Life Expectancy

could be taken, a world could end- and hope.
        Millions of years before the Travel Channel existed. to report the change, storms inside the earth had raised the land into serried waves, like a monsoon seascape, so any voyager in this territory is nearly always moving up or down, seldom on the horizontal.
        Evergreen forests-pine and fir and spruce-navigate the waves of soil and rock, docking along every shore of Snow Village, but also finding harbors deep within town limits.
        Fourteen thousand full-time residents live here. Most make their living directly or indirectly from nature as surely as do those who dwell in fishing ports in lower, balmier lands.
        Snow Village Resort and Spa, and its world-famous network of ski runs, along with other area hotels and winter-sport facilities, draw so many vacationers that the town's population increases sixty percent from mid-October through March. Camping, hiking, boating, and white-water rafting pull in almost as many the rest of the year.
        Autumn weather arrives early in the Rocky Mountains; but that day in September was not one of our refreshingly crisp afternoons. Pleasantly warm air, as still as the greatly compressed fathoms at the bottom of an ocean, conspired with golden afternoon sunlight to give Snow Village the look of a community petrified in amber.
        Because my parents' house is in a perimeter neighborhood, I drove rather than walked into the heart of town, where I had a few errands to undertake.
        In those days I owned a seven-year-old Dodge Daytona Shelby Z. Other than my mother and grandmother, I'd not yet met a woman I could love as much as I loved that sporty little coupe.
        I have no mechanical skills, and I lack the talent to acquire any. The workings of an engine are as mysterious to me as is the enduring popularity of the tuna casserole.
        I loved that peppy little Dodge sheerly for its form: the sleek lines, the black paint job, the harvest-moon-yellow racing stripes. That car was a piece of the night, driven down from the sky, with evidence of a lunar sideswipe on its flanks.
        Generally speaking, I do not romanticize inanimate objects unless they can be eaten. The Dodge was a rare exception.
        Arriving downtown, thus far having been spared from a head-on collision with an ironic speeding hearse, I passed several minutes in a search for the perfect parking spot.
        Much of Alpine Avenue, our main street, features angle-to-the-curb parking, which I avoided in those days. The doors of flanking vehicles, if opened carelessly, could dent my Shelby Z and chip its paint. I took its every injury as a personal wound.
        I much preferred to parallel park, and found a suitable place across the street from Center Square Park, which is in fact square and in the center of town. We Rocky Mountain types sometimes are as plainspoken as our magnificent scenery is ornate.
        I curbed the Shelby Z behind a yellow panel van, in front of the Snow Mansion, a landmark open to the public eleven months of the year but closed here in September, which falls between the two main tourist seasons.
        Ordinarily, of course, I would have stepped from the car on the driver's side. As I was about to exit, a pickup truck exploded past, dangerously close and at twice the posted speed. Had I opened the door seconds sooner and started to get out, I would have spent the autumn hospitalized and would have met the winter with fewer limbs.
        On any other day, I might have muttered to myself about the driver's recklessness and then opened the door in his wake. Not this time.
        Being cautious-but I hoped not too cautious-I slid over the console into the passenger's seat and got out on the curb side. At once I looked up. No falling safe. So far, so good. Founded in 1872 with gold-mining and railroad money, much of Snow Village is an alfresco museum of Victorian architecture, especially on the town square, where an active preservation society has been most successful. Brick and limestone were the favored building materials in the four blocks surrounding the park, with carved or molded pediments over doors and windows, and ornate iron railings.
        Here the street trees are larches: tall, conical, and old. They had not yet traded their green summer wardrobe for autumn gold.
        I had business at the dry cleaner's, at the bank, and at the library.
        None of those