How My Friend and I Grew Into Different Lives

Last fall, something happened that I’d been dreaming about since my college days more than half a century ago: I published a novel.

The publishing house that took a chance on my work is tiny, and not much has happened with the book. But I’m grateful that it’s out there.

I just turned 75, which is a little late to embark on a new career, but until I retired from my day job nearly four years ago, I only had time for the dream.

The novel is racy enough to make my wife worry that her friends will mistake the main character for the author. But I’ve lived a quieter life than he does.

I didn’t set out to live a quiet life, and if you’d asked me as I was living it, I’d have protested that my days were full: a beloved wife and sons (and now grandchildren), engaging friends, a roomy old house that requires constant attention, the means to travel to places I love and a career as a journalist that allowed me to meet interesting people.

But when I think of my neighbor and longtime friend, Jon Wist, who is a mere 70, my life seems relatively sedate.

Jon is thoughtful, well organized, a fellow whose interests go in many directions, a retired engineer who actually knows how things work. Unlike me, though, he did not wait a lifetime to begin pursuing his dreams.

He ran a marathon at 30; at 49, he hiked to Machu Picchu. Five years later he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and then climbed Kilimanjaro again, at age 67, with his daughter and son-in-law.

But his most compelling dream came when he read Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer’s 1997 nonfiction book about a disaster on Mount Everest.

After that, Jon says, “I just had to see it myself.” In 2012, at age 57, he climbed to the base camp on the Nepal side of Everest. If base camp makes you think he barely got started, consider that it’s more than 17,500 feet up and takes more than a week of trekking to get there.