We’re heading up the path along the Cascade River, where the root beer-colored river drops in a series of spectacular cascades just a few hundred yards before it empties into Lake Superior.
“Remember when you were so impressed with me that I could make a fire in the woods in the pouring rain?”
“I do. I couldn’t believe it. Those were the best hot dogs I ever tasted.”
I’m pleased and imagine that now, thirty years after we hiked this trail as newly in love, she’s still impressed.
I’m snapping pictures of the two of them with the boiling cauldrons for backdrops.
I jokingly say to my daughter, “Hey, let me get a picture of you walking across that log over the river.” My wife recoils in sincere horror at my suggestion and suddenly I’m 10 years old, climbing a tree in the woods behind our house, delighting in my ability to freak out my mother by climbing way higher than she’s comfortable with.
I don’t do anything dangerous but I know exactly how and where to climb so that it appears to my wife that it’s dangerous. She keeps expressing concern and eventually goes over her edge when she thinks I’m encouraging my daughter to climb in dangerous areas. She slumps down on a rock and tears well up in her eyes. “This isn’t fun for me. It’s not how I want to spend the day. I want to go back to the car.”
The full awareness of what I was doing and the cycle we got caught in now hits me and I figure we’re now in the Land of the Fucked for a while. I know we both we’re dancing but I took the lead and so I’m disgusted with myself. Sonofabitch, you’d think after all these years, I’d be a little more mature than this. I wonder if the rest of this little hike is going to be quietly tense between us, and it occurs to me to say a little — I don’t know — a prayer, I suppose. “Help me see what I could do to turn this sucker around.”
“I’m really sorry. I got caught up in an old pattern and didn’t realize it. I won’t do that anymore.” It’s all I can think of. And then I just shut up and wait, sitting close, stroking the pant leg on her jeans. She relaxes after a few minutes and we move on.
The river flattens out as we head upstream. My wife and I find a place to sit and poke at the weird little worms clinging to the rocks under the water while my daughter wisely gets some distance from us. In a few minutes, she’s hopping from boulder to boulder in the river, looking for a way to make it all the way across in the icey but shallow rapids. I grab my camera to document the attempt, with an eye on my wife to see if she’s worried.
“I like doing that kind of stuff” my daughter says to me after successfully completing her over-and-back crossing. “A little scary but not really dangerous.” She’s wearing a big pleased-with-myself grin, and my wife gives her a high-five smile. And then one for me, too.
Wise kid, I think. Hope some of that rubs off on your ol’ man.
* Land of the Fucked – one of many great lines in Anne Lamott’s book Traveling Mercies: Some thoughts on Faith.