04/23/2026
For Sarah Goldberg, April 13, 2026
With much love from David Gilligan “Evergreen”
This is for Sarah Goldberg, but also for us who are left behind on Earth. We knew her best as “Copper” in the field. She was a sunbeam, a bright light even in the day, energetic, dedicated, focused, in love with this world.
Sarah was part Jersey girl, part denizen of the wilderness, part Vermont village and good food. She brought together the sometimes contradictory strands of the good life into a unique and celebratory mosaic of the wildest and most domestic traits. In many ways she was the best of Sterling College all rolled into one. She moved from east to west with great determination and the winds always blew her back to Vermont, again and again. She spent over two hundred days in wilderness, nights on the ground under open skies, days in the open desert and mountains. She spent three years running the Rocky Mountain rivers that slide across the American Southwest. She was always on track, finding opportunities for growth, collecting experiences, and meeting mentors. Eventually, she came home, perhaps to rest and find respite, to rediscover relationships, to integrate the different aspects of herself into a whole and healthy life.
I watched Sarah grow tremendously in the nine years I knew her. I watched her go from uncertain to certain, from anxious to focused, from opinionated to relationship-oriented, from conflicted to integrated, from a dreamer to a whole person with an increasing sense of self-actualization. She became someone I would travel five hundred miles to see. The last time I saw her we spent four days together on the rivers of Southwestern Colorado. It was a teacher and a mentor’s dream. The circle was complete. She had become my guide, my rafting instructor, my teacher on the water. This was Copper in full-form, smiling big and rowing hard under the Southwest sun.
We will miss her dearly. We will miss her excitement and intensity, her laughter, her sense of adventure, her commitment to good living, her zesty love of life, and most of all her faithful friendship.
