Turtles in the Uintas

Even a 14-year old punk kid with a sense of entitlement who thinks he might prefer being home, shooting hoops with his friends, talking about girls, eating Twizzlers, and drinking too much Orange Bang knows: the Uinta mountains are an absolute natural gift.

Time is also a gift, but a more fleeting and intrinsically impermanent gift than the Uintas. That same punk¹ 14-year old—at the time, ironically—does not get that.

My dad did². He does. My dad was, for around a half year between other time-intensive church assignments, asked to be our neighborhood Scoutmaster. I don't think either of us was prepared (scout pun half-intended) for the concentrated time it would "gift" us. A busy father of 7 with a demanding job and a continual stream of time-intensive church assignments does his best. And he did. But we were suddenly spending a lot more time together, camping and hiking and tying knots and earning merit badges³ and trying not to set forests afire. In retrospect and especially seeing it all now from the parental side⁴, I should've leaned in, should’ve sunk into those times like candy quicksand. But—and this will shock very few of you—I’m not always the warmest person ever and can be pretty insular and, I guess, at that age I was just a little indifferent to (though not altogether ignorant of) what the situation meant. Just kinda spacey. I know that's wrong. People ache for one-on-one, meaningful time with a parent. I tell my kids all the time how lucky they are to get to go skiing with or make cookies with my parents. At 14, I got that time and didn't appreciate it (as much as I should have, at least). That's that. Can't defend it, only to say that I was an anxious 14 year old introverted pleaser middle child and into Led Zeppelin and Karl Malone and Back To The Future and what could I do? 

I think my dad (currently reading this) looks back fondly on that half year, which makes me feel a little better, like maybe my immaturity and spacey indifference⁵ didn't utterly firebomb the opportunity to connect. And I'm sure some of my recollections are infused with or fogged by that sweet, sweet Catholic guilt I've been dutifully cultivating since birth.

The gift of the Uintas and the gift of time combined one week in the midst of that half year, when our scout troop went on a big, multi-day backpacking trip. My friend Harwood and I were the oldest kids in the group, more experienced and a lot more into the hiking and exploring and roughing it and overall outdoorsy aspect of it all. At that age, a year or two makes a drastic physical difference. Some of the younger scouts were struggling—one got so homesick he vomited all over the fire and had to be packed out by one of the adults first thing the next day. Another went into an introverted shell for about two full days, like some tween vow of silence or an impressive fit of dissociation. It rained a lot, but, because my dad was in charge and had really pushed for us to be prepared like good scouts, everybody was ok. Damp, but fine.

I'm sure a rainy week of listening to whining tweens and trying to connect with an aloof son left my dad pondering his wrists with a Leatherman⁶ here and there. But he kept his cool and helped keep the kids’ spirits up for the most part, even when I attempted to dry off my soaking brand new boots too close to the campfire and the heat melted a little magma-ish wound onto the inside left side⁷.

After a week of downpours and nobody dying and only one kid opting out with crippling homesickness, we had a nice hike out. Everybody’s spirits were up, everybody was sufficiently motivated. You don't have to talk a bunch of kids into the benefits of going TOWARDS the car that will go TOWARDS their homes that will go TOWARDS their video games and Chee-tos. I remember bringing up the back of the group with my dad, hiking more leisurely than my early teenage competitiveness would normally like but also enjoying the easiness. We came around a corner of the trail and out of a thick of trees…. and there was David Felker, his oversized borrowed dad's backback on his back, belly to the sky. His legs were flailing, his arms were swinging, and if wasn’t crying he was on the verge. Stranded, high centered on his back, unable to get back to his feet, like a turtle on the back of its shell. I think even my dad might’ve (very quickly, before helping David to his feet) laughed.

Memories are a gift. The taste of that first campfire dinner after the long, tiring hike in. Capture The Flag in a mountain meadow. Polar bear plunges in a glacial lake. The unforgettable smell and weight of high altitude forest air. Frightening lightning storms above the tree line where we sprinted to find low ground. The picture we took right before the lightning came, me and my Dad, Harwood and his dad, and a bunch of scouts, standing on a rocky ridge. Later, sitting bored in a tent as the rain dumped outside—no phones, no electronics, just a couple tweens talking about whatever dumb stuff tweens talk about when they’re effectively trapped. And, yeah, David Felker turtle-shelling it in the middle of the trail and even my always serious⁸ Dad being amused by it.

This punk⁹ 40-something guy gets that now, at least on his good days. It’s all gifts.

1. Not mohawk and safety pins and Anarchy symbol and Sex Pistol sneer punk. Just sort of “ehhh” punk.

2. My dad often repeated the aphorism to us: The opportunity of a lifetime must be seized within the lifetime of the opportunity.

3. Not too many for me, though. I’m the lone non-Eagle among my brothers. Someday I’ll finally write the allegory song I’ve always wanted to, entitled “Four Eagles & A Black Sheep.”

4. Combine the sentiments of Both Sides Now with Joni’s “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone” from Big Yellow Taxi and….man, what a gutpunch. In the words of Q-Tip, “Joni Mitchell never lies.”

5. Speaking of Joni’s Both Sides Now, on this side of the parent-child relationship, I can now also see how a parent with a teen/tween will take what they can get, interaction-wise, and how a parent is (or can be) able to get past teen weirdness to still connect.

6. Not really. I debated whether to footnote this, but, ok, here I am making sure it’s crystal clear that my dad did not literally have suicidal ideation whilst backpacking through the Uintas in the 80’s. Not that I know of, at least.

7. FWIW: those boots lasted me another decade-plus, partially because they were high-quality and partially because the sales associate at Kirkham’s told us that I should get a boot size substantially bigger than my actual size because “that way your toe won’t hit the end of the shoe when you go downhill.” Is that a real thing? Has anyone else heard that before? Was the guy just some high hippie burnout making stuff up? For years afterward, I got all kinds of crap for walking around on basically snowshoes for clowns. They were SIZE 14! They’d still be too big today.

8. A year or so ago, my siblings and I put together a book of memories for my parents. We solicited entries from friends, neighbors, family (we couldn’t reach any of their sworn nemeses, sadly). The unspoken gist behind the idea being: people shouldn’t have to die for other people to say their nice things and memories about them; you should get to attend your own funeral, so to speak. So we got scores of letters and reminiscences and photos via email (and some via snail mail, unsurprisingly). I somehow drew the lot of compiler and editor (man, let me tell you: old people LOVE two spaces after a period. HOLY. CRAP. ) and so one of the things that blew my ever-loving mind was how many people talked about my dad’s sense of humor. I’m not saying we never saw it as kids, but it mostly came out via dad jokes and puns and stuff that gets kids rolling their eyes. But these notes and memories from my parents’ friends almost universally talked about what a RIOT (another generationally fading term) my dad is. I have certainly witnessed it more as I get older, but reading the notes from his friends has made me pay more attention to it, not to mention worry quite a bit about Who I Think I Am versus Who My Kids Think I Am.

9. Still no mohawk, though my receding hairline may eventually do the work for me. No piercings. No tats. I did listen to The Minutemen for the first time ever a few years ago, on the recommendation of my friend Carl, though.