Who's Your Daddy: Father & Son Camping

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Outside Magazine April 2004

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Who's Your Daddy? (cont.)

I believe I'm genetically predisposed to find my way. My sons beg to differ. "No, Dad, you dumb schmuck, not that way—that way!" It's the sort of editorializing that I never fail to find uncalled for.

MAPS ARE FOR SUCKERS
That sounds a bit downbeat, I realize, and I do want to strike a positive note. So let me restate that: Maps are definitely for suckers. And I'm one of those suckers. I love all kinds of maps—ancient maps, decorative maps, topographical maps, road maps. 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. 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. Our aerial maps enabled us to locate the portage trails easily enough. 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. My father was a navigator in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War, and I believe I'm genetically predisposed to find my way. My sons beg to differ. "No, Dad, you dumb schmuck, not that way-that way!" is the sort of editorializing that I never fail to find uncalled for. As it was, such hectoring proved moot during the Gunflint Trail escapade. 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. The maps had seduced and betrayed us.

TRAVEL LIGHT
A 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 downside was that he also packed an entire kitchen. The burden of our superfluous cargo led to the unfortunate moment when Jeb, seized by a mutinous impulse, heaved into the river a couple of "waterproof" packs, one of which contained my sleeping bag and clothing.

Jeb and our dubious friend had decided, as we neared our campsite, to take an ill-advised fork in the river, which was not actually a fork but a cul-de-sac. As a result, they were forced to bushwhack through unbushwhackable terrain, a demoralizing ordeal that in turn yielded an inappropriately timed lecture by me—a general impugning of their common sense—and then Jeb's demonstration that even for a strapping lad it is not an easy thing to toss a 40-pound pack across a 25-foot-wide stream. I now believe that my threat to disown Jeb was an overreaction, as was his counterthreat to disembowel me with an ax.

PLATYPUSES DO THE DARNDEST THINGS
Once, during a weeklong canoe trip in northeastern Minnesota's Boundary Waters, my son Tim, who was then ten years old, reported that on his way to the latrine he had been menaced by a fanged and almost certainly poisonous platypus. My assurances that the platypus was native to Australia, not Minnesota, proved unpersuasive. That evening, after I made the discovery that Tim had already eaten the chocolate bars that I had planned to use to make s'mores, I felt I had no choice but to exploit his platypus fixation. As we huddled around the campfire, I recalled having read a magazine article that described a previously unknown species of North American platypus, a hyena-like beast that enjoyed dragging sleeping boys from tents and eating their faces before depositing their remains in the latrine. Since then, Tim has never fully outgrown his platypus phobia. Nor have I fully gotten over his selfish plunder of the chocolate bars.

NEVER PROVOKE BEARS WITH A FLAMETHROWER IMPROVISED FROM A CAN OF AROSOL BUG REPELLENT
This helpful hint speaks for itself, so I won't go into a lot of details other than to say that once the crisis had passed we felt that we had learned a useful lesson and, in all likelihood, so had the bears.

STAYING CLEAN IS NOT A CAPITAL OFFENSE
I happen to be a fastidious, though I don't believe clinically compulsive, person. When I'm on a camping trip and have access to plentiful fresh water, I look forward to an evening bath. Unlike my holier— (and more-aromatic—) than-thou sons, I don't subscribe to the theory that if I spill a little Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Pure-Castile Soap in a pristine lake or river, all aquatic life within a three-mile radius will instantaneously be extinguished. Tim's twin, Reid, derives perverse pleasure from the moral egregiousness of my daily ablutions. Once, after a successful afternoon of fishing—at the time, we were camped on an accessible-only-by-air, 30-mile-long lake in the Saguenay region of central Quebec—I had bathed and was toweling off, enjoying the thought that I no longer smelled of fish entrails, when Reid planted himself next to me, arms folded, and treated me to his patented withering smirk.

"As you know, Reid," I said, "Dr. Bronner's is biodegradable."

"Biodegradable—that's very nice," he replied. "Guess what—so's plutonium."

"I'm confident that this ecosystem can withstand the impact of my bath."

"But we'll never really know for sure, will we? Because the microorganisms you've just annihilated aren't talking."

The repartee culminated with my suggestion that when we got home he might try his hand at an essay on the subject of my crimes. I said this in jest but should have known better. His delightful Oedipal assault began: "If my father ran the National Park Service, Yellowstone would be sold to ExxonMobil."

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