RIDGWAY, COLORADO — A Merrill Lyncher with good timing cashed out a while back and bought himself a modest cabin with breathtaking views of the aspen and pine forests rising toward the jagged peaks of the Rockies. The American West, empty enough in these parts, still holds something of the limitless promise of a virgin land.

Some time later, a former colleague who had labored on and amassed a far greater fortune — as well as greater cares — came to visit and the two men went for a stroll. The cabin owner, by now a ruddy-faced Mr. Mellow, gestured toward the snow-covered ridge and said: “The difference between us is you have everything money can buy and I have everything money can’t buy.”

When it comes to money, timing is everything. When it comes to life, it helps to have what the British explorer Richard Burton called “the wanderer’s heart.”

The United States, like some heavyweight who’s taken one punch too many, is still groggy from the money fever of gutted pension funds, toxic securities and lunatic leverage. My sense is the world, like Merrill Lynch, was about three nanoseconds from complete meltdown.