He is far ahead of me now — disappearing, reappearing, slipping through scattered cedar, scrub brush and pine. His tiny backpack bobbing. Dusty trail weaving higher and deeper into the blond New Mexican foothills. I cannot keep pace. I stop and watch the arid plains, the red-walled canyon below, the big-dome sky — a radiant blue, a watery, slippery blue. I see two black crows skimming currents of wind, knife-blades slicing air: wind-surfers. I survey this place in time; I have learned to look back.
We have ascended some, my son and I. So out along the Earth's eastern edge — a distant, ripply palisade dissolving into the hazy horizon — I can see the forested Black Range stretching north to south. I hiked there once, with a man 25 years my senior. I recall the place as a thickly snarled and precipitous landscape, demanding tenacity and heart, offering in return no golden vistas but some good hard looks of the interior kind. To the south is a mountain whose name I've forgotten; it is laden with snow — winter leftovers and a fresh, out-of-season shroud of white. We decided, having already awakened one morning blanketed in snow, to head north and west (drier, warmer, lower in altitude) and gradually to bend our steps south and east, completing a circle that will take us back to where we started — though we both know the peril in such plans.
He is 18. He is young and strong, handsome and smart; his life stretches before him. Off to college in Montana soon. With dreams as broad and as many as I can only now imagine. And today, for him, there is no looking back. There is no history — except for what little he carries inside, a bag of essentials along for the ride, hardly the weight of a backpack slowing his steps. But for me, a father learning to let go, it is the history that today matters most.
Still, I cannot tarry here; he will get away. Already he is a ways up the meandering trail, and this was to be a companionable trip, a keepsake expedition to mark an 18th birthday, a high school graduation, the embrace of manhood, the saying of goodbyes. Time to get a move on.
As I do, climbing this powdery, stone-studded trail, I recall a book of similar themes — Independence Day by Richard Ford, the story of a father taking a trip with a teenage son, each aching from the breach of divorce, the father reaching out, trying to span the chasm between them. Near the end the father muses: "I had the feeling he was far out ahead of me then and in many things. Any time spent with your child is partly a damn sad time, the sadness of life a-going, bright, vivid, each time a last. A loss. A glimpse into what could've been."
The words echoed inside me several years ago when I first read them; they seem even truer now. I do not like this feeling of something slipping through my fingers, like water or sand, wind or time, or a child heading off into a world that doesn't include me. It is only partial consolation to know the leaving is a good and natural juncture in any parent's life, to know it's what you've been working toward all these many years: letting go, setting free.
It is fitting that a backpacking trip provide the setting for this symbolic rite of passage, for any backpacking trip stands as a metaphor for life — a journey requiring fortitude, intelligence, resourcefulness, good humor, a sojourn in the wilderness where mapped intentions get ambushed by capricious winds and puckish elements. And we have been out like this enough for him to know that God is here and that each such pilgrimage is a kind of offering. Jesus, too, wandered the wilderness to confront his tomorrows as a prelude to his surrender at Jerusalem. So we came, sturdy in our independence, at home in the land, far away from television and radio, to be close to one another 24 hours a day, unable to escape for long the other's company.
Still, I expect no late-night talks, no heart-to-heart confessions, no late-inning rally in which pearls of sagacity and erudition are bestowed upon the coming generation. It is too late for that. It will be enough to walk together, to sit side-by-side, to fiddle with a fire and wish upon a sky full of stars, to watch him sleep. Besides, he is on to me.
For 18 years I have nurtured and prodded, imparted what wisdom I could, told him stories, showed him what I knew, offered examples (of weakness and strength), cajoled and sympathized, barked and yelled, run out of patience, been there for him. He knows what I believe; he knows what I don't like. Despite what efforts I made, he has seen, too, my clay feet, my Achilles heel, my unmasked face. When he was little, I so wanted to be his hero, his protector, the author of his life. But 18 years of living have dispelled those delusions. I am just a man, no better as a father than I was as a son. And today, it seems, I know a lot less about being a father than I thought I did in years past. Back then I recall having ideals, strategies, a self-assurance that buoyed me. These days of transition bring questions and uncertainties, and the knowledge of all I didn't do right.
