The rest of our team had climbed the lower portion of the route, but then bailed. Only Abby and I remained to finish the route. The team watched from the comfort of ABC as I slowly made my way up the crack. With numb fingers, I worried that I would lose my grip and fall at any moment. I tried to make precise and solid foot placements and found constrictions in the crack that I could slot a cold knuckle into like a stopper. Finally, the angle eased and I set up an anchor just below the summit.

Abby cleans the anchors.

Abby was out of sight when she started to climb, and I imagined myself a seriously lost fisherman feeling her movements through the rope. A strong front moved in just after she began to climb, blasting my exposed position at the top of the route. I pulled my hood over my helmet, grateful for its warmth. Abby made steady progress and soon arrived at the belay, her hands purplish-red from the cold.

“That was the worst climb of my life,” she said. “My hands are FREEZING!”

I nodded sympathetically as I quickly dismantled the anchor and coiled the rope. We opted to walk off rather than rappel and spent the rest of the 4^th – low-5^th class descent regretting the choice. We rejoined out team at ABC unscathed and quickly descended to base camp where our shelter was buffeted by wind and rain all night.

I’ve been reading too many climbing narratives lately. Maybe it’s the cool and wet weather we’ve had this spring. Even though the two places are similar in only one aspect – granite – I found myself imagining our family excursion to City of Rocks as a Patagonian expedition. I should be clear, I’ve never climbed in Patagonia, but I think Cerro Torre is the most beautiful mountain in the world. The aforementioned route was in fact a one-pitch 5.8 called Carol’s Crack. Swallows, not Andean Condors swooped around the rock formations. I built a toprope anchor midway up the route which the three middle kids climbed several times each. They really did bail to ABC, which normally means Advanced Base Camp in climbing parlance but in the case of our Suburban means A Big Car. And while Jennie read to them, Abby and I finished the route in a gathering storm before returning to our, um, vintage tent trailer which shook like a Patagonian beech tree in the wind all night.

Carol’s Crack happens to be the very first route I climbed, way back in about 1994. Newly married and living just an hour away from the City, Jennie and I ran into my former Scoutmaster, Craig, while visiting my parents. He invited me to climb with him. I knew nothing about climbing, but we were going to Utah State and I’d seen climbers in Logan Canyon. When I showed up at the crag, Craig was at the top and his daughter, Analee, was just getting ready to clean the route. She helped me get my harness on and tied me into a rope she trailed. Then she took off. Soon the rope tightened on my harness and Craig called down to start climbing. I couldn’t see him, but being a bright boy I figured I’d just follow the rope. There was just one problem – that rope kept tugging me upwards. “Sheesh!” I thought. “Give me a break, this is my first time.” I tried to speed up, but still the rope urged, “Faster, Faster!” I don’t remember any details about the route, the sensation of height, or what kind of holds my untrained fingers discovered. Just a feeling of wanting to prove that I wasn’t some no-natural-ability slow-poke.

“Man, you FLEW up that thing!” Craig exclaimed when I flopped down next to him on the belay ledge.

“I thought you wanted me to go faster, the way you kept pulling on the rope,” I panted.

So Craig explained the principle of belaying a second, and how he couldn’t see me so he had to pull until the rope got tight to know there wasn’t any slack in the system. Ha, ha! I took the next route at a leisurely pace and by the end of the day was totally hooked. Soon Craig had me leading 5.9 slabs before I could learn the meaning of the word “run-out”. The kids laughed and laughed as I told them the story around the fire that night. They couldn’t imagine their dad not knowing anything about climbing.

Unfortunately, Carol’s Crack was our family’s last climb for this trip. After a fitful night of wind, rain, and screaming baby, we impatiently waited for a weather window like a bunch of Patagonian climbers. A brief break in the clouds looked promising, so Jennie and I headed out for a 6-mile run (according to the guidebook, 7.5 according to Garmin). Halfway through, the rain started again. City of Rocks has no cell phone reception, no way of getting a weather forecast, just old-fashioned weather-reading experience. And all of my experience told me that we weren’t going to get that window. We held a family council and voted to bail. The timing was right, we’d had a fun time (Type 1+ / 2-) and hadn’t gotten to the “not fun” stage yet. Abby and I had climbed, the boys got their fire, Jennie and I got our trail run. There was no point in tempting fate. When we got home and looked up the weather radar, a big blob of green and yellow was parked right over the City. It was still there the next morning.

