The Final Fire: When a Life Chapter Closes, What's Next?

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

My fireplace, March 16th, 2026.

This is one race we’re all going to lose

Some chapters flame out. Some die out. Some just die. A lot of that is up to us, and some isn’t.

Either way, time catches up to us.

Just before I left on a trip to Africa in the summer of 2021, one of the huge firs just inside my then-property line began to list towards my neighbor’s roof. It had died. I was about to discover just how expensive it was to live in big tree country.

My house in spring 2021

By the time the tree removal people were done, I had hired someone to slice the great tree pieces into pie slices and move them to my property, then hire a crew to cut it up and help stack it into firewood, it was a $7000 investment.

Look, that’s cheaper than had it fallen on my neighbor’s house. Still, that was a hit. Two adventure trips’ worth, in fact.

The above pictures give you an idea of what one tree can produce. I had three pallets stacked high. At the time it looked like I had firewood for forever.

Then forever caught up with me. Time always does.

At the time I had no idea that the tree was an hourglass for the time remaining for me at that wonderful house. Almost five years exactly from the moment I first saw the tree leaning dangerously over my neighbor’s roof, in fact.

The opening video above is a shot of the very last of the logs from that great tree, burning in the fireplace in my great room.

In the final weeks of my time at that gorgeous house, the great room was devoid of the art, the furniture (but not the dog hair) that made the place my home for nearly six years.

Time catches up to us.

Fast forward to July 2026. Six years ago this month I had just found my new home in Oregon and was getting ready to sell my place in Denver. Both had fireplaces. I love them.

This is what I have for now, in my small apartment in Cuenca, Ecuador.

My current “fireplace”

The plan I had initially hatched four years ago during the summer of 2022- barely two years into my time in Oregon -is now finalized. Back then I’d damned near been bankrupted by Medium’s change of payment for its writers, and tried to sell the house.

I was never able to recover financially, which put me in the same situation as many other people facing old age and strictly limited resources, no family or community as a safety net.

That summer, I’d looked at Colombia. Thailand. Visited, explored, and realized, nah. South America was still a good option, but my home staunchly refused to sell. I chose to recommit rather than take a bath with the home price.

For a while. But the seed was planted.

Moving and living overseas weren’t new to me. I’d always wanted to, had done it before. It isn’t a Once In a Lifetime thing. Lots of people have done it, their reasons as varied as fingerprints.

Different when you do it well after sixty.

Time catches up to us.

I have friends here who remind me that mere weeks ago I was utterly lost trying to figure out certain aspects of WhatsApp, which is about the only way people communicate in most of the world. I am still exceedingly clumsy, I mistakenly send people birthday greetings and it’s taken me a while to figure out how to delete them.

Now I not only know how to edit and delete, I even know how to forward and translate, albeit not very well. Tagging Leo Notenboom for those of us grey hairs who are indeed becoming more tech savvy.

A few weeks ago I didn’t have a doctor, a vet, a dermatologist, a gym, a dentist. Didn’t have new friends or know my way around the neighborhood.

Do now.

Sand through the hourglass.

Time catches up to us.

This week I was heartbroken to learn that Sam Neill had died. For whatever reason that hit harder than some of the other celebrity passings. He was 78, had been declared cancer-free.

Not long ago he was quoted as saying that he’d be annoyed by dying because there were still things he wanted to do.

Annoyed. I love that. I absolutely get it. It’s just one reason why this grey hair is punching weights again at my tiny gym up the hill from my house.

Yesterday I spoke with my friend Melissa in the States. We were discussing how we often settle for what we have for reasons we don’t always challenge, or even understand, for that matter.

She and I have both spent a lot of time with people who were neither kind nor respectful, among other things, because we got something out of that connection.

Not what we really wanted or even could have, but it felt acceptable at the time.

We settled, in other words. The harder work of clearing the table and allowing the universe to deliver something much better felt like too much. We’d have to go without (whatever it was we thought we had) but clearing off meant work, discomfort. In some ways, starting all over again.

All of us get to consider where we have settled, and what it costs us.

Of course, you could legitimately argue that this is part of where many grey divorces are born. You’d be right, too.

That leads to a lot of things: freedom and options for some, terrible regret for others. It all depends on how you’ve taken care of your body, your finances, your heart, your attitude and your social life, how those next years go.

