The downside was that he also packed an entire kitchen. The maps had seduced and betrayed us.Ī couple of summers ago, on the dubious advice of a dubious friend (who accompanied us on the trip and, as we headed home, engineered a major collision involving both of our automobiles), we found our way to a dubious outfitter in Maine who, in a way that should have aroused my suspicion, offered to provide everything-canoes, gear, food, including a cooler with lobsters-for an expedition on the Moose River. The duly mapped portage trails were not a pathway out but a pathway in to a barely penetrable morass of fallen trees and boot-swallowing mud. As it was, such hectoring proved moot during the Gunflint Trail escapade. “No, Dad, you dumb schmuck, not that way-that way!” is the sort of editorializing that I never fail to find uncalled for. Navy during the Second World War, and I believe I’m genetically predisposed to find my way. However, the maps identified trail lengths in rods-a unit of measurement so archaic as to be abstract-and before long the stated length of any given trail began to seem only marginally relevant. Our aerial maps enabled us to locate the portage trails easily enough. One July, we planned a five-day canoe trip near the Gunflint Trail in northeastern Minnesota, with an itinerary that included somewhere between 15 and 6,000 portages. A credible-seeming map can nurture the fantasy that even when your group has become hors d’oeuvres for mosquitoes the size of grackles, there is still a path out of the woods. I love all kinds of maps-ancient maps, decorative maps, topographical maps, road maps. So let me restate that: Maps are definitely for suckers. That sounds a bit downbeat, I realize, and I do want to strike a positive note. My hope is that if, by chance, you are a father or a son contemplating a bit of familial togetherness, I can shatter a few illusions by offering some instructive, though mostly negative, examples from my own experience. Along the way, we, as a bunch of guys, have acquired a few crackerjack insights that I’m glad to pass along. We’ve bonded, by God, and in the process I’ve inflicted deliberate psychological abuse only when I deemed it absolutely necessary.
Over the years-since I was ostensibly not yet old, and my sons were still at that endearing developmental stage where contempt for Dad was not yet the default mode-we’ve done our fair share of backpacking (mostly on the wussy East Coast) and canoeing (in Minnesota, New England, and Canada). Of course, I’m grateful that these large-size spawn of mine can carry a lot of stuff, and, except for their tendencies toward knee-jerk enviro-fascism, I regard them as worthy traveling companions.
But each, in his own way, is a sensitive creature, and typically, when I admonish them that the wilderness is tricky territory-where the risk of losing an eye or a buttock or an expensive piece of equipment is something worth thinking about-what I get back is mainly attitude. Inconveniently, Jeb, Reid, and Tim have all reached that station in life where they’re not so easily impressed with my wisdom, though I’ve noticed that they still phone home when they have car trouble or need a cash infusion.
Father son camping, backpacking, wilderness