I GOT TO KNOW ROSS, his parents, and his older sister, Blair, ten years ago while working in New York, when Tracey and my wife, Susan, became friends at a job. After we resettled in Santa Fe, in 2001, the clan came out for a couple of summer visits, and in 2002 I came up with the bright idea of taking Ross on a camping trip. My goal with this and an earlier fishing excursion was vague but sincere. The transition from brathood to manhood is hard enough for anybody, but for somebody like Ross it's especially difficult. I wanted to contribute to his overall stock of positive experiences while he grew up.

Whether it's worked or not remains to be seen. Ross is a smart, fun person, but he prefers urban entertainments like movies, restaurants, the New York Yankees, and the Dominican guys at a neighborhood bodega who show him porn magazines. There's also the tiny problem of me being incompetent as a trip leader, something Ross has commented on. The first time I took him out—to an overfished Pecos Valley trout pond, where we didn't catch anything—he told me in his low New York accent, "This sucks. New Mexico sucks. And you suck."

But that could mean almost anything, couldn't it? I figure I won't know until Ross is 30 whether he'll remember our adventures with misty fondness or will still want to punch me in the groin.

For our camping trip, I took him and his dad, Michael, to a spot northwest of Taos where the Rio Grande and the Red River come together amid dramatic geology. Ross liked some parts of our overnighter—peeing on trees seemed to delight him—but he recoiled against anything that felt wholesome. In a campsite near us were a cute little boy and his dad, a friendly guy from California who was big on earnest declarations about the deeper meanings of outdoor experiences. They came over after sundown, because I'd told the kid I was making s'mores.

I knew Ross would hate them—to this day, I only have to mention this pair and he'll scream "Nooo!"—but my policy there is simple. If he's determined to have a bad time, it's important that I be entertained, even if that requires setups and hoaxes. On the Florida trip, after he refused to come along to tour a wildlife refuge, I briefly conned him into believing that he'd missed seeing an alligator eat a female manatee and all of her young.

But Florida was supposed to be about a good thing—catching fish—which is why I felt so guilty when our last day, a Saturday, dawned with palm–tree–bending winds that never let up. We met Rogan at a different pier, on Captiva Island, and he said it was unsafe to stray too far from shore. So we skulked around, bobber–fishing the docks of zillion–dollar luxury homes.

Ross was fiercely attentive to his fishing rod, even though nothing was happening. At one point I saw his tip go down, yelped to alert him, and watched him as he did everything in textbook fashion—staying focused, reeling steadily, rod tip up. As the fish came to the surface and Rogan got the net ready, Ross departed slightly from the text, yelling, "Get that goddamn motherfucker!"

Sadly, it was a junk fish. Ross kept at it, and soon he reeled in a mangrove snapper that was no bigger than a poker chip. Rogan joked that it was the smallest fish he'd ever seen landed on a hook.

A record. Sweet!