Thanksgiving

Today has been a very interesting Thanksgiving. I woke up to news that a good friend of mine, John Jones, had passed away while caught in a tight passage in the Nutty Putty Cave down in Utah County. John and I served in a bishopric together, and he and his wife are some of the most amazing people I've ever known. They were both going places, and this is the type of thing that is not supposed to happen. In addition to his wife, John left behind a daughter, and an unborn child. John's unexpected and tragic death lead me to consider the things I'm most grateful this Thanksgiving.

For me, right now, I'm most grateful for my religion. My membership in the LDS church has given me nearly everything I have. Service in the church has taught me to sacrifice and to lead in the right ways (something I still need a lot of work on). It has given me my wife, or at the very least contributed to my finding her (since we met at BYU) and giving me comfort to know that we will be together again after this life. It has brought me closer to my Father in heaven, and has helped to create who I am.

That kind of knowledge certainly has to be great comfort to Emily, and to the rest of John's family at this time. Surely they have some hard times ahead-- Emily is a widow, and John's children will never know their father. However, they will see and know each other again. Additionally, their religion creates a giant support group. There will be people, wherever Emily goes, that she can personally and intimately lean upon. That is something else I am grateful for about my religion-- it is something every church should provide to its members, and to its friends who are not members.

I've also thought about how grateful I am to have my wife and my family. They mean everything to me. I can't imagine life without Cate, or what it would be to have to go on without her, or for her to have to go on without me. This has also led me to consider how i live my life-- what risks i take, and how i make my decisions. Today, going 45 mph on a road bike doesn't seem all that worth it to me. I certainly should be more careful riding in traffic, and I continue to question some of the other risks i take. None of this is to suggest that what John did was wrong or foolish-- there was absolutely no way he could have known the danger of his situation-- no one had ever died in Nutty Putty, although several people have been rescued from the area where he got stuck.

Now for my policy argument of the day. Close Nutty Putty Cave. It's time. I have been there before, and enjoyed my experience. It's fun, but it is too dangerous. There is no way to sufficiently warn people of the danger or to keep people out of those tight caverns where becoming trapped is so easy. The current permit system, implemented after the last rescue, has proved insufficient to avoid tragedy like what happened last night. That's it.

I will miss John Jones.