The poet Jane Hirshfield wrote the words:
A day is vast.
Until noon.
Then it’s over.

As a morning person, the words rang true for me. I am one who wakes up early with anticipation of the possibilities that the day can hold. But by two in the afternoon, the excitement has waned.

Such was the vastness that I felt in life. There was endless time to do the things I wanted to do – whatever they were. I had adventures in my 20s and 30s. I parachuted several times. I learned to drive a tractor-trailer. I learned to fly single-engine airplanes. I trekked to the Annapurna Sanctuary in Nepal and I backpacked in the Sierra Nevada.

I met the man who would become my husband when I was 23. We started dating when I was 33 and married when I was 52. During the time we were together we bought a house, remodeled a house, lost a house and left the coastal community that we’d been a part of for 20 years. He was the love of my life and all that was my life was bound to our relationship. So no matter what we had achieved, and lost, we continued through the years and time felt never ending. Then he died. I was 61.

In the months before Ted died, old friends from his years living at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center would come to the house each week to study Buddhist sutras with him. They helped me in the days following his death and I confided to one, “I’m pretty sure I’m the same person I was before I was with Ted – I just don’t know who that is.”

It’s been nine years since Ted left. During the first years, mixed in with clearing out Ted’s carpentry shop and working a lot, I thought about the adventures that Ted and I had had. Backpacking and horse packing to the High Sierra were some of those adventures. He loved those mountains. I love those mountains. I knew immediately that his ashes needed to be scattered in three places. Blackcap Basin in the High Sierra where Ted and I had camped many times and where we had been married in 2006 was going to be the most difficult to make happen. It’s 20 plus miles off the road and at an altitude of 10,300 feet. Each spring since Ted’s death I would tell myself that I had to get up there that September. Each fall would come and go without it happening.

I am an adventurous person and so I did what adventurous people do – I planned other adventures. I had decided to walk part of the Camino de Santiago in May of 2020. I was going to walk solo from St. Jean Pied de Port, France, over the Pyrenees to Burgos, Spain. I had my flights, the train and albergues in St. Jean, Orisson and Roncesvalles booked and paid for. After those first few days and crossing the Pyrenees, my plan was to find my lodging at the end of each day’s walk. Although Covid was spreading through Europe in March of 2020, I still held out hope for weeks. Finally, it was clear. I would not be walking the Camino.

With Covid in full swing, international travel became less appealing and I was becoming enthralled with several young female “van lifers” and followed their stories on YouTube. In January 2022 I placed an order for a Ford Transit cargo van (mid-roof, AWD, long wheel base for you van enthusiasts). Covid had wreaked havoc with various supply chains and as a result, I didn’t receive my van until 15 months later in April of 2023. A friend accompanied me on the drive to Colorado Springs to have it converted into a camper van. Now, a year and a half later since I took delivery, it has just turned 20,000 miles. I love my van!

Throughout the rest of my sixties, life continued to have a feeling of vastness and unendingness. Then I turned 70 and it hit me. Hard. Life is not endless.

“What do you want to do with the time you have left?” I asked myself. Several months before my 70th birthday, a strength training class was about to begin in the town near where I live. I knew the trainer. I knew many of the women who were signing up for the classes. One of them asked me, as we pondered whether to sign up or not, “If not now, when?” She was about to turn 70, too. I looked her in the eye and said, “If not now…” and in unison we said, “Never!” So, for the past year I’ve been attending strength training classes twice a week. It has put me in touch with my body in ways I wouldn’t have thought possible. Now instead of being resigned to live with my aches and pains, I’m attempting to do something about them.

And without the classes, I might not have been able to make the rigorous trip to Blackcap Basin. Two friends of Ted’s from when he was in his 20s agreed to make the trip with me. In September, five of us mounted horses and made the nine-hour horse ride to a place in Blackcap Basin called Snag Camp. We camped next to the meadow that Ted and I had been married in and scattered his ashes at a lake above the meadow where Ted and I had camped many times. I felt a huge sense of completion. Ted was where he was supposed to be.

Now there is another carrot dangling in front of me that the strength classes have facilitated. One year ago I was perusing the Sierra Club’s travel site and came upon a trip that spoke to me: The West Highland Way in Scotland. I love hiking and Scotland has been calling to me for years. Never mind that the plan is to hike 96 miles in just over 10 days. I clicked the button and signed up. The trip is four weeks from now and I think about it every day as I try to get the recommended training to not just survive the walk, but enjoy it.

So, what’s next? The rest of my life no longer feels like an unending expanse of time. The time to be intentional is now. I am content and I want for nothing –– except maybe more adventures.