My best friend of all time, Gaylee, died May 3, 2019, after only ten years of knowing one another. A cancer tragedy second only to losing my dad suddenly to a heart attack at his age of 60. Although Gayle never met my dad, she would say more than once, “I love your daddy.”

She’d heard of many loving daddy moments I’d spoken to her attentive ears, often with tears. We’d driven and hiked to many waterfalls found by reading her 200 Waterfalls of Central and Western New York guidebook in hand.

Roy H. Park Preserve is near her home in Ithaca, NY where we both reside gloriously. I am prompted to return there many seasons since losing her, now the first day of spring 2025, remembering how she called it Paradise Park.

Near 16 years ago, Gayle began placing heart rocks on the gorge wall near two converging streams, small waterfalls racing to larger ones. Like how my love for her vulnerable, sensitive, generous, loving whose openness and acceptance made it possible for me to share everything. And I mean everything! Even when I felt fearful or embarrassed.

A prize without price.

Every time we returned to paradise park, other hikers had added heart rocks discovered nearby, to the natural shelves of the gorge wall. And every year since her passing I add another heart rock each season and sometimes write “Gaylee and Dianea” with a stone, on a heart rock, where I and her partner, Jim splashed her ashes. Our love. Foreverlasting. Still growing heart rocks.