My kids look forward to a winter camping trip each year. But as this meager winter turned to spring and our weekends filled with other things, we resigned ourselves to moving on to warm weather activities. Then a couple of powerful winter storms brought our snowpack back to life. I called my friends, Markell and Alan, and we made plans to take our families to an easy car-camping location on a pass about an hour from our homes.

Although winter camping sounded great, warming valley temperatures tempted us to trade skis for climbing gear. Then I had a thought: Why not stop on the way home for the first climbing session of the year? It seemed like a perfect plan. Abby and I could ski a little backcountry while Caleb and Seth played with friends. Jennie would bring the little girls up Saturday for climbing and picnicking. And, if everything went well, Jennie and I could do our first trail run of the year in the evening. When I called it the “epic” weekend, I meant in the sense of great, superb, memorable.

The first hitch in the plan came before we even got on the road. I was loading gear into the truck while little Grace played outside. I came out with a load to find her screaming, looking like a vampire. Not the pale, dreamy kind that teenage girls swoon over, but the kind with blood running from her mouth and dripping off her chin She had tried (and failed) to ride a Disney Princess scooter. I always knew those Princesses were trouble. I got her cleaned up and made sure all her teeth were intact.

Things went smoothly for the next few hours. We arrived at our camping spot roughly on schedule, and all the kids went sledding while Abby and I skinned up the ridge across the road. Snow conditions weren’t great, but the late-afternoon views of the Tetons were spectacular. Abby was having a great time, despite the fact that her plastic climbing skins had almost no grip on the hard snow. She got her revenge on the descent. With my 50 pounds of additional weight, I punched through the crust while she glided along laughing at my spectacular crashes.

When we got back to camp I found Seth sitting in the back of the truck, asking to go home. He was sick. The kind of sick that is most unpleasant when you’re camping with a girl from your third-grade class and there’s no bathroom. I left the other kids in good hands with my friends and met Jennie for an exchange halfway home. Abby volunteered to set up camp while I was gone. Not far down the road, I realized that I’d forgotten to pack the pole for my Megamid tent. I called Alan to relay a message to Abby that she could still set it up with a ski and that I would have Jennie bring the pole from home. Alan casually mentioned that Caleb had crashed his sled and gotten a bit banged up, but he was fine. What next?

By the time I got back to camp it was dark and everyone was getting ready for bed. I took one look at Caleb’s face and my jaw fell open. As the sun went down and the temperature dropped, the sledding hill got harder and icier. Caleb had wiped out at high speed and he looked like he slid the rest of the way down on his face. In a casual, understated way, he told me how they’d reconstructed the crash by following the blood trail back up the hill to where they found his smashed glasses. Luckily, those glasses apparently saved him from a direct blow to his orbital ridge, which probably would’ve meant a trip to the doctor for stitches.

Topping it all off, Abby didn’t know I’d planned to use our skis and poles to stake out the tent so our gear was still in stuff sacks. At least that problem was easily solved when Alan invited us into their tent. I called it the Taj Mahal of winter camping. He brought the roof portion of his wall tent and covered it with a giant tarp. A propane heater glowed as we rolled out pads and snuggled into bags inside the biggest tent I’ve ever slept in.

As I slowly relaxed in the dark silence, I felt like a parental failure. Three children, three mini-crises, and I wasn’t there to do anything to stop them. But I began to recognize that I may try too hard to shield my kids from negative experiences. Often our fondest memories and greatest growth come from the most challenging times. Caleb had to deal with the consequences of his crash relying on his own inner strength rather than on Dad to pick him up and comfort him. Seth too dug deep inside and found strength to endure. I’m not sure Grace learned anything, she fell off a chair the next day and broke open her lip again. When we take away opportunities to fail or possibly get hurt, we also take away the satisfaction our children get from succeeding on their own.

Many of us still seek that satisfaction in the outdoors. Redpointing a climbing route, skiing a difficult line, or staying on the bike all the way up a technical climb. These accomplishments usually happen only after a lot of falls and occasionally some blood. We draw from those successes and failures to get us through life’s everyday challenges. I’m convinced our kids can do the same.

Saturday turned out to be an epic-free day. Spring sunshine quickly warmed our group as we packed up camp in the morning. I called Jennie to arrange a meeting time and place. From the tone of her voice, I hung up anticipating an epic night alone in the backyard. Grace fussed and cried half the night with her busted lip, but at least Seth was feeling much better. We arranged to meet at roadside crag where we climbed in almost-warm sunshine. The cold breeze and small crowd couldn’t dampen the joy of exposure and warm stone under tender fingertips.

Jennie and I never got in that trail run. But at 8:45 p.m. we left Abby in charge, grabbed the Redbox movie to return, and ran out into the warm night for an 8 mile running date. Epic.

