“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
— Pablo Picasso
The next morning, we got up early for our new adventure: backpacking! Yay! The boys were not impressed. They preferred to stay at Kangaroo Lake and play in the rubber boat. The adults had the keys to the camper, however, which was leaving after breakfast. We turned south over the pass on Highway 3, and were at the trailhead while it was still cool. It had rained the night before (another excellent reason for a camper), and the highway was drying out rapidly under the morning sun. The few remaining clouds appeared distracted, as though they had business elsewhere. Judy fussed over the small packs for the dogs. James stood proud to be carrying a load like the humans, but Jesse kept trying to chew at his straps. He went around and around in a tight circle as if chasing his tail.
“Didn’t you try them on at home?” I asked dubiously, knowing that a non-cooperative dog could make progress very difficult on the trail. Judy kept trying to make him stop, and after a few seconds, he would resume trying desperately to get the pack off. After a while she gave up, and strapped Jesse’s pack on James, minus a few pounds of dry dog food that she lashed to her own pack. James turned the corners of his mouth down indignantly at this most inequitable turn of events, while Jesse frolicked about, happily mocking him.
Kevin slung his own pack on without any help, refusing to let his mom touch his gear. He had a hatchet and a knife strapped to his waist belt, with a large water bottle and a fishing pole tied to the frame. He sulked with the sarcasm of a surly Army private, who was furious with the sergeant who had ordered him on some crazy march up a mountain. Jesse nipped playfully at his heels, until he yelled at him to stop. Kevin yelled a lot. He was a very independent and capable child, and extremely wary of authority. He tried to get away from his mom by crossing the bridge over Bear Creek, away from the trailhead, where he swatted at tree branches with his walking stick and peered back to see if anyone was coming yet.
I tried to focus my attention on Logan, who was deceptively quiet and accepting of his “burden.” His load had the trim appearance of a perfect backpack on the outside, but inside it was stuffed with pillows, air, and the empty plastic water jugs we’d use at camp, so it weighed less than 15 pounds with his sleeping bag attached. He, too, sulked – as if he’d prefer to be watching cartoons on TV, or playing video games, instead of preparing for a long hike up a hot mountain. Still, he responded affirmatively to every leading question I asked him. With the dog-and-boy drama successfully under control, Judy and I checked our parental appetites; with no small measure of uncertainty in our eyes.
“Well, we might as well try it,” was the answer she spoke for both of us. “Come on, Kevin!”
“I’m already over here!! I’ve been waiting for you all this time!!” More innocent foliage got whacked.
It was going to be a long day.
There was little sign of last night’s rain on the steep and rocky beginning of the trail. I walked in the lead to watch for snakes, and spent most of my time trying to keep the energetic Jesse from taking the lead. He was rambunctious and ignorant enough to get bitten by a rattlesnake, which would be the end of our trip for certain. Within 100 yards, Judy put him on a leash, and then had to tell him repeatedly to stop pulling. “Heel!”
“Shut up, mom! Just leave him alone and he’ll be fine!” Such supportive words of wisdom from Kevin, but within a few paces Jesse actually did settle down. James glared disdainfully at him as he plodded along resolutely; the paragon of perfect obedience.
“How are you doing, Logan?” I checked on my quiet son, who had never liked hiking very much. His face was red, and his freshly ironed, matching camping clothes (provided by his mother of course) were beginning to chafe uncomfortably. He glared at me balefully, as if the very question was offensively obtuse. We sat on a fallen log, and I removed his outer shirt, rolled it up, and stashed it in my pack. “See? Now you’re eight ounces lighter.” The boy was not amused.
Logan was a reserved child of effortless, sometimes astonishing intelligence. He was especially adept in social situations, fitting in with almost any collection of people. He was introspective and self sufficient like I was as a child, with a preference for representations of alternate realities like books, video games, and drawings. We were profoundly different in our sense of comfort with the natural world. Where I felt a part of the landscape, Logan seemed to feel like an unwanted intruder, and he moved within a forest or campsite cautiously, as if he didn’t want to break anything. He enjoyed the symbolic implements of camping like marshmallows, rubber boats, and sleeping bags, but rarely appeared relaxed or at ease in the outdoors.
He began to ask for water frequently, as an excuse to stop. The constant halting every 50 yards was hard on Judy, who had to contend with the dogs. Jesse was oblivious to the side effects of being on a long leash, and every time we stopped he got tangled in something. Kevin thrashed more unwary vegetation in aggravation, grumbling impatiently and refusing to drink. I began to consider the relative merits of turning back and spending a few days at Kangaroo Lake. “Do you want to go back?” I asked Logan, and he just shrugged. He had endured my enthusiastic regaling about Big Bear Lake at home, and it all had sounded adventurous back then. Now, with the heat and dust of the trail clinging to him, the stress from Kevin and Judy yelling at each other, the whining anxiety of the dogs, and the overwhelming burden of nearly 15 pounds gouging deep scars in his shoulders, he wasn’t so sure.