Still, here we are. He has turned out so well. Become his own. Admirable of character. A source of pride. Author of a life. A good trail companion. That is what I like about this trip: We are out here together, father and son, but not exactly. More like two close friends enjoying the unspoken intimacy of the other's company. Knowing time is short. Resigned to all that has transpired. My teaching done for now. The student well beyond me, with sun and sweat now stinging my eyes.
I pull from my pocket a wadded red bandana and tie it — head-band-style -- to prevent the salty perspiration from leaking into my eyes as I trudge, head bowed, up hill. The trail has gotten much steeper as it winds higher into the wooded mountains. The midday is hot, my bag is heavy and my breathing labored as I shuffle up, nearing 8,000 feet, crunching stones beneath my boots, switchbacks seesawing this way and that. I recall one time camping, when he was very little, carrying him upon my shoulders up hill and down because he was too tired to walk and I was too tired to afford his draggy, little steps. So I carried him on my shoulders, bearing the load for both of us, his fingers gripping my jaw like a helmet strap, my hands holding his feet. We traveled that way for a long, long time.
He startles me now, interrupting my reverie, looming before me — thick-whiskered and broad-shouldered, the body of an offensive lineman — waiting for me to catch up. "You look pretty cool, Dad," he says sarcastically. He has spied the bandana. "You look just like an Indian." He grins and turns and heads on up the trail, leaving me to catch my breath. "Hey," I call after him. "It's not a costume. It's functional." But he, having waited long enough, is off again, and I, standing here alone, realize it's too late to say, "Hey, want some water? How ‘bout something to eat? Want to sit here awhile?
"Please."
We do not talk much during these days upon the trail. I am grateful for his smile, those occasional looks of recognition, his gentle teasing. I refrain from reminiscing. We both know the tales, the family folklore. He must be weary of his place in my memory — being pulled in the red wooden wagon, playing Star Wars, taking him first day of school, reading to him The Chronicles of Narnia, kick-the-can and camping, football and baseball, the two of us in Pittsburgh and South Dakota, Big Wheels, bicycles and a blue Toyota with a smashed rear bumper.
He knows he no longer fits neatly into these old boxes, cartons periodically reclaimed from attic shelves to remind us of who we are and where we've been and the bonds that join us heart to soul. He must be tired of these roles, a character whose lines were scripted long ago, repeated with each revival. He must be ready to audition for new parts, to find a new cast and theaters big enough to hold his latest dreams. In truth I know little of what lurks within him now -- desires, regrets, aspirations, loves. His interior landscape was always lush, inhabited by a three-ring circus of fantasies and hopes, death-defying acrobats and warriors "swording" foes; his teenage evasiveness has shielded my eyes from such goings-on and made him something of a mystery to me. Parents, they say, may be the last to know.
So, other than remaining close enough for him to know I care, I do not probe or pry or ask too many questions. A young man his age is writing his own life, needing privacy, shedding skin as he goes. A father is part of that molting epidermis, a scaly covering that now fits best as it fits looser. So I give him space, not asking, "Did you see that hawk?" or saying, "Look at how the sunlight strikes that peak," or inquiring, "Will you miss me?"
There comes a time in most children's lives when any question, any comment coming from a parent feels invasive, threatening, an unwelcome foray into territories defended as their own. Besides, we have had our share of father-son talks; there seems little left to say. And by now he knows the best lessons are those shown, not spoken. I no longer have enough new to offer him; he's long been ready to listen to the world.
Things were different, I think, for preceding generations. There were vast, impregnable distances between fathers and sons. Relations were often affectionless, feelings thwarted by rigidity and emotional reserve, sentiments often unexpressed, perhaps untapped. Today's fathers, less bound by these tough-guy male repressions, are freer with their feelings and more engaged in their children's lives, from diaper-changing to nighttime hugs to heartfelt talks of subjects once avoided. But it is harder to let go of children who have become so much a part of us.