–Steve Bohrer

Winter Again

Snow has opened up our backyard again. Nearly every day, Katmai and I wander the hills behind the yurt, sometimes on snowshoes sinking into loose powder, other times in shoes slipping on an icy crust. At nearly 20 pounds, Katmai rides on my back now, his head poking through a hole sliced in my raincoat. Asleep, his head rests on my back, fleece hat slowly accumulating snow.

Awake, he babbles happily over my shoulder, watching the dog run and roll in the snow with an excited “da!” that I can almost believe is a word…. We take fewer breaks now. And when we stop for lunch, Katmai still nurses, but he can also share my bread and cheese.

“He’s so patient!” I exclaimed to Hig near the end of a 7 hour hike, looking over my shoulder at Katmai’s smiling face.

“Actually, he’s not patient at all,” Hig corrected me. “He’s just happy.”

Baby Steps to the Future

Before Katmai was born, we didn’t know how portable a baby would turn out to be – or how easily this little person would slot into our lives. And as we plan more ambitious outdoor exploits for Katmai’s second year, I wonder what all of this means to him. I wonder what impact it has on a baby to spend so much time looking at trees and snow, rocks and berry bushes, tundra and rabbit tracks… A young mind is constantly learning, soaking up the foundations of understanding wherever it might be. But all he can tell us is a happy babble, a contented snooze, and the occasional wail of hunger or cold.

Maybe he’ll grow to love the outdoors. Or maybe not. He’s too young to tell us, and too young to decide. And maybe wondering about the impact on Katmai is the wrong question altogether. Katmai has joined a family of adventurers, therefore he comes on adventures, adapting to the circumstances of his birth like every baby everywhere. The three of us are happy, and Katmai has never known another way.

