I haven’t traveled much over the years.  Just as my student had observed, I was the kind of person that the Rockies attracted for the solitude.

But now, for the first time in my life, I wasn’t looking forward to going home when that semester ended.  I knew why, but I didn’t know what to do about it.

Or rather, I did know what to do – but not how.  So, of course, it was Jan that brought it up, one chilly afternoon in early November.  We were walking down along the river again that day.  The wind was brisk, sending dry leaves clattering across the path; the quiet water along the riverbanks was starting to ice up.  The wind drove a few flakes of snow past my face as I looked up to see a flight of ducks hurrying downriver.

“Nick.”

“Hmm?”  My mind does tend to wander when I’m outdoors.  I was already thinking about a book on the Winooski river valley.

Jan wound her fingers around mine.  “I think we should talk, Nick.”

I tried a weak joke.  “We’ve been talking for, oh, three months now, Jan.”

She stopped, turned to face me.  “Seriously, Nick.”  She took both my hands in hers.  “I need to talk to you.”

“All right.”  Suddenly my mouth went dry.  Jan looked a little pale herself.

“Nick, I don’t know quite how to say this, so I’m just going to say it.”  She looked up, and her eyes were glistening.  “I’ve been falling in love with you for the last month or so.”

“Well,” I said, after a long moment.  “I…” Jan cut me off.

“I know, Nick.”

“I’m better at writing what I want to say, I guess.”

“Maybe you should write it, then,” she said, smiling up at me.

I never did write those words down, but Jan seemed to know, just the same.

“So, the semester ends in three weeks,” she noted.  “What will you be doing for the holidays?  Heading back to Colorado?”

“Well, my contract is up.  I hadn’t thought much past the end of the semester.  But I do need to get back to my place in Colorado; I haven’t been there since September.”

“Jim Anderson would kill to get you on the faculty full-time,” she said.

“I don’t know.  I’ve kind of stuck down roots in Colorado.”

She evidently decided to let the faculty issue drop.  “I’d like to see your mountain hideaway, Nick,” Jan said.  She leaned against me.

“I’d like to show it to you.”  I didn’t, and still don’t, know why I didn’t think of that earlier.  “You know, Jan, you could drive back out with me.  Spend the holidays, be back in time for the start of next semester.”  I couldn’t bring myself to say whether I’d come back, too, or not.

“I’d love that, Nick.”

I laughed, suddenly, as I realized something.  Jan drove a year-old BMW, long, low and luxurious.  “Jan, you know, my old truck isn’t exactly what you’re used to.  Think you could handle a two-thousand mile trip in it?”

She kissed me.  “I think I’ll manage.”

She did manage, just after finals were over and the college released students for the semester break.  We drove the long way, through Chicago, up to I-90 and even – after thirty years – through Prairie Ridge, Minnesota, where I did something I’d never done before.

“So, that’s where you grew up?” Jan asked, as we sat in my old Bronco, in the street in front of a little house, blue now and not white, but still, it was my Mom’s old house.

“Yes,” I told her.  “It was white, then.  And that room in the back wasn’t there.  And there was a big elm tree in the front yard, it’s gone now…”

Jan took my hand as I sat there, lost in a memory.  I remembered Christmases there, summers spent wandering in the woods near the river, and I even remembered young Ceilidh O’Connor walking up the front walk.  All the visions of times gone past, bits and pieces of a life I’d walked away from and never came back to.

“It’s been a long time,” I said at last.

“How long?”

“Thirty years,” I answered.  “I haven’t even been to Mom’s grave in all that time.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.  “Honestly?  I guess I just don’t see the point.  I remember my Mom.  I don’t want to think of a tombstone whenever I remember her.”

“I think I understand,” Jan said.  “You’d rather remember her as she was?”

“Yes.  And, you know, I’d rather remember this house as it was, too.  Let’s go get some lunch and get back on the road.”

Two children, a boy and a girl, spilled out the front door as I started the old Bronco.  They looked up at the clatter of the ancient engine, but the snowball fight they were there to start was more interesting than a battered old truck they didn’t recognize; they disappeared to the side of the house as I put the truck in gear and rolled away.

We took our time, driving out I-90 through the Dakotas, swinging south through Wyoming to Colorado before heading west over the Continental Divide, arriving finally at the Uncompaghre ten days after leaving Vermont.  It was late afternoon when we finally pulled into my long drive and rattled up the slight incline to the cabin. 

