Is This How I Die?

I’ve asked myself that question truthfully twice in my life.
The stories carry a kind of duality. Funny to consider.

An insect.
A bolt of lightning.

Stark differences.

Part One: Death by Lightning

In the summer of 2025, I spent most of my days within a mile of a massive glacier outside of Juneau, Alaska. For three summers, I had called this remote camp home. I was guiding trips in the wilderness, though it felt less like work and more like respectful coexistence with the land.

Glaciers alter landscapes even as they disappear from this world. To live beside one requires constant awareness. Safety depended on understanding a terrain that refused to remain the same. Existing with the land carried a basket of emotions—stress, grief, humility. Watching it change, not for the better, was saddening. But most days, I felt grateful to bear witness.

Each day was different. The place taught me the embodiment of presence. Over those summers, I watched plants respond, then animals follow. I changed too.

I became deeply connected to that place. I respected it. I listened to it like a wise elder, loved it like a dear friend, and worshiped it like a fleeting romance. The glacier felt like an entity of its own. Living beside it meant existing in a constant state of awe—and a constant state of awareness. I knew all the ways that place could take my life.

But one night caught me off guard.

I was sound asleep, a buff pulled over my face—partly for warmth, mostly to block out the light. It was peak summer in Alaska. Night never fully arrived, only softened into an ethereal twilight that suggested sleep was optional.

I woke to a thunderous boom. It wasn’t the first time the glacier’s movement had echoed through my dreams, so I assumed it was calving—thousands of pounds of ancient ice breaking free, crashing into the river below. The sound echoed like cracking stone. It was the sound of transformation. It was the sound of death.

I imagined the freshly exposed ice, brilliant blue, ancient and newly revealed. In the morning, I would be the first to witness the beauty of its death.

Then another crash came—louder. Concern replaced wonder. A flash followed.

This was not glacier, but sky.

Lightning and thunder, with no rain. It was close.

I threw myself from my cot to the ground, instinctively curling into the lightning position. Another crack shook me into motion. I exited my tent to check on the other guides. There were only two of us in camp, and when I reached their tents, they were already emerging, wide-eyed.

We stayed together, crouched low, marveling at the raw violence of the sky. Bolts struck the nearby mountain, leaving spots in my vision. I couldn’t tell if the hair on my arms stood up from cold or electricity. I swear I could feel the air buzzing.

If lightning struck one of us, help would not come.

Someone would die.
I could die.

The thought arrived calmly, unlike the storm surrounding us. I sent my love to my family. I pictured my brother—his familiar eyes—and imagined how my parents might see me in his gaze when I was gone.

As I grounded myself in the reality of uncertain death, the thunder softened. The lightning dimmed. The storm passed as quickly as it had arrived.

Later, awake in my tent, I thought about how lightning had felt like death—swift, terrifying, magnificent. Shattering, yet grounding.

I survived the storm.
But something in me died that night.

It was fear.

Part Two: Death by Sting

It was a day like the ones before it. I was backpacking in the Arizona wilderness, stopped at a water source, resting in the shade of a thorny bush. I elevated my aching feet and relaxed into the rhythm of my pulse.

Midday. Ten to twelve miles still ahead. I felt good.

Then a sting pierced my back. My reflexive swat revealed a wasp.

Fuck. I am allergic.

This allergy has always been unpredictable. Sometimes a welt. Sometimes hives. Sometimes an itchy throat and crawling scalp. Never pleasant. Never consistent. Usually manageable with antihistamines.

I reached into my pack only to reveal the Benadryl I carried was expired.
Fuck.

I chewed it anyway. It tasted terrible. My gums tingled. That felt promising.

I was very remote. Very inaccessible. And now, very vulnerable.

I became acutely aware of my body. The sting throbbed. I took a video to see it—within minutes, it had swollen to the size of my fist. I checked my pulse and focused on slow, steady breaths.

I needed a plan.

The map showed a flatter area nearby—possibly clear enough for a helicopter, if it came to that. There was no service. That part was expected.

The loneliness, less so.

The idea of dying alone felt bleak, but strangely steady—like the pulsing welt beneath my skin. Heat spread across my back. I could still breathe, but my throat began to tingle. I imagined lying in a cool river, drifting with its current. I soaked a bandana in what little water I had and pressed it against the sting.

Life is like a river, I thought—ever-changing, sometimes violent, sometimes calm.

But it was time to act.

I contacted an emergency contact with my Garmin. By satellite message I shared my incident, my status, and my location. I asked them to look at satellite imagery of the area. They confirmed my egress point appeared clear and close.

I shouldered my pack and walked slowly, careful to keep my heart rate low. What felt like miles was only a few hundred yards.

I set up my tent—bright green, deliberately visible. Inside, I lay down and thought about death again.

This time, I pictured my mother’s eyes.
Blue like the sky above me.

I spoke to the sky as if it were her.

I’m sorry, Mom. I know I make you worry. I’ll be more careful next time.

I cried.

I was vastly alone—
like the sky itself.

Closing

They were different moments, but they asked the same thing of me.

One arrived violently, demanding my attention outward.
The other unfolded slowly, drawing my attention inward, toward the body itself.

In both, the future vanished. There was nothing to plan for, nothing to control.

Lightning forced presence.
The sting sustained it.

I did not die in either moment.

What changed was not my understanding of death,
but my willingness to meet it.

When the time comes, I hope I meet it the same way—
present, open, and unafraid.