Paul H. Baynham

Paul Baynham, a fly-fisherman, caregiver and cook, crossed over to the trout stream in the sky on March 21, 2026, at Collier Hospice Center in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, where he worked for seven years as a nurse practitioner. He was 74 years old.

Paul was born an ocean away in Portsmouth, England, in 1952. He was the second of three children to Capt. Brian Baynham, an Irish-born submariner in the Royal Navy, and Jean Fraser, a Scottish war nurse. Paul spent his early years in southern England and on the Mediterranean island of Malta. He began his education at age 7 in a British boarding school where he addressed homesick letters to “Mume and Dade,” and quickly tired of porridge and corporal punishment. His early ambition was to leave school and go to Thailand, a dream he nursed to a high polish in his chest. His traveling began with solo forays to Greece at age 16, sleeping on the beach in Corfu and living on bread and grapes.

Paul left school at 17 and went to Cambridge to stay with his older brother, Mike. There Paul became a builder’s mate and cooked vegetarian, macrobiotic meals for his meat-loving elderly neighbor, Alice. Some afternoons he moonlighted as a nude model.

Every bit a man of his moment, Paul grew his hair long, acquired the requisite velvet trousers, and reveled in the music of the 1960s. He talked about seeing Led Zeppelin, The Kinks and Pink Floyd in small venues with a 5-pound cover. He watched The Rolling Stones perform in London’s Hyde Park in 1969, when Mick Jagger released thousands of white butterflies from the stage. A year later, he saw Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight Festival.

The world was calling his name. He traveled in a caravan to Morocco and then flew to India. In Asia, Paul launched a short but inventive career as an international hashish smuggler. In 1972 he was smitten by an American traveler named Kirsten in a New Delhi cafe. Over the next two years, the couple hopscotched the world before settling down with a pair of gibbons in a bamboo hut in Luang Prabang, Laos.

In 1976, after communists overthrew the Lao monarchy, Paul and Kirsten left for northeastern Thailand, where they married for the first time in Chiang Mai. That same year, they shaved their heads and joined a Buddhist forest monastery, Wat Nong Pah Pong, under the Venerable Ajahn Chah. They spent five ascetic years there, living apart as a monk and nun, before they had separate spiritual experiences and decided to leave, now as Christians. They returned to India, married again, and had their first child, Hannah Joy, in 1981. They sold homemade candles and lived in a small cottage in the foothills of the Himalayas. Hannah slept in a drawer. She grew up to share with her father a love of traveling, spicy food and swimming in the sea.

In 1983, Paul and Kirsten moved to Colorado, where Kirsten grew up. Now in his 30s, Paul learned to drive a silver Mercury Monarch and eventually went to nursing school. In 1984, the couple had a son, Jacob, who grew up in the shadow of Paul’s fly rod. The pair spent many intent hours on the water together tracking trout around the Rocky Mountain West and the world. Paul was a fanatical fisherman who would happily cast into gale-force winds or arctic cold. Once, in Montana, a black bear swam across the river next to him and he never interrupted his drift.

A busy work life notwithstanding, Paul still found time to quiz his children on world capitals, serve them macaroni and cheese with ketchup, and read them books at bedtime — "The Chronicles of Narnia,” “Watership Down,” “The Hobbit” and “Lord of the Rings” were among his favorites, and his Gollum voice gave them shivers. In the summer, he camped with his family, always near trout water. He taught Hannah and Jacob to cast dry flies on meadow streams.

Paul’s health care career was international. He began working with developmentally disabled children and adults at Wheat Ridge Regional Center. He was an ICU nurse at Denver General Hospital. (“We kick butt to save your ass,” read the staff T-shirt.) Then, in 1993, he and Kirsten took the family to Woodstock School, an international school in the Himalayas in the same town where Hannah was born. For three years, Paul taught health classes and he and Kirsten were house parents for the high school boys’ dormitory. On school holidays they traveled around India, Southeast Asia and Afghanistan.

Once back in Colorado, Paul returned to college to become a family nurse practitioner and worked at the Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Fort Logan. In 2001, he and Kirsten returned to Laos for two years to do village health work with the Mennonite Central Committee. Later, he trained village medics in Myanmar and Rohingya refugee medics in Bangladesh. He finished his career at Collier Hospice Center, where he felt a special calling to work with the dying. Wherever he was in the world, his colleagues and his patients knew him for his compassion, a product of his contemplative faith.

In retirement, Paul and Kirsten spent five winters back in Laos, where Paul volunteered with the village health team at the Lao Friends Hospital for Children in Luang Prabang. He called it retirement with a purpose. Paul was at his happiest in Laos, scavenging street food, strolling through the wet markets, chatting in Lao with the vendors over small mountains of fresh herbs. The shock of a cold bucket bath on a tropical afternoon made him sing like James Brown.

Paul was known for his food. He fried up pad thais, assembled South Indian dosas with fresh coconut chutney, and grilled Lao street fare over a charcoal brazier outside. His kitchen cabinets were fragrant with spices. Guests were an excuse to cook an elaborate meal. He paid attention to preferences, too. If you didn’t like cilantro, or couldn’t eat gluten, he’d remember that about you. His motto was simple: “You love people and you feed them.”

The cooking finally stopped in November 2025, when Paul was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor. Now people brought meals to him. Paul spent the next four months at home in Wheat Ridge, cared for by Kirsten and receiving visitors with his characteristic warmth, humor and mischief. On March 20, he was admitted to Collier Hospice Center where some of his former colleagues were there to greet him. He died the next day at 11:37 p.m. with his eyes open, looking into the great beyond.

Paul is survived by innumerable trout who are frankly glad to see the back of him. He leaves behind a far-flung family: his older brother, Mike, in the U.K.; his younger sister, Sarah, in Australia; scattered nieces and nephews; his wife of 50 years, Kirsten, in Wheat Ridge; his daughter, Hannah, in New York City; his son and daughter-in-law, Jacob and Hilly, in Montana; and his two grandchildren, Theo and Julian, whom he loved “more than fish and chips.” He is survived, too, by his adoptive family at the Arvada Vineyard church.

A celebration of life will take place at 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 11, at the Arvada Vineyard. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that wherever you are in the world, you take a loved one to the most authentic hole-in-the-wall restaurant you can find, a place where food is made slow and spicy, and you eat to your heart’s content. Paul will be there in spirit, his mouth full, his eyes bright, laughing at the sheer joy of being alive.