Katmai and Hig enjoying the forest

~~~~~~~~~

Erin, Hig, and Katmai make their home in Seldovia, AK. They combine “ground truth” with “researched truth,” using their scientific backgrounds along with their adventures to  further the conversation about conservation. They’ve trekked through over 7000 miles of wilderness (mostly in Alaska) since 2000. Erin has written a book on the year-long expedition  A Long Trek Home: 4,000 Miles by Boot, Raft, and Ski, published by Mountaineers Books in 2009.

Summer

Luckily for Kamai, his father is a master bushwhacker. With Katmai protruding from his chest like a strange second head, Hig ducked beneath the alder boughs, turning his body to delicately brush by the devils club. He pulled salmonberry canes out of the way of Katmai’s face. One small scratch on the nose was all Katmai had to show for his afternoon in 4th of July Creek valley. I wished my arms and legs could say the same. In the long light of summer, even a day hike can get overly ambitious.

The rhythm of baby fussing was sped up by the heat, and we rested beneath the shade of spruce tree islands in the brush, entertaining Katmai with twigs. My packraft spun in circles on the glassy water as I paused to nurse the baby under the light of the full moon – huge and red from the haze of distant forest fires. At 2AM, we paddled home.

…

Last winter’s meager snowfall was followed by volcanic ash, then a warm sunny spring, melting the mountains back to bare ice and rock. Even amongst high peaks, the usual snow slopes were boulders and scree, bare rock fields with barely a hint of vegetation. Some of the dime-sized patches of moss might not have seen sun in years. Some of the rock might never have seen sun at all.

Hig and Katmai scree glissade

For a four-day expedition in the moutains above Tutka Bay, we counted. About 17 pounds for a diapered and dressed 6 month old. 1 pound for the wrap to carry him in. Another 4 pounds of extra clothes, diapers, and sleeping gear for Katmai. Altogether, it was 22 pounds of additional weight to add to the 65 pounds or so we were already wearing or carrying between the two of us.

We walked on ice. We walked past newborn lakes. We skated down slopes of sharp scree, past cliffs scratched by vanished ice and decorated with mountain goats. We threaded our way down steep and narrow routes with cliffs all around. Katmai watched and slept and giggled from his perch on our chests.

Katmai trusted us. He trusted us to keep the bushes out of his face. He trusted us not to drop him on the boulders or ice. He trusted us to keep him warm and fed and dry. Katmai spent his days snuggling his parents, watching the world go by, and occasionally being set down to play in it. Each place we stopped, he found new bushes to chew on, new rocks to investigate, and new games to play.

Fall

Katmai peered through the grass as his younger companions busied themselves with nursing and diaper changes. The air on the alpine ridge was crisp and cold, with a biting breeze. We ducked down in a pocket out of the wind, sitting on the bright red and yellow carpet of autumn tundra. Three babies, three moms, a dad, and a friend, out for a few hours hike on the trail above our yurt.

Katmai peers through the fall grass

In the flurry of activity that was my book tour, I missed our backyard wanderings. I hiked through crowded airports with Katmai on my back, explaining to the TSA agent that the wrap was simply a long piece of cloth – posing no terrorist threat. We hiked the streets of Portland and Seattle, baby carrying oddities in a land of strollers. On a darkened stage, Hig gently bounced Katmai in the wrap on his chest, as we told stories from our year-long journey. Katmai smiled at the crowd and watched the pictures flash by – adventures from before he was born. Katmai fussed, sending his dad scurrying off to soothe him to sleep before returning to the presentation.

Katmai came with us on stage because he came with us everywhere – a smiling crawling appendage to our lives.

~

On Friday, we’ll have the conclusion of Erin’s story.

Speculations

We knew how to plan routes through a complicated landscape of cliffs, water, and brush. We knew how to packraft in a gale, set up shelter in a blizzard, and start a fire in the pouring rain. We knew how to pare our backpacking gear down to a fine-tuned minimalism. But we knew nothing about babies.

Wilderness expeditions were a thread of our lives we couldn’t imagine giving up. Yet we couldn’t imagine having an infant along either. Most of our early speculations revolved around babysitting grandmothers – wondering when the baby would be old enough to leave for an hour or two, a day or two, a week or two. We wondered whether it was possible to bring a baby bushwhacking at all.

In the year since Katmai’s birth, we’ve never been hiking without him. He’s more portable than we imagined.

Winter

Katmai was squalling, his high shrill voice ringing from where he was curled in the wrap on Hig’s chest. The cry sent my new mom brain into a frenzied flurry of activity. I pulled a thermarest from my small day pack, plopped down unceremoniously with snowshoes still dangling from my feet, snatched the fussing newborn from Hig’s arms, and threw a down quilt over the pair of us. He started nursing immediately, eyes still closed, neither knowing or caring that his dark warm cave was on a snowy hillside. The awkward diaper change by unpracticed parents in 20 degree weather went a little less smoothly. But within a minute or so of us starting to walk again, all indignities and discomforts were forgotten. We continued for another couple of hours, repeating the nursing break once more – slowly building a new rhythm to our lives.

….

