My Dad the Mountain Man

My dad is a mountain man. I don’t mean one of those deer-skin dress up on the weekends kind of mountain man. I mean he’s one of those people who is completely at ease in the wild. He has an innate sense of direction and a calm reassurance when he’s in the woods. He has a working knowledge of plants, animals and weather. He is more aware of his surroundings than anyone I’ve ever met and he loves being away from the hustle of even the small town we grew up in. He finds peace in outdoors.

So obviously we have always been an outdoor family. Some of my earliest memories are of being in the mountains with my family. When I’ve spent too long in the valley I begin to feel restless and disconnected. I need the mountains to live. Even now, I long to be there, rather than here, behind my desk, typing away. Some of the most reassuring sounds are of a fire crackling, bugs humming and buzzing, the laughter of a creek running past, or of the gentling lapping of a crystal lake; some of the most reassuring smells to me are of pine, earth and smoke. My soul is in the mountains; the touch of the earth brings me peace.

Needless to say I was raised loving the outdoors. We were basically raised in woods. We were hunters, fishers, and campers. We hunted deer and elk with rifles and bows, pheasants and grouse with shotguns; fished for rainbow trout in the lakes and cutthroats in the streams; and camped wherever we could find a space – as long as it was away from people. Those ready-made, cement fire pit, place cleared for a tent, campsites weren’t really for us. They were for people who didn’t know how to camp. If we had our choice, we would drive until we didn’t see any more people and then find someplace away from the road. Somewhere where you could only hear the birds and the wind and the water.

The outdoor life feeds my soul – unfortunately I’m chubby. I’ve been a “husky” kid for my entire life and that has caused me, and I’m sure my dad, some consternation. When I was about twelve or forteen my dad took me deer hunting. We went with his good friend Dave. The two of them were very much alike. They are men comfortable in the outdoors, with animals and with guns. They are the last of a breed of men who relied on their own knowledge and skill to get them through most anything. They are fearless in tackling problems big or small, and they have a real connection to the wilderness.

As was always the case we started early. Later I came to call the time we left to go hunting dark-thirty. This is descriptive of the level of light and my consciousness level. I liked hunting because I was with my dad. I didn’t necessarily like it because it involved extreme physical exertion and that, has never been my strong point. And, to make matters worse, my father has this strong urge to see what he cannot. Which means, even when he arrives at his outdoor destination, his curiosity pulls him to the next ridge, the next valley, the next stand of trees. This is an unhealthy mix when you have a chubby first-born son with allergies.

We started up the trail early, very, very early – me, my dad, Dave and his horse. Dave, in addition to being an outdoorsman like my dad, is also a certifiable horseman – a cowboy of the nth degree. Once we started up the trail there was little talk. When you’re hunting, or even in the outdoors, the less talking the better. You want to try and blend in with your surroundings, and talking only hinders that. I’d like to think I held out for a while. I wasn’t a complete pantywaist. But it wasn’t long before I was breathing heavily and having difficulty staying up with the two mountain goats and the horse.

Now, the only thing worse than talking while being outside is breathing heavily. Any good hunter knows that breath control is vital. Breathing gives you away like nothing else. So as I huffed and puffed my tubby body up the mountain, falling farther and farther behind, making the men move slower and slower, I’m sure my father was weighting his options. He was trying to figure out whether it was better to leave me on the trail with some food and pick up later, the odds of having a hunting accident with a witness or how to convince my mom to give me up for adoption with over a decade invested in me. I wasn’t feeling too good about myself at the moment – even then I knew I wasn’t measuring up to what my dad had hoped for in a son. I wasn’t fit, at the time I wasn’t really a lover of the outdoors, and I was much more stationary than he was. I would have preferred a nice book, a small fire and a warm cup of cocoa than hiking for hours in the cold, only to shoot a helpless deer.

Finally, after the sixty-second rest of the morning, with the light quickly threatening to find us far from our destination, Dave suggested I hold onto the horses tail. I was humiliated. It was finally out there. I was slowing them down and somehow they had to get me going faster. So I did. I reached out, grabbed the horses tail and we began to walk. Actually, it was more like being pulled up the trail. I was being jerked and pulled up the trail behind a stinky animal that was causing my sensitive nose to begin clogging up almost immediately; my unfit gasps for breath slowed down only to be replaced by the rasping sound of the future asthmatic I would one day become. But at least I was keeping up.

It was while being dragged behind this animal that I had the first real look at myself and the person I was. I think most sons want to become like their fathers, especially if the father is like mine. He’s always been an amazing human being – kind, thoughtful, spiritual, smart, hard-working and patient. Amazing. I have worshipped my father from my first memory. But on that cold, miserable morning, with my arm being jerked out fo the socket, I realized I wasn’t turning out like my dad. I was fat, a bit lazy and sedentary. While my dad was fit, always on the mood and curious to a fault. I had no desire to see what was just around the river bend – I wanted another Snickers bar and a warm fire; I had no real interest in killing a living thing, gutting it and bringing it home to cook – I wanted to watch it move and run and remember its grace and beauty. I was not turning out like my father; I was a failure to myself and to him I was sure.

It was in the middle of this prepubescent funk that we came to take a rest. I was able to let go of the horses tail, massage the palm of my chafed hand, and try and get a long, clear breath down my raspy throat. My dad and Dave were quietly discussing what was up ahead in the canyon in phrases only men of their kind can and still understand each other. It was also at this moment when I came to see my father not just as a man, but as something completely unattainable, something I would never be.

“Looks good.” Said my dad.
“Yep. Just the one guy.” Said Dave.
“Camping in the oaks. Not where we’re going.” Dad said, motioning with his chin up the canyon.
“Makin’ good time.” Said Dave.