The sun was just setting when we got out of the old truck.  My cabin faces west, towards the highway, so the red rays of the setting sun were lighting up the front of the house, striking through the aspens on the hillside beyond, sparkling yellow and orange on the snow.  Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much I had missed the place, my place, in the months I’d been in Vermont.

“Nick,” Jan breathed.  “It’s beautiful.”

“Well, it’s a lot of work,” I allowed.  “Almost three hundred acres to take care of.”

“I can’t get over it.  This is where you live.  I never imagined.”

I shrugged.  “I’ve been here a few years.  It sure beats living in town.”

“Take a walk tomorrow?” she asked.  “I’d like to see the whole place.”

“How are you on snowshoes?  Snow’s already probably pretty deep up in the woods.”

“I’ll manage.”

The next day, we did just that: the day after, too.  Jan proved to be pretty handy on snowshoes, and we had several good, long tramps.  Evenings we spent in front of the fireplace.  Once we drove into Montrose for dinner. 

Other than that, we stayed at home.

I’ll remember those two weeks until the day I die.

Jan learned not only snowshoeing but archery; she proved to have quite an aptitude with the hand-made longbow I use for deer and elk hunting.  She insisted on splitting firewood, learned to drive the little Ford tractor I keep for various chores, and generally picked up all the ins and outs of country life she’d never had the chance to know before.

Before we knew it, it was time for her to go back to work.

Denver International Airport is about a six-hour drive from my cabin, and for once the winter weather cooperated.  We spent the night before her flight in the Brown Palace in Denver, and talked over dinner about what would come next for us.

“I know now why you’re not too anxious to move away from Colorado,” Jan told me as we were having a glass of after-dinner wine.

“Well, sure,” I agreed.  “I’ve got a big investment in the place.  It’s home.”

“I can see why.”  She set her glass on the table. 

“You know,” I began, feeling my mouth go suddenly dry, “Jan, I know your career means a lot to you.”

“It does.”

“And I know that your house in Hamilton means about as much to you as my land does to me.  To tell you the truth, I’ve got to be pretty fond of Hamilton myself.  I wouldn’t mind spending part of the year there.”

“I thought as much.”  She was smiling now, one of those kind of secret smiles that women get when they know what’s on your mind better than you do yourself.

“Well, Jan, what I had in mind… That is, if you’re willing, at our age and all, and what with traveling back and forth…”

“Yes, Nick.”

“Yes?”

She took my hand across the table.  “Yes.”

I relaxed.  I didn’t even realize I’d been so tense.  “Would a wedding in Hamilton suit you at all?  Maybe in the spring?”

“A wedding in the spring would be lovely, Nick.”  Her eyes glowed.  “In the woods behind the house.”

“That,” I agreed, “sounds perfect.”

Jan finished her wine.  “Well,” she said, “I’ve got an early plane to catch, and you’ve got a long drive tomorrow.  I think we should go up to our room.  Besides,” and she winked – winked – at me, “I think a small celebration is in order.  Don’t you?”

“I think you’re exactly right.”

We talked that night, and we talked on the ride out to the airport, planning our new lives – half the year in Hamilton, half in Colorado.  It seemed no time at all until we were standing at the gate, and Jan’s plane back east was looming large and white through the windows.

She kissed me.  “I love you, Nick,” she said.  “You know that, don’t you?”

“I know that,” I answered, “And I love you, too.”

She smiled.  “Good.  I’ll see you in a few weeks.” 

And then she turned to board the plane.

I walked out of the terminal feeling like I hadn’t felt in years.  The six-hour drive back to the Uncompaghre seemed to take only minutes.  I was, I admit, flying pretty high.  I stayed that way for two weeks, buoyed further by several long phone conversations where Jan and I made plans – a canopy in the trees behind her house, the husband of a friend of hers, a municipal court judge, to perform the ceremony; the invitations, the reception, the honeymoon.

It was a Sunday morning when a phone call from Jim Anderson brought me crashing down to earth.

Every word of the conversation is burned in my memory.

“Nick,” he said after I answered the phone, early that Sunday morning.  “It’s Jim Anderson.”

“Jim,” I answered, grinning.  “Good to hear from you.”

“Yes,” he said, cautiously.  “Nick, I’ve got some news for you.”

“You do?”

“It’s bad news, I’m afraid, Nick.  It’s Jan.”

My blood ran cold.  “What about her?”

“Nick,” he went on, “I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry to have to tell you this.  Jan was killed last night.  A traffic accident.”