There was a time, I suppose, when fathers taught their sons farming, a trade, the family business, expecting to have their offspring around, passing on — with the patience of decades — the tools of living and securing relationships with bonds lost to us today. Maybe yesterday's emotional vacuum was allayed by working side-by-side, watching sons mature into manhood through shared labor, fixed in time through a mutual pride and respect.
Parents today, knowing how readily families splinter, must raise their children knowing they will too soon go away. I do not expect my sons to live where they grew up. I suspect they will be long gone from here, occasional house guests, alternating holidays between in-laws, friends and other kin. So when my son heads to college, the parting means more than a four-year hiatus; it means a break, a fissure, a reconfiguring of lives. The same is now true of daughters whose worlds are similarly free and equally open to the calls and demands of our mobile culture. Kids just don't stay home anymore.
"It's not like I'm going off to war," he tells me, and it's not. But I do not know when I will have him again all to myself for seven days of play. This time is precious, this trip a gift that engenders both joyful happiness and dreadful sorrow, and a yearning, a longing for . . . I don't know what.
So I take pictures and he indulges me, rolling his eyes but agreeably standing "right there, no, over here." I take pictures recording this moment, this place, trying to capture something that will, no doubt, forever elude me. Tonight, for example, I take six photos of him eating.
We are camped in a softly wooded area, perched on a shelf of rock overlooking a river valley perhaps 1,000 feet below. The drop to the bottom is sheer and he stands -- back to me -- at the very edge of a cliff, scooping his chili-mac dinner from cup to mouth. The setting sun washes the hillsides in a rosy gauze, splashes off summits, drapes corners and canyons in lengthening shadow. It is a glorious moment — far beyond the scope of my photographic skills. Much else is beyond my reach, so, as the sun dies and the darkness overtakes the land, I feel myself curiously missing him already. Missing his loud music, the mess in his room, his voice calling for me in the night, his Friday night football games.
I watch him eat; I watch him watching the descending dusk. Then silently we go through the evening rituals — the cleaning and sorting and putting away — in a loosely synchronized dance of self-contained cooperation. And, of course, he hangs our stuff in trees, suspending it beyond the reach of bears.
He has done this since he was a little boy, climbing a tree with an armful of rope to hang gear he could hardly lift. The ceremony has been observed even in bearless places and tonight, when a bear visit is possible but remote, he says he does it mostly because it's part of what makes camping fun. And I see again — in that grin of his — the little kid in him, peeking out at me. And there's that twinge, that ache I do not understand.
Where does it come from, that abdominal surge of love and loss and longing? What is that sadness that tugs at me every time I look at him, that ache as I remember? Remember his blue-eyed, little-boy face, the little racing feet, his snuggling close on cold, wet camping nights when owls or dogs could be heard on the wind, his tiny fingers clutching my T-shirt. Or his wanting to play hide-and-seek when all the other boys we took camping that time said they had outgrown such games; and he wanted so badly to play, knowing how much fun we had always had romping through woods and not understanding why his friends would not join him. I can still see that eager, trusting, hopeful face appealing to me — giant, father, intercessor — with its own look of longing and loss, stung by circumstances sliding beyond his control.
Why does each sweet memory now come with a dull pain, a sadness that can trigger tears? Of course, it's partly loss, the letting go -- to that time in your life, to enchantment, to a childhood, to that blue-eyed little boy now metamorphosed into a shaggy, winged creature awkwardly taking flight. And you are left behind on the runway, with empty arms and that lousy empty feeling, as abandoned as the Velveteen Rabbit wondering what just happened, where it all went, what it was all for -- those years that sped too quickly by, those years spent giving to a child who's now grown up and flying off, hardly looking back.
