Forgive me for a long and vulnerable post. For context, my friend Boo was very important to my life, and he died in a car accident on the Salmon River Road in Idaho in the Fall of 1999. Flash forward to the fall of 2024. I was taking a graduate course on leadership and the importance of role models. One requirement was to reach out to a personal role model and tell them their impact on you. So, on the 25th anniversary of Boo’s death I wrote him this letter. Flash forward again to the following summer, a week ago, when I happened to reread this during a moment of severe sadness and heard two very important reminders of what he taught. I’m sharing this in the hope that you will also hear something you need to hear.*
Boo,
I’m writing this letter to you for two reasons. First, and I’ll get to this later, I’m taking a leadership course in graduate school, and I’m required to reach out to a role model and tell them how they’ve influenced me. Secondly, it’s the twenty-five-year anniversary of the night you died, which seems like such an enormous amount of time, a lifetime ago, and I can’t believe it’s been a quarter century. So I guess there’s a third reason I’m writing this – I miss you, my friend.
Not sure where you are or what you know, but I live in Salt Lake City now. I’ve struggled since you left to find meaningful, consistent work. Not sure that matters in the greater scheme of things, but it’s often got me down over the years. I’m doing an online MBA program in the hopes that it will help me get a secure job that I also find meaningful.
I’ve done a lot since you left. I studied abroad in Norway for five months, and I’ve been back a few times now. I home stayed in Estonia for a week in 2000, and I never felt so far away from home. Stinky and I went to see Ingrid and Mara in Chile, and we went to Torres del Paine down in Patagonia. That was wild country back then; I’m afraid of what it might be like now that it’s been developed. I’ve been to Peru, Mexico City, and all over the West. I think we would have done some rad road trips together.
I worked in the Yosemite backcountry for two summers. Bob and I spent a winter in Big Sky together, working at a ski shop. I spent many more winters there after that. You would have loved Big Sky twenty years ago – it felt like the wild west. Bob and I skied the Big Couloir. We skied all kinds of crazy in-bounds shit, some with epically deep powder and some with scary ice or wind crust. Both of us became tele skiers. We talked about you and how you likely would have been there with us.
I learned to kayak too. I got pretty good and spent so many summer days and evenings on rivers, many with Bob. The Gallatin was so fun, you and I would have lapped it in the evenings. South Fork Payette too. I don’t know if I would have been up for some of the more challenging runs that you probably would have done, but I would have happily run shuttle and watched you charge the North Fork.
I spent many years in the Eastern Sierra, working at a backcountry lodge. I did so much backpacking, and a 13-day and 9-day self-support ski tour. Those mountains are my happy place, but things were starting to get lonely by then. I backcountry skied mostly alone a hundred days each winter, just me and my dog. I moved so many times, lived so many places. One summer in my twenties, I lost housing and lived out of my Subaru. I could have gone home, but I wasn’t going back. A summer in my 30’s, I also lost housing. By then my parents were gone, and people our age had moved along with life, so I felt I had nowhere to go and needed to tough out a couple of months in my truck. My permanent stuff, what I inherited from my family, seasonal gear and equipment, books, records, and everything else that wouldn’t fit in my truck stayed in storage for over a decade.
Remember how your mom was really into psychic readings and reincarnation? I had this amazing dog named Tucker, and sometimes I wondered if he was you reincarnated into my life to help keep me happy. His personality was a lot like yours, and he was always screwing around and having fun like you used to do.
Now I must let you know how much you changed my life. We were always great friends in college, but as you know, we started hanging in different circles. I was so damn bored and looking for something else, but I didn’t know what or how to find it. That’s where you rescued me. That summer in Sun Valley with you, Bill, Stinky, and Steve was the best thing that ever happened to me. Yeah, we had a great time, but even more importantly, I saw there was another lifestyle outside of what I’d grown up with in Boise and felt like I was supposed to follow. You showed me there was so much more than television, sports, frat boy bars, and subdivisions. You taught me how to explore, how to search beyond ridgelines, how to take adventurous risks, and to do it with your friends. That summer, I realized I wanted to live in or near mountains for the rest of my life.
It wasn’t always easy, and there were really lonely times. Not sure how close you were to Telly, or if you know, but he died by suicide in Stanley about 15 years ago. Some of what drove Telly to kill himself, many of those feelings of insecurity and inferiority and loneliness, I often felt too, although I never got as deep as him. I’m realizing today that one of the things I really could have used through those years was a role model like you, which I did not have at that point in life. A lot of my friends were surface-level friends, and there weren’t many people who were looking out for me, calling me out on destructive behavior, but most importantly, connecting with me and pushing me towards a better place, like you did in the summer of ’99.
Beyond the good, supportive friend that you were, I really admired your authenticity and courage, which I think not a lot of people knew was in you. One of the last nights we hung out, that weeknight you came over to my house, and it was just you and me playing pool. We were seniors and we talked deeply about the future. I remember how scared you were to move to LA to pursue a career in acting. I admire your courage in knowing you had to try, even if you failed, and even though you were so scared of what might happen, no matter how much you didn’t want to leave your home in Idaho. Also, I’m so sorry I never came to see you in a play.
Also, I want you to know that I hold no anger towards you for driving recklessly and crashing your truck into the Salmon River (although that might be different if Bob was hurt). We all acted recklessly at that point in life, and I rolled two cars in the following couple of years. I was just lucky enough to not get hurt.
Well Boo, I’m writing this from my camper at a trailhead in the Stansbury mountains. It’s a beautiful fall day in the mountains, like the day of your memorial. Thank you for all you did for me. You’re a role model for me because of how authentically and courageously you lived your life and guided others along with it. I’m going to spend the day in the sunny mountains as I would guess you’d prefer that I do. I need to remember to take more time to spend like that. Frequently I return to central Idaho, although I usually race through Ketchum now, but once I start driving up the upper Wood River valley towards Galena, I start to feel home and the memories of all the lives I’ve crossed paths with, especially yours. The dirt roads feel especially intimate and close to you. The lodge pole pine, Douglas fir forests and granitic soil smell and feel just as they did 25 years ago when I was with you. Thank you so much for what you gave and what you shared. I have never forgotten, but I especially feel it in the landscape where we grew up and shared an unforgettable summer together.
- October 8, 2024
*A few lines have been deleted and names have been changed to “Bob”, “Stinky”, “Ingrid”, “Mara”, “Bill”, and “Steve” to protect some friends’ personal identity.
