Lynn Ackerson was born in Detroit, Michigan to Wayne and Marina Ackerson. She died quietly on Thursday, May 8 in her sister’s home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the pink glow of the Sandia Mountains.
Lynn’s final road trip began with her diagnosis of terminal cancer on Labor Day 2024 in Bowling Green, Ohio. She and her sister drove across the country together one last time to settle into another life in New Mexico. Only months before, she and her trusted kayaking companions had tested themselves in the North Atlantic Ocean and fresh waters of Lake Huron.
Adventures on land and water began with her late husband, Aaron Macy, at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona in 1993. They shared a love of the outdoors that found them camping in Arizona’s and Utah’s wild places, playing in Oregon’s high desert and ocean beaches, and traveling to Japan. After his death, Lynn found her footing in the communities and challenges of open-water ocean kayaking. The Great Lakes comforted herwith their thick shoreline and majestic waters.
She realized in the last months of her life that she would never retire to a life of helping others: there would be no teaching yoga or volunteering with hospice patients. But there were visits from her dear friends from university, kayaking and yoga. She made tamales for the first time; laughed and cried with friends at a Santa Fe spa; and toured the Enchanted Circle. In the end the ‘enchanted dust’ of New Mexico that coated her car and shoes covers her body as it rests. Please go visit her at La Puerta Natural Burial Ground in Belen, New Mexico and know that she looks to the mountains, at peace.