“How?”  My mouth was suddenly dry; I’m amazed Jim could hear me.

“She was coming home from a faculty dinner in Northwood,” he explained, “And there was a tractor-trailer.  His brakes failed coming down that long hill before the highway intersection just north of town.  It wasn’t his fault, Nick, it was a mechanical failure.”

“Was he hurt?”  I don’t know why that seemed important.

“No,” Jim said, “Not in the accident, but he’s in the hospital.  His hands and arms were badly burned trying to get Jan out of her car.  His rig went right over her, and there was a fire…  Nick, the police said it was probably instantaneous.  Jan never felt the fire.”

“Well,” I whispered, “that’s something.”

“Yes,” he said, “It is.”

There was a silent moment before Jim went on.  “Nick,” he said at last, “Jan told us about your plans, about… well, she told us everything.  She was so happy, Nick.  Nobody at Hamilton ever remembers seeing Jan so happy.”

“I know,” I said, dully.

“Jan’s sister is coming in today with her family to start making arrangements.  I suppose you’ll be coming back, too?”

“Yes,” I answered.  “I’ll let you know, Jim, what flight I can get on.  Can you get someone to pick me up at the airport in Montpelier?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll be in touch, then.”

“Nick?” he said.

“Yes?”

“I’m so damned sorry, Nick.  I’m so sorry I had to tell you this.”

“That’s all right,” I said.  “At least the news came from a friend.  Good-bye, Jim.”

“Good-bye, Nick.  See you soon.”

I laid the phone carefully in its cradle.

The world was spinning around me.  I felt for the couch, sat down.  I sat there, blinking, like the owl, like the owl in daylight, as the jays of my memories whirled and cackled around me.  I heard the jays screeching; I saw their blue-black wings flashing.

I’d never had a chance with Ceilidh.  And now Jan was gone.

Like an owl in daylight, I was stunned, blinded, disoriented, lost.

Things needed to be done, and that brought me reluctantly back to reality.  I bought plane tickets.  Three times I spoke with Jan’s sister on the phone, helping to make arrangements, painful but necessary.  Tuesday morning I drove to Denver to catch an evening flight to Vermont.

We held a small service under a canopy, under the trees behind Jan’s house.  People I knew were there, people from Hamilton College.  People were there I was meeting for the first time, Jan’s sister Nancy and her family.  Everybody was warm, supporting, thoughtful.  It made me feel worse.

After the service, there was the trip to the cemetery where Jan was placed next to her parents.  I tried not to look at the headstone, the hole in the cold ground.  I heard Jan’s voice:  You’d rather remember her as she was. 

After it was all finally over, I went to the hospital and spent an hour with the truck driver.  He was recovering but terribly depressed. 

So was I.

Finally, on Friday morning, Jim Anderson left work to drive me to the airport in Montpelier. 

“Nick,” he said as I was about to board the plane, “You know, you’re part of our little Hamilton family now.  Jan was loved by a lot of people in our little town, and it meant a lot to us to see her so happy.”

“That’s good,” I said.  I was still feeling kind of dull.

“What I’m trying to say, Nick, is that we don’t want you to just disappear.  You’ve got friends here, Nick.  Remember that, all right?”

“I’ll remember.”

I got on the plane, then, and flew back to Colorado.  I was back in Denver Friday night, stayed in a cheap motel in west Denver Friday night, and drove back to the Uncompaghre on Saturday.

It was just after noon when I finally drove up the long drive, and walked inside.  The cabin seemed so small and empty now; Jan’s laughter had filled the tiny house, and our plans had made everything seem so large.  All that was gone now.  I didn’t know – I honestly didn’t know what to do next.  Not right away.  But by Sunday night, one thing had been decided.

Monday came all too quickly. 

I waited until 8 o’clock, when offices in Montrose opened up, and I called Ray Wilson, the realtor I’d gone through to buy my land.

“Ray,” I told him, “I’ve decided to sell my cabin and land.  Can you come out today?”

“Sure, Nick.  What’s up?  Why are you selling?”

“I’m moving.  Somewhere north. Alaska, maybe.  I hear the Kenai Peninsula is nice.”

Fate has a habit of leading us in directions we don’t expect, for reasons we never understand.  In some ways, I wished I’d never gone to Hamilton, Vermont; in other ways, despite the pain, I was glad I did. 

I’ve always believed in looking forward, not back.  All through my life, people have come and gone, but wild places have never let me down.  It was time for a new start.

With that, I turned my plans towards the North.

To be continued?