“See the snow? I know you’ve never seen anything else, but someday things will be green here.” At three weeks old, the world outdoors was probably not much more than a monochrome blur of white ground and black branches. It was probably also not much more important – the world beyond mom irrelevant to the tiny infant’s brain. My words trailed off as Katmai fell asleep, and I listened for the small sounds of baby breaths and snores from the wrap on my chest, over the din of snowshoes crunching on an icy trail. He never saw the top of the hill – the half hour it took to get there was longer than he could stay awake.
In the shade of the forest at Cape Yakataga

Spring

I covered Katmai’s ears with my hands as the 5-seater plane buzzed over the giant Bering Glacier, on its way to the lonely outpost of Cape Yakataga. As we neared the coast, Hig and I talked excitedly about the places we remembered from our year-long trek, excited to be setting off on this latest expedition.

We’d switched out our stretchy cotton baby carrier for a homemade version made of ripstop nylon. We had three backpacks for the three of us – only Hig and I carried all of them – a large one on each of our backs, and a small front pack for whichever parent wasn’t carrying the child. After many years of ruthlessly cutting down our pack weight, the bags seemed oddly bulky for just three days away from base camp – expanded by a collection of baby diapers, baby sleeping bag, baby clothes and a baby life vest. A much larger volume than the three and a half month old baby we carried it for.

On the scale of our adventures, it wasn’t much. Eight days in the field, two small backpacking trips, some easy packrafting, a few thick bushwhacks, a bit of scrambling, bugs, sun, and logging roads… It wasn’t something we thought we’d be doing this year at all. But the invitation to Yakataga arrived unexpectedly in the spring, tempting us with a trip that seemed both interesting, and surprisingly possible. Katmai was portable.

Katmai-4 months; Tree- 500 years

The rhythm evolved. Tuck baby into wrap, face into mommy or daddy’s chest. Walk a few minutes until baby falls asleep. Continue until baby screams.

Pluck him out, nurse him, and pop him back into the wrap, face out this time. Protect baby’s eyes from the bushes as he gets a close-up tour of river bank alders, logging road ditches, and forests. Try to keep mosquitoes off the baby’s face. Continue until baby screams.

Pluck him out, nurse him, and pop him back into the wrap, face in. Repeat.

With each venture away from our base camp, the packs grew smaller, as we realized that babies, like adults, need less gear than you might at first think. With Katmai, we floated down a braided glacial river in the packrafts, and crossed several more. We ducked and climbed and swatted our way through overgrown deadfall on the edge of a clear cut, and a smorgasboard of milder bushwhacks. We scrambled steep slopes of crumbly rock near the edge of a glacier – dad carefully picking his footsteps while the baby happily gurgled and kicked.

Hig and I were acting as field assistants for Cascadia Wild, documenting the potential for restoration in the massive Yakataga clearcut. Hig measured stream widths, while I nursed Katmai. I scribbled notes on streamside vegetation, while Hig showed Katmai the varying textures of alder and willow leaves. We appreciated the dramatic face of the melting Yakataga Glacier, the broad valley of the Duktoth River, and the misty Lost Coast. Katmai appreciated gnawing on cottonwood twigs, grabbing at dandelion poofs, and watching the bushes rush by.

~

Stay tuned for Part 2 on Wednesday.

The idea of ski touring is to climb a mountain and ski back down. Simple, right? Not so fast. First, you’ve got to get to the top. You can either hike with your skis on your back, wallowing in waist-deep snow, or climb the darned thing with your skis on your feet. Just one problem there, downhill skis are designed for…downhill skiing. You can use telemark skis (like I do), but that requires learning a new set of skills. Or you can put together an alpine touring (randonee) setup with specially designed boots and bindings. That’s a great option but expensive, especially if the person decides that slogging uphill for hours is not much fun after all.

There is a third option, an adapter that fits into regular alpine bindings but allows the foot to pivot for climbing. I put out the word and soon found a friend that had a pair of Secura-Fix’s that I could borrow. Judging from the fuchsia/teal color scheme, I deduced a mid-80’s vintage. A quick visit to the virtual museum of ski touring at Lou Dawson’s Wild Snow confirmed my hunch and added this ominous comment, “Clip the base of this contraption into your alpine bindings and away you go. Or actually, away you waddle with enough weight on your feet to cause permanent orthopedic damage.” Well, she’s young, her bones and joints are still resilient.

We had a bit of a problem, though – the designers hadn’t planned for smaller feet. Also, one of them had been slightly bent and wouldn’t adjust. Nothing a trip to my dad’s fully-equipped shop couldn’t fix. A bit of grinding, a dash of bending, some light hammering, and voilà – a pretty good fit. Next, she needed a pair of climbing skins that give the grip that propels the skier uphill. I already had an adjustable strap-on set, but there again the smaller size was a challenge. Again, we found a solution that worked without being ideal. After weeks of scheming, the day arrived. Would the equipment work? Would she like it? Would she be willing to endure severe cardiovascular torture for the pleasure of solitude and a few turns in possibly terrible snow? We were about to find out.

Abby was so excited for her first backcountry ski excursion that she didn’t even complain about the 6:45 wakeup call. I guess you could call it a teenager alpine start. While she got ready I attached skins to skis so we would be ready to go when we hit the trailhead.

Abby with her new torture devices.