“I’ll do it if you want to.” His words belied the pouty petulance on his face. He was nearly crying with the frustration of not wanting to be there. I knew he really wanted to go back, but I also wanted him to experience the lakes, and being out in the wilderness away from his comfort zone. I reasoned that he needed to get over his propensity to avoid anything physically difficult, and that letting him quit and take the easy way out would do him more harm in the long run.
“Well, your sister did it when she was younger than you,” I reminded him in a playfully chiding tone of voice. He merely flared his nostrils at the comparison. “Tell you what, let me carry your pack for a while and let you get used to just hiking, okay? Then later you can put it back on, or we’ll go back. How does that sound?” I could see him brighten at the prospect of not having to carry anything. I took off both of our packs, and fitted him with a single water bottle that weighed about three pounds. “Can you carry this? It will get lighter as we drink the water.” He nodded with visible relief.
Kevin was curiously respectful of our exchange, and gallantly offered to take some of Logan’s pack, but I didn’t want to split it up. I wanted it to remain intact, in case he might try to carry it later. Instead, I thought of a more demonstrative way to display the unfairness. I used the shoulder straps to wrap it around the top of my pack, piggy-back style, so it made my load look impressively ungainly. However, when I tried it on, I felt almost no difference in weight or balance. My pack had weighed about 45 pounds when we started, and now it was around 60, give or take a water bottle. The yoke was acceptable, and I couldn’t see it once it was on me, but to Logan it was either a badge of his Dad’s courage or folly, depending on his outlook. I made him walk ahead of me so he wouldn’t be reminded of it, but mostly so I could keep him moving, and gauge his progress.
“Drink lots of water,” I reminded everyone, and we were back on the trail. Kevin gladly took the lead, kicking at rocks and clearing the jungle of crocodiles and wildcats, followed by Judy and her unruly dog team, Logan wishing he were somewhere else, and me, the poor schmuck who had to carry everything. In this most underwhelming array, our ragtag company finally made it to the Forest Service bridge after what seemed like half a morning. I teetered and struggled to get my packs off, as they would not recline conveniently against anything with the outlandish mini-pack tied to the top. I knew I had to leave it in a spot where I could slip back into the straps and stand up by myself. I took it back down the trail a few dozen yards to where I had seen a log fallen at a good angle.
We let the dogs lap and muddy up the water downstream for a while, and the boys clambered awkwardly about the pools beneath the bridge with heavy legs that were unaccustomed to hard work. Judy took off her shirt and rinsed it in the cool water, prompting derisive catcalls from her loving son. “That’s gross, mom, you’re gonna scare away all the wildlife!” He rolled large rocks into the water to vent his disgust. Plop! Splash!! The dogs whined and barked in enthusiastic confusion. I guessed that he was right: we wouldn’t see any wildlife on this trip at all.
Logan perked up, as if the rest had done him some good, and the purple splotches of resentment were disappearing from his face. He even volunteered to help me wrestle my pack (and his) back on. Such a doting and dutiful son! With an air of competence, he had acquired a straight pine bough along the way as his walking stick. He appeared almost outdoorsy, with his olive-green camping vest, and bright red baseball cap set at a jaunty angle, as we prepared to tackle one of the hardest parts of the trail. He had been so fresh and clean when we started, as if he’d stepped right out of an Eddie Bauer catalog. Now the sweat was beginning to wrinkle his clothes, and bits of dirt had levitated off the trail and wriggled their way into crevices in the inexplicable way that makes it impossible to stay clean when backpacking. I was just happy that he wanted to continue up the trail. The clothes could be burned when we got back.
Surprisingly, the boys handled the steep and dusty climb quite well. The boisterous banter died down as they concentrated on projecting a capable appearance. Our grimy boots crunched on the loose rocks and gravel in time with the panting of the dogs, who were stupidly resigned to the pedestrian pace. We made good time in a place where we absolutely had to, if we had any prayer of reaching our goal 3,000 feet higher in the Alps. We took another long rest to clean the dirt off, at the last place where the creek came close to the trail. Logan was trading boasts with Kevin about who would get there first, until Kevin reminded him he wasn’t carrying a pack anymore.
“You feel like taking it back?” I asked Logan coyly, knowing the answer already. He suddenly sagged as if he’d slipped a disc, and might need a stretcher. “I’m only kidding!” He straightened up, visibly relieved, and I smiled inwardly with compassion. I had made a firm rule as a parent, never to berate my kids like my father had done, and I usually wound up doing the hard things for them out of sheer kindness. And so, there I was, balancing an awkward double pack as big as a pallet of inventory in a camping warehouse, and it felt like a privilege. When I was a kid, my father would just stare at me pop-eyed with incredulity; the veins in his neck throbbing, as if he couldn’t believe I was so inferior. He specialized in making lesser beings feel like a waste of genetic material. I vowed I would always try to build up my kids instead of tearing them down, but there were times when the buried emotions crawled from the grave to speak in angry words before I could beat them back down. This was not going to be one of those times. “Thanks for carrying our water, you’re doing a good job,” I said sincerely, and was rewarded with one of the quick grins Logan gave when he was acknowledged. Children need to feel validated the way plants need water.
~
— Lloyd Jones