Is your best friend of the same or opposite sex as you? I think would be a better question.

We’ve been best friends since we were 10 and we fought for an oar while taking sailing lessons. They don’t make friends any better.

My best friend is a woman. We met at a psychic fair in 2000, where she was doing spirit guide drawings. I had never been too an event like that before and was curious about what she did. She was on a break at the time, and this little old woman was sitting in a chair at the back of her booth, and told me to wait she would be right back. So I waited,and when she came I told her about the woman who had been watching her booth and told me to wait. She told me there wasn’t anyone with her, so it was an oops on my part again on not realizing who I was talking too, but in the years since she has been one of those people that come into your life and you feel ike you have known them forever. :-) I’m glad I waited, a once in a lifetime type of friend.

Right now in Texas, my boyfriend for the past six years. Before that, it was a woman when I lived in New York whom I’m still in contact with. When we talk or we’re together, it’s like no time has past.

Cherishing friends is perhaps what I do best and, with a few exceptions, friends gathered close and kept from childhood - with those bonds that became closer in the years of growing up.  Those ties, those secrets we shared, those memories that remain over time remain the most special.  I speak of those with undying love.

"Best friend" among those cherished for an array of reasons, reasons that come from the heart, would be difficult.  And as an adult, friends made from early adulthood also remain as touchstones in my life — friends that have remained true — "there" if you can understand that word in that connotation.

But while men are among those spoken about above, a story much later in life evolved that was to change my life.  On the mountain flanking Mt. McKinley while alone, I had a grizzly bear encounter (that was actually photographed from the top of the mountain, too far away to help) that lasted for hours.  Caught on a steep slope with a bear so large, so inquisitive, it was life or death.  Much much later, I was the talk of Denali Park - an example for those who dared hike alone.  It was an article I wrote in a Chicago paper, seen by someone who had seen another article that same month - in yet another major newspaper - of a man caught by a bear in Denali, also alone, who had a like experience.   And  also lived to tell the tale. 

A heart-stopping experience like this was a bond like no other we found. We wrote., and then never stopped.  Our separate lives in the wilds of the world, the other close calls in faraway places, the thrill of climbing mountains and talking about our closest-held feelings about reaching the top, drew us together as friends in a way so separate, so unique.  Our belief system, our intense love of nature, our daring for the wildest of wild places was a bond stronger than all others.  We understood each other’s longings to attain the most beautiful of natural places in the world - without speaking.  And so two strangers, both writers, both who had travelled the trails less trod, became the closest of friends, friends who could share all our inner feelings, finding our hearts soaring as we reached the summit of another mountain as the first rays of sunlight hit the peak. 

Would this be considered "best friend" I often wonder?  Most likely, for this was the friend that in all this wide world was "meant to be" and is so much like me that I find in him my other half.  And all because of rare separate single grizzly bear encounters in Alaska’s far reaches of Denali 25 years ago that we returned from safe - and then told the world our stories. . and found each other in the process. Special?  Meant to be?  A treasure most don’t have?  I think so.   Do we feel blessed?  You know we do.  Friends forever.