We decided to keep things simple for the first time out. We drove to our local ski area, which happened to be opening a limited amount of the mountain that day. A rarely-used cat track leads to the summit from a trail-user parking lot. From there you can ski down the groomed runs or head to more adventurous terrain. In fact, it’s only a backcountry experience in the sense that you’re hiking, not riding the lift a couple hundred yards to the north. You don’t get the untracked powder, but there’s no breaking trail in deep snow and no avalanche danger.

Abby had gotten in pretty good shape during cross country season. Skiing uphill in single-digit temps with an extra 10 pounds on each foot was a different story. It turns out that I’m a genius motivator. I had shown Abby part one of this story the previous day. When the going got tough and she was tempted to quit, she had the extra motivation of knowing that all the Outdoor Parent readers would think she was a wimp if she quit. And as it usually happens, she soon felt better and we emerged from the cold, dark gully into the gleaming sunlight.

While there may be a certain satisfaction in skiing up a mountain, it really is (to borrow a quote from the Black Diamond catalog) “all about the down.” With the 80’s orthopedic torture devices stowed in her pack, Abby clicked back into her skis and pointed them down an unmarked sheet of corduroy. Our first turns were a bit rough after an eight-month break. The snow quality was marginal – icy here, thin there, occasionally more weeds than snow, and a few base-gouging rocks. We didn’t care, we were skiing again. We even found four inches of powder. There is definitely more appreciation for skiing when you’ve gotten to the top under your own power.

All too soon we neared the bottom, gliding onto a cat track we normally fly down to the lodge. We didn’t want it to end, so we did something we never could have done with the mountain open – we skied the rest of the way backwards. We would have loved to take another run, but we had family visiting at home and Abby’s shins were sore from the climb. Abby’s first ski tour was a success. The equipment worked, she had a great time, and she can’t wait to go again. She made a resolution to hit the treadmill and get into better hiking shape. Hidden deep within most backcountry skiers (not so deep with some) is a hint of arrogance, a pride in being different from the masses taking the easy way up. I could see that pride as Abby thought that she was possibly the only 13 year old girl in America hiking for turns that morning. Teenagers love to be different. Maybe backcountry skiing will provide a way for her to be different in a positive way, as opposed to the negative or self-destructive ways that many kids choose to be different. I think we’re onto something here.

–Steve Bohrer

I have a friend with a young son who is surfing with him (well) on a regular basis at 7 years old.  I’m figuring on the same goal, riding with me on my longboard at 3, pushing him into waves on a body board on his own at 4, surfing his own board by 5?  Snowboarding also, I figure around 4 is a good start there.  While I’m at it, maybe I’ll have him run for president by his 9th birthday and solve world hunger by 10?

That constant nagging little voice keeps telling me I’m getting way ahead of myself on this whole thing.  What if he doesn’t like doing all the outdoors activities I do?  What if he likes video games instead?  What if he wants to do ballet?  its all to much for me to get into words.  I imagine most fathers have similar feelings and concerns as their children begin to grow up from infants into impressionable children.  We all want the best for our children, and we look back through our own lives to see what has brought us the most joy and fulfillment. The best we can do is foster an envoronment that leads our children outside.  Want to have your kid surf instead of playing video games; put the Playstation in storage and go to the beach.  Want him to climb instead of hanging out at the mall, make it a habit to go to the mountains on free days instead of sitting around the house.  It can be viewed as work, or it can be viewed as bringing the ffamily together ina way that will start positive habits that can last for years to come.

I was talking to a father of a 19 year old college baseball player who said “Baseball is my life, I just got lucky and thats what my son loves too!  I encouraged but didnt push, and i made sure it was fun, never a chore.”  I’m guessing that this means you want to be a partner not a coach, and if my son wants it, a mentor, but not forcing him to do more than he wants.

Right now I’m just going to enjoy him where he’s at.  We’ll get walking out of the way first, then I’ll start planning our first boat trip to Bali, or maybe down the street to our local beach with the family, whatever he wants to do.

Ty and Andi’s responses to the first question typify the challenge of parenting, outdoor or otherwise. Their discussion also made me chuckle because Jennie and I have had nearly the same discussion many times. We love our spouses and our children. But we also have other goals and interests that are important to us. Our spouses often share those goals, but as parents it’s just not possible to pursue them together while leaving the kids at home. There’s just no getting around the fact that someone is out having fun while the other spouse is dealing with all of the mundane or unpleasant tasks that just have to be done in a family. We all have to figure out a way to make it work in our own relationships. What works for some won’t work for others. But the important qualities that come with being a parent – sacrifice, unselfishness, patience, love – also enable spouses to continue to enjoy their outside pursuits.

OP: Do you kids like to run?

Ty: They do. Noah likes to run with me.

Andrea: He begs to go.

Ty: They come to a summer camp we do with another high school. They dabble in it a little bit.

