Thu, Nov 26 2009
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Sudden death a tragic loss of good friend The river seemed to know Fiona was there, and she deserved it. In the fall she got to hunt doves for the first time, with her young Lab, Barlow, which she had trained so well. She named the pup after a trail in Oregon which her great grandfather had helped build.
You should have seen her face with that first turkey, and again with that first big bass. Her smile lit up the woods and the river. I have never seen anyone so happy. It was an even bigger smile when she killed her first pair of mallards, and watched her dog retrieve them. She giggled like a youngster. Fiona took to it like no one I have ever seen; she was a born outdoorsman. She learned everything about the outdoors so fast, and loved every minute she was there. In a matter of days she learned to paddle a canoe perfectly from one side, and on our interpretive float trips, she fit in with five other male guides to a point where our guests thought she had grown up on the river with the rest of us. All the guides loved her, as did our guests. Everyone wanted to float with either Uncle Norten or Fiona. What a pair the two of them made. She said he brought her dad back to her. She loved only one thing more than the outdoors… her kids and her friends. Never in all the days I knew her did she put anything above Sam and Sydney, nor the close friends around her. Never did she ever say a bad word, a criticizing sentence, about anyone…not once, not ever. If a friend needed Fiona, everything else was put aside. If I had a problem with my magazine or books, if I couldn’t figure out how to make it all work, Fiona was there to straighten it out. When she went with me to public speaking engagements to sell books, so I could sign them and talk to folks around me, I saw how folks were drawn to Fiona. Book sales always went up when she went along. A few months ago, Fiona took a job in her local courthouse, helping those who few people wanted to help, offenders of the law who received community service sentences, down and outers who didn’t interest many. Fiona wanted to help them all. I don’t know exactly what was involved, but the last time we talked, she told me how the money wasn’t enough for the work, but the job was worth all the effort because the people there were so in need of help, so neglected by others who saw them only as a problem. Fiona gave them that smile, that love of others that was born in her, and she didn’t even know she had. Fiona told me…. “I feel so good about what I am doing… I am helping those who feel there is no place to go for help”. It was one of our last conversations. And so it is, that I am filled with tears, and yet deep within me there is also a smile…Fiona’s smile. Sunshine inside me, a storm without. 
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