Yesterday I went on a big twelve mile hike in the Columbia River Gorge. It was quite stunning, with booming waterfalls, silent forests clothed in translucent moss, rock falls already collecting lichen, and ravines formed by lava flows and glaciers. There were even some salmon spawning! Those large red fish really make you wonder about one’s own answer to the question, “What’s worth dying for?” considering how definite their response seems to be.

But maybe what’s worth dying for isn’t so important. After all, so many people are dying for no reason at all. Although I was hiking in the beautiful Northwest wilderness yesterday, 61 people were dying in Delhi. I was there only two and half months ago. How does one face life when tens of thousands die in an earthquake, die in a tsunami, die in a hurricane, die in a war? Maybe dying isn’t so important. Maybe living is.

So I won’t get bogged down in grief that is hardly even mine. Today is Halloween, for example, and I get to go trick-or-treating with my dormies. Over the weekend I had one of the best roleplaying sessions in my life, playing Exalted with Peaches (GM), his sister Amy (playing a noble woman with a daiclave), her boyfriend Tom (playing a liar and a theif — basically Silk), Garret (playing an old wrinkly barbarian), and Jacob (playing a samurai child with zero street smarts). I myself was Kiercy, a troubled medic and sorceress. So much fun! You see? Life is worth living, even if just for all its little joys. Unlike Antigone (who gives up her life to serve the dead), people should not wholly sacrifice themselves for those who have already left.

So it goes.