Gregory Reinemer

In summer of 2012, Gregory had agreed to sit on an MSU grad student’s thesis panel. We took 12 days to take the 900+ mile route. We headed out in our Jetta TDI, making our first stops in the John Day Fossil Beds, Strawberry Lake (snowed in), Eagle Cap Wilderness, and Hell’s Canyon. This part of the trip was quite hot in June.  Most days, we used the Gazetteer to help us find a short hike along our route, usually just 3 miles or so and simply indicated by a tiny red dotted line on the map. I’m not really a “morning person” so I like to start the day slowly with a cup of coffee and a game (backgammon, at the time) so we usually didn’t hit the trailhead until late in the morning and it was HOT! Hence the photo of G washing up in a trough. We enjoyed nature’s bounty like the thimbleberries, seen here, but not so much the poison ivy that  we learned, after we had hiked out of Hell’s Canyon, we had likely brushed up against. We panicked! The ranger gave us Clorox wipes that were supposed to help. Luckily, we did not get the itch! After this, we wound our way up into Idaho and the Sawtooths. There was snow on the ground in one campsite and it was snowing at Banner Summit. One morning was so cold, we didn’t make our coffee until we drove into the sunshine to where we used the car hood for our table. Tina and Rohan told us about a fantastic hot spring next to an ice cold river and it was fantastic as seen by Gregory’s look of delight (or is that shock?) when he took the cold plunge after the hot soak. Jimmy Smith Lake was a surprise…very lush and secluded with lots of birds. We loved the quirky humor of the locals,  like the East Fork University sign, along the side roads we explored. My most memorable event happened as we were cutting into Montana on a forest road and emerged in the middle of a small cattle drive. We were surrounded by the action and got to watch real cowpersons (!) and dogs (!) working! When we reached Bozeman we hiked up to Hyalite Lake (r.t. 12 miles) with friends, including dear one-armed Larry. 

WHAT WOULD GREGORY DO?

He would fix things!

At our place:

1. Doorknobs that fell out in pieces;
2. Toilet fixtures that no longer functioned;
3. Electrical items that needed some tricky rewiring.

Unfortunately, Gregory can not fix the grief and sense of loss we feel at his untimely death.

Personally, I feel a loss at his passing in many small events that stick in memory:

1. His always interesting conversations, on topics ranging from the intricacies of how lasers functioned, to the mysteries of black holes, to the latest book he had been reading;
2. Finding Gregory already ensconced in our most comfortable chair when I woke up in the morning, reading that book;

3. Reading his emailed instructions and encouragement that yes, indeed, even a mechanical klutz like me could fix the leak in that toilet mechanism;

4. Watching him fix Betsie’s morning coffee with no visible sign of complaint;

But despite all the things Gregory could fix, he can not fix the sadness, sense of loss, and grief he left behind in those of us still here.

A thought I think is appropriate here was expressed by the artist, Pierre Auguste Renoir: “The pain passes, but the beauty remains.”

And so for many of us the pain of his untimely death will pass, but the beauty of his memory will remain with us.

Finally, to paraphrase John Lennon: “Everything will be alright in the end …….. and if some things are not alright, it is not the end.”

Rob DeWreede, Betsie’s brother