I sat there, listening to this strange and cryptic conversation and tried to figure out what just happened. One guy? In the oaks? How would they know this. I took a deep breath, tried to clear my lungs for a question that I knew would show my ignorance for what it was – a big and wide thing.

“Hey dad?” I whispered, “How do you know there’s only one guy up here?”

“Come on, let’s get going.” My dad said and started walking, but motioning with his head that he wanted me with him rather than tagging along the horse’s rear end. I came up to my dad and we walked up the canyon trail for a while, long enough that I thought he might have forgotten my question. We were already walking at a pace slow enough for me to keep up without a tail in my hand. “Watch the prints.” My dad said, pointing.

As we walked up the trail I could make out a scattered pattern of prints on the trail, indistinguishable from each other. “Now, watch this one.” My dad said, pointing at a particular print. “See how he’s heading up the trail? Now watch.” After a moment my dad pointed at the same print, only pointing down the trail. “See how here he’s headed down? We know he’s not in the canyon any more. Now, pick another one.” We did this for several minutes until we had weeded each print down, there it was headed up the cayon, and there it was headed down. “The only one we can’t see coming down is this guy.” He said, pointing. “But we’re not nervous about him because he’s where we’re not going. He’s way up in the oaks and he’s been here over night.”
“How do you know where he is, and how long he’s been here?” I said with doubt and wonder.
“Well he’d had to get up pretty early to beat us up here. Plus you can tell his prints are old – there’s dew in them. And we know he’s in the oaks because of the smell. Here, stop and see if you can smell it.”

We stopped for a moment and I was grateful for the break; Dave and the horse stopped a way off, giving us time to talk. My dad smelled the morning air, and I did the same, not really picking up on anything. He must have seen the doubt in my eyes, because he said, “It’s smoke. We can smell his campfire. And he’s burning oak, not pine. He’s hunting, or he wouldn’t be up this early. But we’re headed to the pines, so we won’t be bothering each other.”

I was speechless. He couldn’t have shocked me more had he pulled a McDonalds sandwich and hot cocoa from behind a tree and handed it to me. In my entire life I had never seen anything so magical and out of reach than this display of perception and knowledge. This man, amazing in his proportions to me before this morning, had just become mythical in the space it took for him to draw air into his lungs. No son could become what he was. I was amazed and discouraged at the same time. “Okay.” I said, trying to not let my wonder show openly on my face. As if somehow I had the same knowledge but had just given him the chance to say it first. That first grade ploy of, I know, but I’m not going to tell you.

But I hadn’t known. I hadn’t had a clue. He had gathered all that information while walking, nearly running in my opinion, up the canyon. While quietely talking with Dave and looking after his chubby son. He had done it all without effort, as a matter of course. The ability to do what he had done was nothing short of astounding.

My dad has always been a mountain goat. He walks fast and he walks sure. He moves from place to place when he’s hiking with incredible confidence and grace. It doesn’t matter if he’s walking across a long that crosses a roaring river, climbing up a steep stone slope, or coming down a shale wash, he never trips, never faulters, never wavers. He’s amazing to watch. And he’s always moving at this impossible speed. I don’t mean he runs, but he moves fast, too fast for most I’ve ever seen him with. He’s often having to wait for those he’s with. To be sure he’s patient. I’ve never seen him loose his temper with a hiking partner. But even while he’s standing, waiting, he’s scanning the horizon, looking up the trail or studying some feature of the landscape. He seems perfectly at home in the wilderness.

When hiking with my dad, even from the first moment a hike begins I was unlike him. His sure-footedness was frustrating to me. I always seemed to be slipping, sliding, falling, tipping or teetering. Just walking up the trail behind my dad was frustrating for me, because I would watch his feet. Walk where he walked. His feet never slipping. Mine feeling like they were on rocky ice. Rocks always caught my toes, dirt conspired against me, and logs, well logs, always rolled, no matter how sturdy they seemed. Even when I tried to mirror his steps, I slipped where he just advanced.

It would have been better if he had been impatient with me. Gotten cross. I would have preferred him to get a bit angry, a bit frustrated with my tottering ways. Just a loud sigh would have confirmed for me that I wasn’t measuring up. A quick, angry word would have assured me that I was falling behind, I was being slow and I wasn’t walking where he had told me to walk. But to add insult to injury, he was always kind and always patient. I never felt judged by my father for what I so obviously lacked.

So as we hiked up the trail that morning my self-esteem suffered. I couldn’t have felt any lower or slower. With a second wind in me I was able to keep pace behind my dad, letting my thoughts wash over me and completely missing the beautiful October mountains slowly being unveiled by the sun as we walked up the trail. I don’t remember thinking in terms of “unreachable” or “mythic” but I can identify those feelings now, as I look back. I did what all kids do when they doubt themselves, I dispared.

And as I puffed my way behind my dad, I watched him walk. In my asthmatic autopilot I put my foot where he put his. Just trying to keep up and not slip or fall behind and make him embarrassed in front of his friend. I watched his feet and wondered how anyone could be so sure of themselves, how they could be so sure-footed, how the could know so much and still be so patient. How could I ever become what he was? And it was sometime during this revery that I saw something that I had enver seen before in my life. As I followed him up the trail, watching where he placed his feet, careful to walk where he did. I saw him slip. Just one little slip, that’s all I remember seeing. but it was enough. It was enough, maybe not that morning because I was too deep in my own self pity to realize it’s importance, but it was enough later. Later I would realize that my dad, like all dads, are just human. Like me. And we each had our time and place and talents. And those things were unique to us. But it was the slip that gave me hope. I could attain greatness. Maybe not like him, but my own greatness. I could inspire my own children like he inspired me.