Andrea: The girls were the fastest 4^th grade girl runners in the sprints at the end of the school year, so they’re fast.

OP: Do you think they’ll do cross-country and track?

Ty with his cross country team at halloween.

Andrea: We’re going to fight because it’s the same time as soccer, and I’m a soccer player.

Ty: I just stay right out of it. Being a coach I’ve dealt with those parents, and I’m not going to be that parent. I’ll just lead by example and maybe Noah will play the flute or something. We haven’t really pushed them, we’ll see I guess. They’ll probably really like it or really hate it.

OP: What other kind of outdoor things do you do with the kids?

Ty: Andrea went with the girls, they like to snowboard a lot. They went a couple times this last winter. We took everyone out cross-country skiing…

Andrea: They hated it. But they’re going to learn to like it.

OP: Cross-country skiing seems to be an adult thing.

Andrea: Yeah, you know it wasn’t fast, they’re like “We could be walking in the snow”

Ty: That’s what Kayla said, “Why would I walk with these big things on my feet when I can just walk on the snow?” I got nothin’. Good point, I don’t know why we do this. (Laughter all around)

Andrea: We like national parks. We’ve got the pass, so every time Ty’s gone for a weekend I just take the kids and we go play at Jenny Lake, go take pictures and stuff, go play without him.

It was easy to see that the Draney kids are at home in the outdoors. The Vaquero Loco races end at Cottonwood Lake, where Ty greets each runner at the finish line. He and Andrea (well, mostly Andrea, I suspect) put on quite a feast – burgers, watermelon, chips, and huckleberry sodas. I think Andrea spent most of the day in front of the grill with a smile on her face. Their kids roamed the lakeshore, playing with each other and the other racers’ kids. They’d occasionally wander up to check in with Mom and Dad, but then it was back to playing.

OP: What’s your favorite outdoor parenting story?

Ty: I do believe that with kids you’re always teaching, sometimes it’s good sometimes it’s bad. We had them all out at this cross country camp this summer. I dragged the kids out for a run and the girls ran out ahead with the other kids. Noah was with me and he’d just listened to this pep talk from one of the other coaches. So he said, “Dad, this is kind of like your email.” And I’m wondering, “What are you talking about?” We have this web portal through the school district and when it opens up there’s this cheesy thing like, “Don’t just dream it, live it!”. And he says, “Are we livin’ it?” He’d already fallen and taken this digger on the trail, and he’s got mud on his face from drying his tears. We’re running down the trail about as fast as a six-year-old can. And he asks, “Are we livin’ it?”

“Yes sir! We’re livin’ it!”

“Running is a way of life,” Ty says. That’a a drastic understatment.  He has been running competitively for over 20 years, including high school and college. His “free” time is spent coaching the Star Valley High School Cross Country and Track teams and as race director for El Vaquero Loco 50k/25k.  Like many successful ultra runners, Ty has a “real” job. He teaches Spanish and enjoys himself the most while spending time outside with his family.  He has been married for 12 years to the former Andrea Baxter and they have three children — Jenna and Kayli, age 10, and Noah, age 6.”

I met Ty a couple years ago when I signed up for the El Vaquero Loco. Set in the Salt River range near Ty’s home in Afton, Wyoming, the course follows a rugged trail with 9,000 feet of climbing. Luckily for me, the 25k version only has half of that. After the race, I continued to follow Ty’s blog and I was impressed with the way he was able to blend a successful ultrarunning career with his professional career and family life. One picture stood out for me – Ty in running clothes pulling his kids through the snow in a plastic sled.

This summer, while running the Wasatch Back relay, I noticed a guy who looked a little familiar walking past. It was Ty, running with a team of his high school runners. We chatted at a couple of exchanges, and he was nice enough to pick up the reflective vest that I dropped out the window as I yelled “Go Star Valley!” Our team was mightily impressed that he would make that kind of effort to give his kids such a great experience in the middle of his summer vacation. I was mightily impressed that he was confident enough to wear the blazingly wild shorts his team had given him, even if it was the middle of the night.

A month or so after this year’s Vaquero races, I ran into Ty again at a cross-country meet near our house. My daughter, Abby, was running in her first cross-country race. It was the first meet of the year, the so-called ‘mud run’ where runners navigate various obstacles including a canal swim and several passes through a mud pit. Most teams treat it as a fun kick-off to the season, and it looked more like Halloween than a sporting event. Ty’s team was no exception, but when the gun went off they were all business. His girl’s squad won the event in a flourish of sagging butterfly wings and ripped pantyhose.

A friend and I decided to run the Vaquero Loco 25k again this summer. I sat down with Ty and Andrea after all the runners had left the registration area.

Outdoor Parent: You’ve got so much stuff going on – the coaching, the racing, the family. How do you fit it all in?

Ty: I don’t know (laughter). I guess the best way to illustrate it would be, you know people say they wish there were more hours in the day? I’m really glad there’s not. There’d just be more stuff to do.

A lot of it kind of works together. The coaching part is the closest I come to getting paid to run. That gives me a couple hours after school to run, get my speedwork in. It does make it tougher to compete a little bit, especially in the spring with meets on the weekends.

