No one who knew Ed can ever claim to be unaffected by the experience... I'll forever consider myself a better person for the memories I shared with him andI feel honored to call him my friend.
I first met Ed while we were both geology students at San Diego State in the early 80's. While we had a variety of classes together, my earliest recollection of him will surprise no one: In the first class meeting of a structural geology class, we were asked to introduce ourselves and to identify for everyone our hometowns; when Ed's turn came, his response: "My name is Ed, I'm from planet Earth".
By 1984, we'd both gotten our degrees and had each settled on UNLV for Graduate School and agreed to head out to Sin City as roommates. The next several years brought some of the best memories of my life, as we endured the cultural shock of learning to survive in Las Vegas, overcoming the challenges of grad school and figuring out what the hell to do with our lives. Through it all, Ed never lost his amazing sense of humor and his fascination for the natural world around him. He was always most energized sitting on a ridgetop admiring the scene before him, whether it was a picturesque valley, a soaring hawk, or a solitary wildflower. After a day of hiking, skiing, climbing, or geologizing... sitting around a campfire drinking beers, Ed would often peer off into the star-filled night and say "Carter, it can't get any better than this!" Of course, he hadn't yet met Wendy so naturally he'd later learn that it certainly could!
Eve and Lauralyn: you can rest assured that Ed's childhood animal adoption habits never changed... dogs, birds, lizards, insects,... it always felt like a zoo. He once decided that home-harvested honey would make great Christmas presents, so he set up beehives in our backyard. When the bee colony threatened to swarm into the house, Bill, Angie, and I were forced to barricade ourselves in our rooms while Ed calmly herded the colony back to the hive. Of course, in the end, Ed harvested several quarts of the most delicious honey imaginable,... then offered his bee removal services to unsuspecting neighbors who began to suddenly find bees colonizing in their yards!
Opening the freezer was always an adventure - white mice, raccoon tails, sidewinder rattles, all waiting for resumption of one project or another, or addition to one of his many collections. Ed's collections are legendary: rocks, fossils, plants, animals,... but most impressive is his endless collection of friends - it's difficult to imagine someone with a greater knack for making friends. I'll always be proud to be part of that collection.
Farewell my friend... see you on the other side.
Your fellow Agent of Erosion,
Jerry
No comments:
Post a Comment