You find, then, that a curious reversal has taken place. For all those years, from babyhood through childhood and into adolescence, you were the strong one, the one who knew, the one who brought comfort, who showed the way, who tried meeting every need. And in time it changed you. Fulfilling your children's needs became a habit, became instinctual; it became who you were, how you identified yourself, your role in life. It felt good to be needed, felt good to be tall and strong and wise, to nurture, to serve. But now your stature has changed, and you, the one who tried fulfilling every need, are now left wanting and needing — something from them. You can almost feel the hole in your heart, the hollow space in your stomach. You wonder what it was all for, to give so much and then be left behind and empty-handed — save for memories whose sweetness is spiced with the bitterness of loss.
Such are my thoughts these days upon the trail as we course through meadows and stands of ponderosa pine, keeping an eye out for water and occasionally veering off trail, consulting maps and tracking the sun. The sky is incessantly blue, the soft winds fragrant with the awakening spring. Despite the dull pull of longing, I relish his companionship, savor those times we sit together, eating trail mix, soaking up sun, talking about the Pirates and The Simpsons, Cool Hand Luke and A Prayer for Owen Meany. But as we travel on, heading toward the Diablo Range and a place called Hell's Hole, hiking hours at a time, affording free rein to thoughts, I wonder about this need I feel. What is it I really want from him? What is it I need?
My answers bother me, because they hint at rewards no parent should expect. It isn't right to lament, "What do I have to show for all that work when my child is grown and gone 1,000 miles away?" You do what you do raising children because you believe those acts, those choices, those sacrifices are simply the right things to do. You give, you care, you bleed, you rejoice because these are your children and it is natural and right to give, to care, to bleed and to rejoice -- without really expecting anything in return.
Of course, you do get so much in return: You can be both sidekick and scout as they explore a world newly wondrous. Yours is the pride in their achievements, a series of gratifications as they master the terrain of their childhood expeditions. But you do what you do for them, to help them become healthy and whole, productive and independent — to get along without you, their sidekick and scout. Your motive, then, is not to garner their love, to earn their respect, to win their gratitude. But it would be nice, when they finally wobble out of the nest and leap from limb to wind, to see some sign that they understand what you have done.
But these feelings bother me. Because I do sense his love, respect and gratitude. Because I do know what it was all for. Because I can't expect him — now racing headfirst into new frontiers of meaning and wonder — to understand parenthood until he has been there himself. And because I should be grateful to him for turning out as he did, deserving my respect, not rejecting but embracing a father's imperfect love. And because it seems selfish to want something in return for having accomplished what we set out to do — raise a son to be like him. I am blessed to have him as he is.
I was young when I first saw Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, but one scene made an impact I have not since forgotten. Sidney Poitier is a young-adult son arguing heatedly with a father who tells the son he must obey him because of all he has done for him. "You owe it to me," yells the father. And the son yells back that he owes the father nothing. You did what you did, Poitier says, because that is how you chose to meet your obligations as a father. Father and son then stare fiercely at each other as a tense silence charges the air between them.
Through the years I have wrestled with each side of the argument; I understand both sides. But I do not want my sons to think they owe me anything. Still, I have needs only they can fulfill.
Does that mean I should lay those needs at their feet? I think not. Not now. Maybe someday. Maybe when I am old and frail and failing, maybe not even then. I don't know. But I have seen the work of parents who are emotionally needy and the damage it does to kids. Psychological manipulations just aren't fair. It should not be my son's responsibility to get me through life just now, to fill the vacant spaces in my soul. It is time, I guess, for me to grow up some more, too. And part of that, I now realize, is that letting go and getting out of his way is an act of love as tough as the sacrifices that came before.
The sun is not long for this landscape. It hovers low above a vast mountain to the west, a silhouetted wall of earth that stands as a backdrop to this stage — Hell's Hole, where the trail rapidly descends, spiraling into a forested pit where a ring of steep-walled mountains have gathered round, forming a colossal funnel offering no apparent exit, no visible escape route to those who venture there.
But there, far down below, down below ridges and cliffs, slopings and juttings, is a river: a splashing jewel reflecting the day's last sunlight as water ripples and pools in deep canyon shadows, a silvery patch of light glimmering like a magic hole at the floor of the Earth. And there is my son, halfway between me and it, perched on a promontory, gazing into the maw, apparently out of hearing range.
