BVB, the passing of an American Legend…

"And now we arrive where we began, another dance around the sun and Hanna is a high school senior, good lord, and then off to college, your whole life stretching ahead like a passionate covenant with the world, the unbroken promise of beauty: life happens so fast it leaves you breathless. Oh parents, confess to your little ones that their life has a life of its own and feels wholly of itself, confide again and again to remember that life is simply not condensable; remind them again and again and then once more again that although nobody reads poetry anymore, everybody lives it, the words on paper to be brought to life by the boundless susurrations of human voice, spoken words and the humble worship of the human experience; remember these times as when every thought is a prayer, the marrow-deep ecstatic rapture of drawing each breath under aching skies a worship of the ongoing daily miracle we must never take for granted: having been born, our passion and promises, our fears and dismays, and at last one ordinary and unexpected day when for one moment with all that beauty beyond comprehension we open our eyes to rumbling jalousie, stage lights, months of sacrifice, the silence and expectation, and now a flowing cataract of light in the windows facing out and all these unhurried human truths suddenly fall together, one into another, and then another, as when living through the script and the scenes the actors become themselves, a moment when the light seems to have seen them exactly as they wish they were, and that is where will we find them, where we find one another, in that place beyond home where we come like water, and like wind we go." —Bob van Belle

Hair is not only looser but more gray…

There will be a memorial service in San Diego on August 6th at 3 pm. The location is the Calvary Chapel, 7525 El Cajon Blvd in La Mesa. Everyone is welcome, it's likely to be a fairly religious service, organized by his older brother Steve and the rest of the family. No doubt there will be some spontaneous climber hang out afterward.