June 16, 2014
I didn't know her well, or at all, really. Her ex-husband is our neighbor & our friend, & together they raised four incredibly capable & self-possessed boys out in the bush, up-river from Ambler, in a sod home of their own construction. They have lived a version of a life's dream very close to the one we are pursuing, & they have done so humbly & deliberately & in a manner deserving more respect than I am capable of articulating. I have thought of them, in their separate spheres, as heroes of mine for that very reason. & when I met her, she had such a rootedness, a grounded kind of radiance that made her seem conduit of something you couldn't see but that the earth could. She had a strength that was unlike that of any other, a kind of knowing derived from purposive living, maybe. & so when she was struck & killed by a drunk driver in a hit & run while riding her bicycle to work on a back street of Healy last week, our collective h