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Jordana and I headed north on Broadway early Saturday morning on August 16th to join Junior Ranger staff and community volunteers for our 2025 service project to honor Maddy. We knew some of Maddy’s and our friends would be there, but we weren’t sure how many people would actually show up. And, even though we generally knew the area we would be working in and what we would be doing, we didn’t know the specifics.

When we arrived at the parking lot on Lee Hill Road we found that Junior Ranger ranger leaders and team leads were already at work. At least a dozen of them were setting up shade tents, bringing out tools, and bringing in large water coolers. We walked over to the table they had set up about 100 feet from the trail head with things to set up in honor of Maddy: a picture, a sign…

But I didn’t know you had a top brand blender.

For fruit smoothies or maybe, even, margaritas?

For company in your apartment, sweet and luscious?

Or just yourself, to make it through the loneliness of lockdown?

I didn’t know about your climbing gym membership

Or your two pairs of climbing shoes, your harness, and all that rope.

Another year? How can this possibly be? How can Maddy’s death, the experience that

tore at the fabric of our family, that clawed at our reality and tested the limits of our

suffering have happened 4 years ago, in the early dawning hours of a new day that was

supposed to be shaped by hope and health? How is it that time is warped in such a way

that 4 endless years, 1,460 excruciating days of sorrow have passed while equally, this

rending is as real as if it happened yesterday, with every detail forever etched in our