GKM
New member
Greetings. I began life in Palm Desert, California early ’60’s when my Dad was a USMC 1st Lt. stationed at Twentynine Palms. My grandmother was a DAR officer and kept our family records, instilling a pride of our early Scot-Irish ancestry. By my school age, we had moved to New Orleans and later Virginia, with holidays and summers with cousins back in Kentucky. Fast forward to 1990 and for whatever reason I wanted to give the west coast a try. California then was quite a different, and nice, and was a reasonably affordable place for a 30 yr old. I landed in SF and within a year was spending nearly every other weekend in the Sierras or Mt Shasta or Yosemite, with climbing trips expanding to include peaks in South America and Alaska etc. I once calculated that I had spent nearly year of the ’90’s sleeping on the ground, from alpine weekends and bigger expeditions. I still have all my gear, mostly for sentimental reasons as I haven’t used it for 20 years.
Despite California becoming a hugely different place over the last three decades, I am still here, for now. I’ve settled in 100 miles northwest of SF, Sonoma county, at one of the small rural coastal towns where meat and produce comes from farms along the highway. Here I am one of a dozen volunteer firefighter / EMTs covering our 172-mile district. We get a response call approx every other day — mostly medical calls of older persons having older person issues, and the occasional SAR, rope or ocean rescue, collision on Highway 1, and seasonal wildland fire or two that we need to remedy quickly. With the nearest hospital two hours away, we load our emergencies onto an air ambulance, which works well assuming there is no coastal fog.
Gregory Miller
Despite California becoming a hugely different place over the last three decades, I am still here, for now. I’ve settled in 100 miles northwest of SF, Sonoma county, at one of the small rural coastal towns where meat and produce comes from farms along the highway. Here I am one of a dozen volunteer firefighter / EMTs covering our 172-mile district. We get a response call approx every other day — mostly medical calls of older persons having older person issues, and the occasional SAR, rope or ocean rescue, collision on Highway 1, and seasonal wildland fire or two that we need to remedy quickly. With the nearest hospital two hours away, we load our emergencies onto an air ambulance, which works well assuming there is no coastal fog.
Gregory Miller
