Alan OhashiAlan O'Hashi is a writer, filmmaker, publisher, and storyteller whose work grows out of a lifelong curiosity about people, place, history, and the unexpected ways the past continues to shape the present.Born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, O'Hashi grew up with the American West as his backdrop. His education began with biology and political science, an unusual combination that eventually led him toward environmental politics, community development, documentary filmmaking, and writing. His career has taken him from the mountains and forests of the West to tribal communities, classrooms, film sets, publishing projects, and archives.At twenty-three, O'Hashi worked as a seasonal ranger in Rocky Mountain National Park. On July 31, 1976, while trying to return to the park from Cheyenne, he became stranded in the Big Thompson Canyon during one of Colorado's deadliest natural disasters. His Ford Pinto station wagon stalled in the rising floodwater after striking a 55-gallon barrel. He escaped through the driver's-side window and reached higher ground. An unlikely aqua-blue portable toilet caught his car's bumper and helped steer the vehicle away from the main current.For decades, O'Hashi regarded the experience as a remarkable story from his youth-a story he occasionally told when someone asked about the flood. Fifty years later, a visit to the Loveland Museum's 50th-anniversary exhibit changed his perspective. Photographs, artifacts, maps, and the names of those who died brought the experience back with a force he hadn't expected.He began asking different questions.Why had he escaped when others hadn't? How much control had he actually possessed? What role did chance, circumstance, instinct, other people, and faith play in the outcome?Those questions became the foundation of this book.O'Hashi grew up Presbyterian and has spent much of his life thinking about the tension between predestination and free will. The flood gave those theological questions a personal dimension. He could make choices, but he could not control the circumstances of those choices. He could choose his next step, but he couldn't choose who-or what-would appear to help him take it.That idea became a recurring theme throughout his life.O'Hashi later faced other moments when circumstances outran his plans, including an emergency airplane landing, serious illness, hospitalization, and other unexpected turns. Each experience reinforced a lesson first introduced in the Big Thompson Canyon: we cannot prepare for every possibility, but we can develop the resilience and resourcefulness to respond when the unexpected arrives.His work reflects that same curiosity about uncertainty.O'Hashi has produced documentary films exploring history, culture, family, and the American West. His projects have included stories about Indigenous history, Juneteenth, Japanese American experiences during World War II, and the landscapes and communities of the Rocky Mountain region. His documentary work has taken him into archives, museums, tribal communities, family reunions, and historical sites, where he often combines personal stories with larger historical questions.He is also the founder of Best Chance Media, an independent publishing imprint based in Boulder, Colorado, where he works with writers to bring their stories into print. Through publishing, filmmaking, workshops, and his own writing, he has become increasingly interested in helping other people tell the stories they carry. Read More Read Less