Notes on Jeff: 1.

Moments I recall amongst so many: 

Jeff was a friend I met in my youth and grew with to the brink of old age. We went from the complete and utter freedom of youthful vigour through to the accruement of love, children, jobs, property and responsibilities we could never have imagined at Ripon College in 1980. Though our actual contact was rare after I moved to New Zealand in 1993 the times we did see each other in 1995, in 2006, 2012, 2018 and 2019, and of course 2009 when Jeff and Sara were in New Zealand, were always a perfect blend of recognizing our old memories and history but being able to remain in the present and talk about our lives as they had unfolded. The talks we had around so many campfires or wood stoves in remote mountain huts stay vibrant within me. And particularly the last ones in 2019 Door County with Rick Parduhn and Mike Gatenbein. 

True, honest and vulnerable moments. Memories from 1980 to 2021 that will burn brightly in me till I join Jeff around that final campfire. 

I was fortunate to have such a friend as Jeff. One of the rare few we can meet after our formative years and high school with whom we connect and nurture that bond through the years. I shared moments with Jeff on the basketball court, in canoes, walking in wilderness, concerts, Packer games, Brewer games, and a few wild parties, (my 21st, and Jeff’s flat on Oakland Avenue in Milwaukee, a few Miflin Streets, San Francisco, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and a few other places). I also worked with Jeff a few different times. His approach to that, his work ethic, also remains with me to this day. 

To those who knew Jeff well he could be slightly stubborn at times. When he would start rubbing the whiskers on his chin and begin to frown a bit the jig was up. Be it a route ahead by river, lake or wood, politics, the Packers, Badgers, windmills, being cold in Wisconsin vs. New Zealand, it didn’t matter. Once he put his stake in the ground that was it. I always understood that about my friend. 

And it may seem that Jeff at times never let anyone’s inexperience or hesitancy in a canoe, kayak, cross country skis, or off track route get in the way of a Jeff Kjos plan. I have been thinking a bit about this. As many times I was on the recipient end of those plans. So I stood on a few steep hills in the winter snows of the Baraboo range, not having skied in years, or being a giving a sit on kayak with a rapidy river ahead, or Jeff deciding there is an interesting looking rock formation well off the track he wanted to take a look at. Yet I survived them all. And learned in each case to stretch my comfort zone. I carry that lesson with me always. 

Yet peeling all that back these last few days I also realize that Jeff most likely just assumed because these things were so easy for him that they shouldn’t necessarily be difficult for anyone else. He was so gifted athletically, so agile, nimble, and coordinated that he could simply do so many things physically that us mere mortals cannot. He had panache in nature. 

The call I got from him when Luca was born and informed how fragile and tiny she was and the battle they faced ahead. Yet the love for his daughter and partner, the love he exuded even over the phone was palpable. Phone rates very different those days but we talked for a long time. 

Or that final evening we spent around that Door County campfire in 2019. All old friends, all who had visited me in New Zealand, and shared so many other special moments with each other, yet also had our own paths, our own lives. And the laughs we shared that cold night were in equal proportion to the tears that flowed for our painful times. And the comfort in the laughter, tears, or just the many moments of quiet with the fire popping from the late fall wind stirring the cherry red coals, and the snow falling with no need for words. The company was enough. 

I am going to share my photos, words and thoughts of Jeff here in a more quiet place than Facebook. I hope those that love him find them as well. 

E hara take toa

i te toa takitahi

he toa takitini

My strength is not 

as an individual 

but as a collective