​The most difficult search and rescue calls seem to come at the most inconvenient times. It was after 8 PM when the call came in that an 80-year old woman with dementia had left her home and was missing. It was getting dark and time was ticking away.

The need became apparent when my wife Kat convinced me that a garage should be used for parking cars and not for man-projects. Our first Montana winter here confirmed she was correct. At first, I thought I might have bitten off more than I could chew. But then, how do you know how much you can chew until you take a bite?

​Wandering on old, over grown trails and logging roads it’s easy to imagine that, even if you weren’t the first to trod this trail, you just may be the first in many years. That the things you’re seeing might not have been seen by anyone else.  Sometimes, you get a surprise.

The Vietnam War ended in April 1975, I graduated from High School in June of 1975. What if I had been born just a little earlier, or if the war had lasted just a little longer? Today I ate lunch with a group of guys who didn’t have to wonder, they were called and they served.

I can’t help but sigh when people ask, “What kind of dog is that?” If I feel like being flippant, I answer, “A big, black dog.”

I have taken many first aid classes over the years, everything from 4-hour CPR to the Coast Guard 80-hour Medical Person-In-Charge. I was even a Coast Guard/Red Cross approved instructor. What else could I learn?

​Forty-five minutes from our house is the west entrance to Glacier National Park. We have lived here for a year and a half now and I had only been to Glacier twice. Of course, I lived in New York for most of 60 years and never made it to the Empire State building so I guess I was still ahead of the game.

Don’t believe everything you see on T.V.
Television portrays the real estate business as a beach-front, McMansion, GQ dressed kind of business. Maybe that’s the way of things in the Hamptons, but in Montana it can get a little closer to mother nature.

The other night was exactly one year in our new house on the mountain. This morning we woke to see a small herd of elk standing on the hill above the house. I don’t remember that ever happening in Monroe, NY. What else is different one year later?

My long-term plan had always been to retire at 60. It didn’t work out. It took me until I was 62. People said I’d be bored. It turns out we are all as busy as we want to be.