We’re good at what we do; we continue to act, to do our job and live our lives, until a moment like this comes along and there is a pause, a moment to stop and feel.  I stood in that road for hours feeling my body grow tired, watching for the stars to come out, and then realizing they wouldn’t because it was cloudy, listening to the evening silence of nature.  The now stretches for hours, or days, or years, or maybe a lifetime if you’re quick about it. 

Death is a doorway through which the soul travels, sometimes when it is ready, sometimes not.  There is an important moment that comes, a need to recognize all the love that transcends this doorway of death.  A moment where we need to sit, watch the moon as it rises above the earth, appreciate its beauty fully and completely because at any moment it could disappear behind the clouds, leaving us without its brilliance. 

I strive to experience each moment, each interaction with this intention.  I pause, dive in completely, let it wash over me with everything it has to share.  Each death comes with so much sadness closing out something beautiful, but more than anything it is a reminder to live!

Fitting I’d say, that I sit here on my 28th birthday and contemplate a book I finished two weeks ago Interview With the Vampire and the odd circumstances that led to me watching half the movie a week ago and the other half tonight. 

Vampires have always held deep magic for me, sexy, dark, powerful creatures that live forever and fly around with the world as their kingdom. 

The book is amazing.  Anne Rice has woven an immortal’s story in with the hopes and fears of humans using tools only accessible to godlike night creatures to chisel out a passionate work of emotion, hope, and despair. 

And yet, with all it’s superhuman antics and hundreds of years of backdrop it tells the same story as Where The Wild Things Are, holds the same messages as Shantaram and Siddhartha or doing a Juice Fast, and evokes the same feelings as walking a highline with some good friends. 

So then, where does that leave me on this birthday of mine?  Rambling, writing my thoughts as they speed forth from my mind to meet the world.  I’d give a lot to be immortal, to take time out of the equation of life, to make that so limited resources renewable.  And yet Louis, and immortal vampire, struggles with the same pain I do when I wake up on a Sunday and realize I spent all day Saturday hungover in another world dreaming of another life (August, Claire, and I haven’t had a drink in a week and a half btw, but that’s saved for another writing another day). 

Age, what a mystery!  After spending the weekend with my 90 year old grandpa who seems like he could live well past a hundred, and coddling my newest cousin who was born 2 weeks ago I was again struck by the arbitrary nature of such a concept. 

Weather one lives forever, or was born yesterday the same is true.  THIS moment is the one that matters, and if we forget that, than 400 years of misery is no better than 40.

But something important is overlooked by this story of immortality, and every story that touches on the meaning of enjoying each moment, and it bothers the heck out of me!  What if you DO enjoy every moment, make the most of life, fill the day with passion, love, pause and BE?  Than isn’t 5400 years better than 96?  Am I missing the point? Or are story tellers so focused on telling the human race to live ONCE that they forget about the possibility that some of us are already alive?  What about us?  You, me, and the Yeti, who celebrate the birth of a moment and the death of a firefly with the same soul-shaking laughter.  *Get’s up to do a booty shakin’ dance in my boxers* 

Birthday ramblings are so much fun! Don’t like it?  Bored?  Go read something else! The internet is a big place my friend.  Go find your own nugget of passion, or stay and share mine, there’s plenty for all.

So really.  What is it about time? Age? Or the nonexistence of both?  To fully enjoy a moment we’ve got to get lost in it completely, and sometimes a moment takes a long time to build.  JWST for instance is a moment that has been building for 5 years, and continues. 

HA! Almost stuck there… me and my 28 years of wisdom starting to answer that question in an sentence?  That’s what larkinflight.com is all about, the quest for these answers, and the continued asking of the questions. 

So, what is Death then?  What roll does it play?  What roll should it play?  Well F$%& Death!  I’ve had a great conversation with sickness (did I blog about this yet?) and we came to a happy agreement. We understand each other.

Death, come see me, let’s chat.  I don’t need you in my life anymore because I’ve learned your lessons…   I’m going to live longer than anyone alive today, much longer, and more important, that life will be full of passion, love, motivation, caring goodness, appreciation, and all those things that matter most within each of us.

Got that? Fantastic.  Larkin out.  Dreamland awaits.  Seriously Death, lets hash this out.

