Chance encounters of the close kind

Life is Big.

I met Sharon at a workshop at Mt. Shasta, Calif., in 1992. We all sat in a circle and introduced ourselves. The workshop leader asked us to buddy up, explaining that we were to work in teams of two. Sharon and I looked across the circle, nodded and grinned.

Instant buddies. That week we forged a friendship.

Our lives were vastly different.

I lived in a house in the woods in rural Poulsbo, Wash.

Sharon had an apartment in the heart of downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. Sharon, a single woman, had traveled all over the world. She was intensely interested in alternative medicine a...