Though I once lived in dangerous places as a retired person I live in the safest place I have ever lived

 Why?

Because as you move through life you make choices. When I was young I liked to live more dangerously and with more adventure. Long about my early 40s I realized that the choices I had been making might cause my death by 50 or younger.

It's not just choices I was making regarding where I lived but all kinds of choices in life. I started noticing when I fell off a cliff I was rock climbing into the ocean when I was 37 that I couldn't do the rock climbing moves I could in my 20s for example. I had ripped off the muscles on the back of my right knee and fallen about 50 to 100 feet into the ocean off an ocean cliff. Then I couldn't swim right because my knee muscles wouldn't allow me to use my right leg. Then the water was 54 degrees to 57 degrees because I was in northern California and I had to fight hypothermia as I struggled ashore. Then the waves were breaking at about 5 feet so I almost drowned trying to swim to shore too.

So, I realized I needed to stop rock climbing because I couldn't do what I used to do without getting seriously injured.

Next, I was skiing down mt. Shasta on my favorite back country route from Bunny Flat to 7 mile Curve and I started hitting ice and I started to go into the splits. So, I thought I could recover and then I hit another patch of ice and pulled my left hamstring. So, I had to try to ski out on one ski which was really difficult. These were two of the major rude awakenings of my late 30s to realized I had to live differently than before and made me move towards a SAFER way of living than I had lived before.  Both these incidents happened when I was 37 and were very difficult to get through in my life because my father had just died too.

I suppose some people would have called in a helicopter to rescue them but this wasn't me because at that point I couldn't have afforded this and I didn't have health insurance either. So, i was dragging my leg for around 6 months and then retraining the muscles instead of having an operation to correct the problem which I couldn't have afforded then anyway.

So, over time I learned to be safer in my life so I could go on living at all and raising my family and getting all my kids through college and successful.