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

Someone’s life worth of tears covers my cheeks as I sit on a grassy hill looking at the stars. The breeze rushes through my thin clothing alternating between warm and chilly as I alternate between sobbing and breathing. A satellite crosses near a partially full moon as I mentally compare it to a partially lived life, bright and wonderful for what it is, but incomplete none the less.

Processing suicide is really hard and full of sudden emotion. I’m crippled by love one moment and totally pissed off the next. But most of all really confused.

Why?? Life is the most precious thing any of us can ever have or experience. Why would you throw that away? Even if there is some sort of amazing afterlife, or another shot at life, why quit this one?

I wrote that weeks ago after hearing about Colin’s death. It bothered me a lot, tore up my world, and threw a lot of emotions around I haven’t used in awhile. But I shut it out. I didn’t think about it, got busy, kept going full bore with life, rescue, space, and fun, and processed in the background. Then, after a really busy week:

Sitting in my yard on this beautiful sunny morning in Boulder, listening to spring bird-song and looking at all the new green life sending it’s leaves and flowers into the world. As the smell of lilacs drift across the spring day, and the warm rays of the sun massage my skin, appreciation bubbles out of this world and gurgles it’s way across the day.

The processing came to the surface again. I cried a lot at the beauty that surrounds life, supports life, propels life. And conversely, is lost to death.

Processing went on for a long time like that, sporadic, harsh. And then, sitting again in the forest of my life, watching the depths of death dance through the sunbeams, ideas began coalescing last night as a friend told me a riddle:

Those who make it don’t need it.

Those who sell it don’t want it.

Those who need it don’t know it.

She lost a best friend to suicide in high school, and another best friend last year to an Air Force Accident. The juxtaposition of those is striking. Someone taking their own life and choosing to end it, and someone so full of life and motivation having it ripped from them in an instant.

Mourning is essential, as we struggle to piece unknowns into our life, things that completely overstep the boundary of our understanding, and yet happen again and again. We must give in to it sometimes for awhile, but then also come back and help it settle into meaning.

Doing technical rescue work in Boulder; I am exposed sudden death more than most: motor vehicle accidents, water rescues, climbing accidents, medical problems; but I am especially torqued by it right now. What is death? And what roll does it play in life? And what is the answer to the riddle?

“A coffin.”

And there it is, hidden in the answer to a 6^th grade riddle. Shockingly simple. “A coffin… those who need it don’t know it.”

Death, unlike life, is unaware of itself as a physical entity. It is the separation and rejoining of energy, which causes pain and joy. A doorway in, and out of this world, sometimes locked, sometime left open, but there throughout life, whether we look closely or not.

Those that pass through the door, leave loved ones on one side, and find loved ones on the other, but it is not the leaving, or the finding that is important, but the love itself, and the wonder of it belonging throughout life, death, and all that happens from one to the other and back again.

We feel pain at loosing a loved one, but that pain is a reminder that the love continues through all in a brilliant embrace of life, death, and all that is important in being.

The duality of my task here and my adrenaline filled body is slightly maddening.  I feel like running up a mountain or jumping out of a plane, and yet here I sit and wait, and write…

Yesterday evening about 5pm my pager went off.  “There goes your evening.” a coworker says as I run for my car.  I knew it was something big, they way you look at a sunny day in the winter and know it will be snowing in the afternoon .  Then I hear the dispatcher “possible drowning… two kids in the water… there were three… one went down… screaming for help.”

By this point I’m halfway to the station trying to stay under the speed limit.  Minutes later I’m copying down directions… dive van already gone… hooking up the boat… And off again, roll status 4… lights, sirens, air horn, heavy traffic, green lights all the way, breaks!  air horn again!  Arrival… pause… deep breath.  Firefighters everywhere, divers in the water, boats in the water, search, weeds, helecopter circling, search dog arrival, helping direct divers, talking to the sheriff, reporters, suiting up, drysuit on, in the water.  And slow…

A find… someone’s starting CPR… too late… the water is too warm… he was down too long… didn’t have a good last seen point… weeds made it hard…

…and somehow the last week of time jams itself into the last hour and a half.  My body can’t figure out how to be sad and full of adrenaline at the same time.  I go to work cleaning, putting away gear, and avoid anyone who wouldn’t understand.

Again, life speaks to me, calmly explaining how precious it is, and that it must be cherished, appriciated, loved, because one moment it will be gone, no warning, no second chance.