One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out.
Listen closely, friends—especially those of us carrying seventy (70) or more good years of age on these bones. Be as I am—a reluctant enthusiast, a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic.
This doesn’t mean that you’ve grown soft or indifferent. It means that you’ve lived long enough to know the difference and have the wisdom to back it up.
You show up for what matters—your family, your quiet principles, and the wild places that still feed your soul—with the steady fire that only decades can temper.
You give it all your honest effort, your clear words, and your hard-won wisdom.
But you no longer mistake yourself for Atlas holding up the world. You fight when it counts, then you step back, take a nap when you feel like it; sit with a cold drink, and let the younger people carry the heavier load for a while.
What the world needs now is elders with bright eyes, slow smiles, and good sense to guard their remaining strength.
Save the final half of yourself—the wiser, wilder, and more playful half—for pleasure and adventure.
At seventy or older you’ve earned the right to be selective. Guard that second half like the treasure it is. It’s what keeps your heart young, your laugh easy, and your stories worth telling.
Life was never meant to be a grim checklist of duties to endure until the end.
Life is a wild, ridiculous, heartbreakingly beautiful gift, and the final chapters can be some of the sweetest if you let them be. Burn only what you must. Keep the rest for living.
Those final battles matter.
Mess around with your old friends like you’re all twelve again, only this time with better stories and fewer consequences.
Point that mountain bike down a winding singletrack and feel the old thrill return as the wind rushes past and the tires hum over roots and rocks.
Fire up your motorcycle and ride it south into Mexico, chasing warm winds, dusty roads, and plates of street tacos that taste better because you earned them with miles.
Climb the mountains you can, or simply sit at their feet and let them remind you how small your worries really are.
Paddle the rivers at your own pace. Breathe deep that sweet, lucid air until your lungs are full.
Then, when the legs grow tired and the sun slides low, sit quietly for a while.
Let the precious stillness settle over you like a well-worn blanket.
Contemplate the lovely, mysterious, and occasionally terrifying space between your ears and the infinite one stretching out to the horizon.
Laugh gently at how small we all are, and how impossibly lucky you’ve been to see so many seasons.
Laugh even harder.
Keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to a body that is still active, alive, and pleasantly sore in all of the right places.
The mind tends to stay sharp enough on its own, but the body has a way of hardening up if you let it—so make flexibility your quiet daily victory.
Outside showers and Stretching every morning like it’s a gentle conversation with your joints. Gardening like it’s an easy yoga or simple calisthenics.
Walk, ride, and bend with intention so the years don’t turn you stiff and brittle.
Eat the strange local food when it agrees with you. Sleep under skies that don’t care about your age. Say yes to the easy detour.
Say no to anything that chains you indoors when a good breeze is blowing.
Move like the elder that you are—deliberate, strong in your own way, and kind to the machine that has carried you this far.
And I promise you this one sweet, stubborn victory over —those hurried souls with their hearts locked away and their eyes fixed on columns of numbers and endless busyness: yes, you will outlive the ordinary bastards.
Not just in years, but in stories rich with miles and memories, in scars that tell better tales than any résumé, in sunsets witnessed, rivers crossed, singletrack conquered, and border crossings that turned into lifelong friendships.
Long after their careful, colorless lives have faded to quiet regret, your laughter will still echo somewhere down a Mexican highway.
So go, while the light is good. The trail is calling, and it has never once cared about your age—only that you answered.
Walk it, ride it, bike it at your own pace. That’s the secret.
—With love and mild mischief,
In loving memory of Aunt Dora,
who left her childhood home in Cuba for a new life in Miami and never once lost that bright, adventurous spark,
and also in memory of my mother Esther,
who lived to the ripe old age of 87.
Their courage, warmth, and love continue to light our way.
May they both rest in peace.
Mother’s Day 2026
Trawlercat Chronicles 