The area to the right looked more promising. Thick vegetation dominated by immature pines faced us straight ahead, which was also up. Up is the direction off trail we had travelled so far, enough so that I was getting light headed from craning my chin skyward just to see what was ahead. Yeah, it was that steep. Cutting fire lines in Northwest Montana kind of steep.
Which made me think of my Dad. My internal journal always tagged such moments. Decisions, challenges, the unique, the sublime. Certain moments have always earmarked themselves for future retelling to Daddy. The stuff of conversations.
My father grew up on the red clay earth of the lower Chattahoochee Valley in southwest Georgia. Nothing too steep. Did a stint in the Air Force that included Florida, Okinawa, and Montana. There’s Montana, again.
But this day was different. I was here partially because of Daddy. Only on this day I was hanging onto anything that remotely looked trustworthy in the mountains of North Carolina and Daddy had been gone a year. To the day.
And I miss those conversations. Face to face when I came home to visit or my parents arrived at my doorstep, willing tourists to my grandiose (in MY mind) guiding, but mostly over the phone. Almost thirty years of off-the-wall observations and misadventures. From Blakely to Beijing, Flagstaff to the Flathead. My mind has not stopped it’s tagging. I have to tell them somewhere.
I have two daughters. Sweet, sassy souvenirs of trips to China. They were their Granddaddy’s light and substance, as they are also mine. A teen and a might-as-well-be teen. They loved my father dearly. A year is long enough. It’s time I start those conversations with them. Now I know their world is band practices, learner’s permits, and soon enough, boys. Their attention span is in more demand by more things than bandwidth at a prepubescent sleep-over..
So now I start this.. Day-one of year-two. Listen up, girls. You, too, Daddy.
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