There are those of us who have “overpriced” ourselves for the very judgmental singles market to which we are returning. Sometimes that experience is life-changing in the worst possible ways. Sometimes it’s celebratory.

Sometimes after we make a decision, we realize it was rash. Sometimes we find out that said rash decision was absolutely the right thing. Most of the time we have no clue, and that cluelessness soothes us to stay static.

So before you assume you’ve settled, make sure that you do a realistic and fair assessment of where you are, what you want, and whether what you want is even possible. You might well be perfectly situated exactly where you are, and with whom, but only need a few tweaks here and there to make things pop again.

Beautiful as it was, this wasn’t right for me

I could have settled, not comfortably but at least for a while, for my gorgeous home in the woods. Settled for a lonely life, surrounded by beauty and access to the Coast, which I adored.

Sure I could. Sure thought about it often enough.

I could have made it work well enough, until the sheer cost of upkeep and maintenance and all the rest forced me out. That happens to too many of us who push the critical decisions off because we’re comfortable enough, it’s not painful enough.

But time catches up to us.

It caught up to Sam Neill. He’s annoyed now, because he still had things to do.

Do you?

I sure do.

As the last of the great chunks of fir burned to ash in my fireplace, I already knew that discomfort was coming. My house was a pitcher plant, as I’ve written. So much easier to stay, settle and relax.

Then perhaps I realize someday that my health or my bone density or my finances (especially those) would no longer support whatever dreams I might have left.-

If I had any dreams, or the time in which to realize them, left to me.

Time catches up to us.

Earlier this morning right after my jog-walk, which has gotten slightly longer and slightly easier as I adjust to 8600 feet, I got an email from my 1971 high school class president.

Another one of my classmates had passed. Seventy-two.

Lord that sounds young.

I looked her up. She and her husband ran a Golden Corral restaurant in my home state of Florida. She clearly ate there a lot herself. Only a few months ago there was a photo of her, a big girl.

Not a criticism. Statement of fact.

She married bare minutes after high school graduation. She won’t make it to the 55th, barely two weeks and only seventy-three and-a-half miles away from her town.

Time, and our habits, catch up to us.

Recently, fellow single-Substacker-over-sixty Sue Fagalde Lick wrote a series of hair-raising stories about getting deathly ill in a small coastal Oregon town far away from exactly the specialized care she needed.

Another Substacker in the same basic age neighborhood and with some similar issues concerning isolation and access to healthcare, Sue Kusch, has been dealing with and writing about the very real consequences of not dealing with reality.

A visit to her aging parents underscored not only their utter inability to imagine not being self-sufficient (her dad fell asleep in the car, in Arizona, in 110F, because of meds) but this raised the question for her own life.

Sue lives too far out. Her much older neighbors are in complete denial of their situations. Gorgeous rural Washington, but just too isolated.

Sadly, disaster awaits those who wait too long.

Time catches up to us.

My buddy JC, who is the marketing director for Hawthorn retirement communities, reports that while their target age for their active communities is 75, most folks wait another ten years.

Ten years.

For too many, a spouse has died, a parent is afflicted with memory issues and the kids are forced to force their folks into a community they didn’t choose and don’t want.

Sue F and Sue K and many more of you are all dealing with exactly these questions, and for our parents.

By the time the last log from my mighty fir tree had burnt to ash, I knew my next chapter. Whether it’s my last, who knows?

What I do know is that by moving to Ecuador, I have a small apartment that nearly spits me out every day to get out and DO things, meet people, expand my world again.

By moving here I am making my brain, my intellect and my body work full time to adjust, often with real difficultly and sometimes annoyance, to a million new things, the most challenging of which is that I can’t speak the language.

Yet.

I’d be annoyed as hell if it was my turn to go tomorrow. I’ve got adventures ahead and horses to ride and languages to learn and a million things to do. Countries to visit and sports to try and lots and lots of laughs waiting to make my stomach sore.

Just like Sam Neill. Like you. Like my old classmate in Florida who didn’t make it to the 55th reunion, only two weeks and 73.5 miles away.

Time catches us all.

Will you wait for him, or will you give that old rat bastard a run for his money?

Let’s play.

The author in Tanzania

Thank you as always for your eyeballs, comments, encouragement and for subscribing. I hope you’re inspired and I hope that you make time for the dream that still shimmers for you. Please consider: