{"id":1069,"date":"2010-10-11T20:48:10","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T04:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/?p=1069"},"modified":"2010-10-11T20:50:34","modified_gmt":"2010-10-12T04:50:34","slug":"remembering-john","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/?p=1069","title":{"rendered":"Remembering John"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weekend, Tom and I flew to Maryland for the funeral of one of his oldest friends, John Merrill.\u00a0\u00a0As is often the case, the details are sad.\u00a0 John was killed in a landslide while hiking in Colorado with his dog Oof.\u00a0 His dog refused to leave John’s body when other hikers arrived on the scene of the accident, and ended up staying all night on the mountain with his beloved companion until the SAR folks were able to recover John’s body.\u00a0 Oof has since been adopted by one of the SAR workers.\u00a0\u00a0 His wife was pregnant.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These are the details.\u00a0 The facts reported over and over in the papers.\u00a0 Somehow they seem so empty.\u00a0\u00a0 They say nothing about the intelligent, kind, complicated man that John was.\u00a0 That there was so much more to his life than the way that he died.\u00a0 I only knew John for a short time, but I will remember him as a funny, quirky guy who danced in his kilt at our wedding.\u00a0 I will remember how much he loved show tunes.\u00a0 I will remember how much he loved America, Guatemala, animals and wild places.\u00a0 I will remember what a good friend he was to my husband.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the past three years I have lost two friends to the mountains.\u00a0 People who do not hike or climb always ask, “Why were they there?\u00a0 Why were they climbing?\u00a0 Why were they hiking?”\u00a0 And the simple truth, for me, and I believe for those who I have lost, is that we climb, and we hike, because we must<\/em>.\u00a0 It is a necessity of our lives.\u00a0 To be out in the wild is where I find my peace.\u00a0 It is where I find myself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As John’s mother said at his memorial, quoting her son, “I climb the mountains to get closer to God”.<\/p>\n

We will miss you John, but we will always remember you in the high, wild and beautiful places in the world.<\/p>\n

For more information: http:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/news\/ci_16196657<\/a><\/p>\n

Tom’s Blog post:\u00a0 http:\/\/tomalphin.com\/category\/uncategorized<\/a><\/p>\n

Photos: Don Mears Photography, Jane Merrill, Amy Alphin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend, Tom and I flew to Maryland for the funeral of one of his oldest friends, John Merrill.\u00a0\u00a0As is often the case, the details…<\/p>\n

Continue readingRemembering John<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-friends","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1069"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1096,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions\/1096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}