another side

I never watched Lara dance up a rock wall, or weave a magic line through a chaotic labyrinth of ice, as so many of you have. On a good day I could stay with her for about 3 minutes in the mountains, either ascending or descending. But I have seen that same incredible blend of grace and intensity thread a coherent path through a jumble of points, pixels, and polygons. That virtual world of science from which she drew her daily bread that fueled so many excursions into the real world of sky, rock, and the infinite. She was the heart and soul of the most creative work I do, and our symbiosis is not replaceable.

Two weeks ago, in Tucson, with a smile that may have bordered on conceit -- it was really pride in my colleague -- I heard the world's premier landscape ecologist extol the elegance and creativity of Lara's recent research in fire history. They were to spend two hours together the next day, as equals in the scientific stratosphere. That same night, as people piled into my car for a poorly mapped route to a remote hacienda, Lara deferentially opened the back door. "Wait -- you have to ride shottie, so you can navigate." Who else would you want to find the path for you, whether on dusty rural roads or routes far more delicate and hazardous?

A week later, as Lara was flying into Ruth Gorge, another world-renowned scientist (who is about 4'11", about half of it gray matter), stood by Lara's poster in Vienna, first puzzled and then enlightened. "Is she a reader (he's British) at your college?" "Could be anything she wants", replied the poster's second author. Lara has told me more than once that her 40s would be her real academic decade.

Lara never had a limit on generosity, whether of the spirit, the larder, or the dollar. On daily coffee trips to her beloved Peet's, she would often take a couple dollars from me to buy hot cocoa. It was only by chance that I discovered, a month into this practice, that I had been about a dollar short each time. "Wait -- you're not supposed to be bankrolling me." She would have never said a thing. The same Lara sent me a text message at 10 PM one October night in Yosemite Valley, knowing I'd never sleep until I knew she was off the treacherous nighttime descent from Sentinel Rock.

Monday mornings at the lab we traded weekend stories. After a typical Lara weekend -- say, driving 1200 miles round trip sandwiched around several savage ascents in the Canadian Rockies -- she would listen with genuine interest to whatever petite accomplishment I might have to report. Now I reach out mentally to all those places we both were, or she was and I gazed at from below, and see her everywhere: the fractal maze of the Shuksan Arm, or as I ponder timidly the X-chutes dropping off Sam's Ridge; everywhere the sky is blue, the rock solid, or the powder deep.

I can't believe you're gone LB. You are orders of magnitude larger than life, and always will be. And I can't stop weeping.

Adios mi hermanita, con todo mi afecto

Don McKenzie