It’s been awhile, and there is a lot bouncing around inside. I’ve got an Ignite experience to process and share, and a intriguing adventure to postulate on, as well as a really amazing effort beginning to bring together an incredible slacklining community. But right now a death is on my mind, but not so much the death, but the life experience surrounding that event.

Many of you know me as a free spirit launching forward in the universe, have spent time with me dancing, running through the forest, exploring the inner worlds, and relishing the freedom of being able to chose our own path every existing moment. I love that me… but there are others.

There were four of us working in the lab, taking measurements on a gage block to calibrate and optical rail with a distance measuring interferometer system so we could verify the radius of curvature of a computer generated hologram we are using as a reference wavefront for measuring the James Webb Space Telescope primary mirrors. I’d been working on this particular task for about a month, and this was the last day I had to do the measurements. Everything was aligned and measuring well; just a couple more key measurements left and BAM!

“Boulder Emergency Squad, Front Range Rescue Dogs, Pridemark, Boulder County Emergency Services, and Nederland Fire Department respond to Barker Reservoir in Nederland in a possible drowning.” My pager went off.

We get 1 to 2 calls a week, and I’ve personally been on hundreds. Many are canceled, or turn out to be nothing serious, but I think after a few years every rescuer develops a sixth sense to know when the shit has hit the fan and someone needs your help. I knew it then and yet I couldn’t leave. Half of me did right then, bolted out of the lab at a dead sprint, drove directly to the lake and jumped in still wearing my cleanroom suit. But the physical half stayed.

I took a deep breath, three actually, and said very calmly “ok, what distance are you reading now?” It was my test the four of us were doing, and I had to stay.

10 minutes later we finished, and I bolted in an effort to catch up with the half of me that was already gone.

What was the world thinking as they paused momentarily to watch our dive van pass lights flashing, sirens screaming? Was it with a prayer or a curse that they pulled over and let us through?

The primary diver plunged at the last seen point. I was backup diver, listening on the com as he hit the bottom and started the search patterns in the zero visibility, steep and rocky bottom of Barker Reservoir. 12 minutes later we had a find. I helped Jeremy pull the victim up and pass him to medical who started CPR. A chopper was there, Rocky Mountain Rescue, all in all probably 50 to 60 of us. Everyone arriving as we did, with loud sounds and bright lights to say to the world. “I’m going somewhere to do something we have agreed as a society has the highest importance, and so you should pull over and let me pass.”

He didn’t live. Despite everything we did, and all the practiced careful speedy-execution he was under just over an hour and was pronounced dead before he made it in the chopper.

Could he have been saved had I left work 10 minutes earlier? If we had driven faster? If we had the boat there quicker with sonar? These are the questions… the answer? Probably not. But maybe? And would it have endangered someone else? Us? A Pedestrian?

The electronic leashes I wear daily tie down that free spirit of mine, and yet… Backing into parking spaces; getting up in the middle of the night; leaving unfinished dinners, movies, parties, frisbee games; not drinking; climbing next to the road rather than across the creek, skipping hikes, adventures. All of this is worth it. In the end, it’s not about how you lived your life, what you accomplished/built/destroyed. It’s about what you did with each moment along the way.

It’s the decisions in life that matter the most, for that is the moment where two worlds split, and you get to choose which one you’re going to live in.

This was not the post I intended to write today, but sometimes when words start coming out, they take the writer in a completely different direction than was intended.

Sheriff Report

Colorado Daily

Daily Camera Video only the last minute or so is good footage