“TIME IS THE LEAST OF WHAT WE HAVE,” Ernest Hemingway wrote in a particularly lucid moment. It is the ephemeral quality of our dance through time that makes life precious. For our own well-being, we must embrace the essence of the moment — yet it is still hard to see the old lions pass.

David left us many years ago. Chuck, Susan’s dad, died two years ago. Now the uncles, Tom and Doug, are gone, too. They were intelligent, honest and hardworking men — good, steady guys from the World War II generation, history’s most important window of time. They joined the other men and women who were part of that great brave moment when Britain, Russia and the U.S. defied and then conquered a powerful and surging evil.

David was given a Bronze Star at the Battle of the Bulge. Tom and Doug were part of the infantry’s muddy slog across Europe. Chuck fought with the Navy on the coral islands of the Pacific.

When they returned, battle-worn, their innocence shattered, they longed for prosperity and progress and joined with the others of their time to build a new world based on fresh hopes. They saw the beginning (and end) of the Cold War, watched Armstrong walk on the moon, rejoiced as Salk cured polio. Good fathers and husbands — solid examples of people who rose from the tumult of war and went on to create the foundations of the modern world. Their core values of family, country and God have been probed, stretched and rewritten by subsequent generations in ways that they admired if not completely understood.

Those of us from subsequent generations seem overly quick to dismiss the sacrifice and accomplishments of the WWII generation, especially now in multitasking America where life travels at Internet speed. If it didn’t happen in the “now,” we let it slip into the fog of history. This is a mistake. The WWII generation may not have had the blinding brilliance of modernity, but they had the strength of character and determination to save the best of humanity for those who came after. We owe them far more than we will be able to repay.

A few months ago, I drove by Rock Creek, a mountain river where David and Tom used to go to fish and camp in the late 1950s. When I was 12 they let me tag along, and we filled the Pontiac with tents, sleeping bags and ice chests. They were in their 30s and I remember them as young giants in their physical prime — lean at the waist with broad shoulders and muscular arms that could carry a backpack for hours without a shrug. They were robust with a sense of purpose that protected family and pulled children forward. As two guys alone for a few days without the responsibilities of wives and kids, mortgages and jobs, they were animated and exhilarated in the mountains. They were too serious to be described as fun-loving, but they had accomplished enough to be confident and at ease with themselves.

The western slope of the Sierras is lush and green with the vegetation of the great rivers that pour toward the Pacific. They feed the pines, firs and cedars of the high mountains that were formed by the uplifting of the massive tectonic plates of granite from the planet’s core, then the oak tree foothills and finally the great valley floor. The colors are sharp, deep greens, fertile browns and, up above, the silver-chrome of the huge sun-washed boulders.

The eastern Sierras are wilder and harsher. There it is dry, high desert, and the colors are muted sage, pale brown and filtered tan. The mountains’ eastern descent is quick and violent; sharp canyons split great rock outcroppings. Packs of hungry coyotes howl at night.

It was to one of these canyons, north of Bishop, where the peaks jutted to the sky and Mount Whitney hovered over all, that we would go. To a kid, it seemed that the river started at the top of the world. Set back off the highway, among the short pines and the tan and red rocks, is a tiny settlement called Tom’s Place, and David and Tom made jokes about it.

Over the years, I traveled passed Tom’s Place and Rock Creek a dozen times. Each time reality pitched and swayed, and I could see David and Tom as young men huddled around a high mountain campfire as night came on. At this altitude it was cold when the sun went down, and they wore heavy army jackets from the war and old wool caps. Tired from a day on the river and contented with their dinner of trout and potatoes, they sat quietly, sipping whiskey and smoking their pipes in the dark, staring at the fire as it flickered off the dark backdrop of the burbling creek a few feet away. They talked sparingly in low voices, each man absorbed in his thoughts.

They were young with many adventures yet to come, but as they watched the embers flash, they pondered their past, worried over their present and wondered about their future. They were part of a very special generation of men and women who were courageous and resilient, a tribute to a simpler time.

As David and Tom sat in the high, narrow canyon surrounded by huge slate boulders and jagged granite, the summer night changed from pitch black to a canopy of endless stars. It was unimaginably beautiful, and in its enormity it blanketed and kept them whole.

Eventually, though, time passed and they turned away from the fire, and first one, then the other slipped away to become one with the stars.

Sadly, the old lions are leaving, but they left a legacy never to be forgotten.

Grant Cooke is a long-time Benicia resident and CEO of Sustainable Energy Associates. He is co-author, with Nobel Peace Prize winner Woodrow Clark, of “Global Energy Innovation: Why America Must Lead,” published by Praeger Press. Cooke and Clark are currently writing a second book titled, “The Green Industrial Revolution.”

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