Beautiful hiking weather this weekend, with clear skies and temperatures maxing out in the low 60s. Slightly chilly, but perfect once you get moving. The trees and the flowers were blooming, and the combined calls of the birds were as loud as a busy city street. Did two six mile hikes, both at relatively leisurely pace with plenty of stops to identify flowers and birds.

The saturday hike was an hour's drive, and I gave a 62 year old woman a ride. On the drive out she spoke a lot about her recently deceased brother. He had worked for a logging company in Portland until he was 43. Then he sold his home and most of his other possessions and went on a cross country kayaking tour. He paddled through the nation's waterways, going west to east, then he went north to south. I guess it took the better part of a year.

Then he started a small landscaping business that allowed him to travel for half the year. He continued boating in Central and South America, having some pretty amazing adventures along the way. He got stranded in the Panama Canal at one point on a capsized boat, and was stuck the better part of a night, clinging to the remains, half and half out of the water.

He had one child, a daughter whose mother he split with when she was very young. Her mother had done a good job of keeping him away (according to his sister), and they were estranged until she started having her own children in her 30s. He had become close to his oldest grandson before he died.

In his later years, he ended up spending his off seasons in Guatemala. He helped some of the poorer villages develop working sanitation systems, and he built a school. He was a biker, and he would ride his Harley down through the west coast, and Mexico, and then in to Guatemala.

During the summers towards the end of his life, he worked as a gardener for a millionaire with a vast estate. While his employers lived in a mansion with their own tennis court, and a large swimming pool, he stayed in a small shack, sleeping on a cot and keeping just a few possessions.

At 62, he died in a motorcycle accident on his way to Guatemala. Got hit by a bus. He had told his sister that he had stopped fearing death the night his boat capsized in the Panama Canal. Clinging to the remains of the hull for long night hours with no hope of rescue, a sense of calm had come over him. They spread his ashes at the base of a 300 foot tall, ten foot wide Douglas Fir he had discovered during his logging days. According to his sister, it was his favorite spot in the world.