A mountain on the Sterling Highway outside Cooper Landing. The green color is from my lack of a UV filter on the camera.

Idiots with no lives (i.e., fishermen) gather along the Russian River pursuing the running salmon, standing shoulder to shoulder for several miles up and down the river. By hook or by crook, they manage to catch 75% of the fish that enter the river. We took a rafting trip from Cooper Landing down the Kenai River, which intersects the Russian River at this point, and witnessed the amusing spectacle.

Sitting near me on the raft was a young lady from New York with her brother and parents. Like me, she had just graduated from college and was seeing the world before starting her first job. She was also from an old east coast school and we knew some of the same people and had recruited at similar firms. While I ended up in Chicago, she joined a Manhattan law firm.

I remember quite clearly telling her that I was jealous that her office was to be on a higher floor than mine would be. In late August, I was to take a job on the 44th floor of the Sears Tower; she was to take a job on the 50th floor of the World Trade Center, Tower 1. Her name didn't show up on any survivors' lists, although I knew that but for the whim of a madman, the Sears Tower could have been the building hit that day. Fortunately, I would later learn that she was 3 blocks from the WTC when the first plane hit.

Two weeks after lounging around Alaskan rivers watching bald eagles and listening to U2's Beautiful Day, I would find myself in the Middle East, the origin of it all, where the days were also remarkably beautiful. It was a beautiful day. Don't let it slip away.