| Martha and Trumpet the Beagle |
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I met Martha while performing at a cafe in Mariposa in Fall 1995. I was living on the Merced River near El Portal. Earlier that day I’d swam out and pulled a body out of the river that had floated down from up river. That’s how we were introduced …me as the guy who pulls bodies out of the river and her as a singer-songwriter/climber/computer engineer/masseuse from Santa Cruz. She had an easy smile and most beautiful laugh I’d ever seen. Our first date was climbing up in the Valley. |
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Martha is from Michigan and fresh out of college was recruited as a computer systems analyst with a top secret clearance from the NSA in Maclean, VA. She turned that down and instead went to work in the space industry engineering rocket engine control systems for Rocketdyne in Southern California. |
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For a few months in late 1975 we lived within a few minutes of each other in the San Fernando Valley before I left to teach in Yosemite where we’d meet 20 years later. She didn’t come from money, her father was a machinist for GM and her mother a homekeeper but, at age 27, she managed to buy her first home, in Malibu, overlooking the ocean, with her own money. |
With Mom Later, she took a job as a systems analyst with Hewlet-Packard and moved to the Bay Area. In 1987 she left high tech, bought a house in Santa Cruz and became a New Age masseuse. In 1995 she moved to Oakhurst. |
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At Saddlebag Lake, Tioga Pass with Keeper |
| Our regular rides around Bass Lake |  |
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Climbing near Courtright Reservoir, 2005 |
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In a more subdued high school moment. Grand Rapids, Mi. |
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| By the, iced-over, Tuolumne River, Yosemite, November 2017. |  |