So I continue on and he moves on, too, and we make our way. out of contact, until I reach the bottom and stand along the riverside. The water is street-wide, crystal clear, knee-deep and melodious. It is cool down here, shaded in dusk's gray shroud and chilled with wet. I feel small but snug as my eyes mount to the sky, sun gone, black mountains looming overhead. "How do we get across?" he asks, emerging from a copse of trees. We stand together on a slip of sand and watch the Gila River, flowing through a gateway of stone, sliding downstream, curving around a bend."I don't know," I answer, seeing no log, no stepping-stone bridge. "What do you think?"
My legs ache from the day's hike, from the steep descent, from being out like this for days and trying to keep up with him. So when he says, "Let's just wade across," I don't answer but splash on across, not caring about the cold or my boots or what'll happen on the other side. We do this several times, crisscrossing the river then following along its bank — soggy boots squishing like sponges — until there is no shelf. Then we just splash on in again, slipping and balancing on river-rocks and cobblestones, wading through jarring water — knee-deep to thigh- high -- so cold that it numbs the feet and pains the toes. We do this until we find a grassy place, a level spot offering refuge for the night.
We pull off wet socks and jeans and boots, hang stuff up to dry, set up a tent, throw our sleeping bags in, fire up the stove for dinner, layer on dry clothes for the night. I offer him a swig of tequila; he heads over to the river to pump water for cooking. All these exercises please me, watching him know exactly what to do. I told him when he was very little and I've reminded him often that everything a person needs to know in life is written in the landscape and that camping is how you decipher how to live. I no longer need to elaborate on these themes with him; I can see he's ready to do this on his own. For more than any gift I want him to have from me is this: to see the universe as God's poem for us and to backpack in order to learn the Poet's way.
This will be our last night together on the trail. We are too cold to make much of a ceremony of it, shivers driving us into our tent and goosedown bags before many stars have shown their faces. We do not talk; I refrain from telling him all that I've been thinking. We sleep, snoring, our bodies stretched upon the ground, and wake at dawn in an ice-glazed tent, yesterday's wet clothes frozen to clothesline trees.
Still, as we break camp, going through the morning motions, suspecting this to be our last upon the trail before he returns to live with his mother before heading out to school, there is a lump lodged in my throat and tears ready on the rims of my eyes. And when once I try to speak to him, my voice cracks and I turn to walk away so he won't know he is the object of such affection.
That day hiking — 12 miles worth — is the most fun I've ever had on the trail. We are knee-deep in the river, occasionally on dry land, sloshing downstream, splashing each other, playing like kids, laughing, teasing, falling in, staring in awe at the beauty that surrounds us, at home in fields divine. Boots wet as rain. Round rocks smooth as bone. Canyon walls, precipice, water pure as grace. Deer, black squirrel, hawk high overhead. A long day's hike together, sun traversing the sky. Till late in the day.
We come at dusk upon a grassy beach offering rest, a place for a tent and campfire. Across the river and up on a ledge are cliff dwellings, stone and clay ruins abandoned centuries ago. "It would be an easy climb up there," I say. "We could go and fool around up there, then stay the night here, one more night here."
"No," he says. "Let's head on back to the car tonight."
"Don't you want to climb up there?" I ask. "This would be such a great place to stay."
But again he counters — wet boots in the morning, another cold night, socks and jeans stiff with ice tomorrow: "We can make it on back tonight."
"Okay," I say. "You're right; it's probably best." But what I really want is to stay, to linger here awhile, to climb around in the ruins and make a fire tonight, and gaze upon the stars again, and tell stories to bind us tight. So I say to him, "Lead on. We've still got a ways to go."
And he does, loping on down the trail -- while I hold back a little bit, slowing my steps, watching him scuffle along, cross an open meadow, getting smaller in the distance. I watch him as he hikes along, not slowing, pausing or looking back. I watch him until he walks clean out of sight.
He is far out ahead of me now, eager to get on with his life and to explore paths of his own devising, leaving me behind, watching from a distance, hoping that someday the trail might bring us together again.