I think the hardest thing is probably for Andrea because it all lumps together for her because I’m always just gone. It’s always running. We’re always having that, um, discussion. I’m recreating…

Andrea: This is personal running….

Ty: This is recreating running, this is work running. In my mind it’s pretty easy to separate that.

Andrea: For me it’s all the same. For Ty he’s got ultrarunning, cross-country, and track. He’s got every weekend, every day till six it’s running. And when he says he’s going to a race I’m like, “You were gone the last five weekends.” He says, “That was cross-country, this is ultrarunning.” Oh, that’s different, I’m still alone.

Ty: She always tells me that 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. is mine, however I want to use it. And I stick to that pretty well, especially with work and stuff I do that a lot. I get the kids to bed, put on the headlamp and get the dog and away we go. Or I’ll get up really, really early and try not to nap the rest of the day. There’s some give and take, no doubt about it.

OP: Andrea, what’s your thing? what does Ty support you in?

The Draney kids cheer on dad

Andrea: Oh, well…

Ty: She’s headed to Europe in a couple weeks…

Andrea: And he hasn’t even complained, he’s like “Oh yeah, whatever you want, have fun.” He’s always good that when I get my time, which I don’t know is very often (Ty laughs), that he’s happy and just says go and have a fun time. And when he goes I’m not quite as enthusiastic.

OP: That sounds kind of familiar.

OP’s wife Jennie: I say “He’s going to come in the door and I’m going to walk right out.”

Andrea: Yes!

Jennie: And then he gets there and I think, “Oh, I haven’t seen you” and I don’t go.

Andrea: But a lot of mine kind of coincide with his. I love travel and photography and you can kind of take those with you on a race. And the anniversary where we went to Hardrock I’d always wanted to go to Colorado and it was lots of fun, it was beautiful so it works pretty well together.

….to be continued on Monday.

A discussion I began to have frequently with my wife in Madagascar revolved around the premise of students becoming teachers and teachers becoming students. My middle school teaching career was interrupted to facilitate the Madagascar adventure. We explored the paradox of teachers and students: the notion of learning as an accumulation of discrete facts and skills by the young. Clear to me then- as my perceptions of Madagascar formed by observing my son- was the idea that good teaching involved discarding our hierarchy and allowing kids to know we too have things to learn. I regret now having ever said things to my son illustrating a harmful aspect of hubris; of assuming one’s role is teacher.

Our Madagascar life possessed a tidal-like ebb and flow- no obligations beyond exploring and maintaining good health- we all could recognize a sameness in our days; when later, all the small moments would reveal themselves as precious. One such moment splashed in the face of the region’s drought. On a dark cloudy day, however, the skies unleashed. Governmental dignitaries were visiting the research site for a self-congratulatory policy statement the legacy of which I am sure the locals soon forgot. With little shelter beyond a small and protected porch, the adults huddled together like we would suffer the same fate as the Wicked Witch of the West. The water droplets were frigid and stung when they hit as if they had fallen from near space. Rain pounded the tin roof. The dirt flats facing the porch morphed into a mud sea.

Lemurs on the trail.

Not unhinged by the deluge, my son stripped down. He ran full speed ahead then turned to repeat. This was unfiltered joy. The kind we adults so often cannot access. I know now such displays for a love of life can make people uncomfortable. In our quotidian lives we devolve. We crave the predictable and fear the unknown. I think this mud running frenzy may persist as one of my most proud parenting moments.

~~

Several months before we planned to depart Madagascar, we had heard of an oversized white chameleon frequenting a remote section of forests. On one of our daily hikes, my son in the backpack, we happened upon a treasure. I had lost a camera lens in the area a few days prior and returned to find it. I stumbled on a vine as I stepped off trail. I began shuffling through some fallen leaves. I realized I was in the wrong spot; I had turned off trail too early. My son then outstretched his arm and pointed his finger. “Snake!”, he declared. A yard in front of us, an eight-foot Madagascar Ground Boa had the Moby Dick of Chameleons firm in its jaws. With the snake pre-occupied I lifted my son from the backpack and set him on the ground. We watched. Unhurried and fastidious jaw movements shifted the chameleon further down the snake’s throat. My son and I did not speak. An hour or two had passed before the snake ceased its repetitious movements. Both animals lay still. The chameleon’s head ingested, its body sticking out from the Boa’s now slack-jawed mouth.

The monsoon season was not far off. We heard thunderheads rolling in form the Indian Ocean. Leaves curled as if in anticipation of a hard earned rain. I placed my son in the backpack, left a marker on the trail, and hurried to get my wife. My family returned to the marker as the sinking sun left a darkened forest. Dry leaf detritus crunched under our feet. Lying still on the ground, the white chameleon looked ashen. My son picked up a stick and prodded the chameleon. The thick body rolled on its side. And by now the snake had disappeared still hungry. We looked around nervously expecting the boa to drop from a limb. I most vividly recall telling my son the chameleon was dead. And this meant it could not move anymore. That being dead was something altogether different than sleeping; there would be no waking up. A few questions came making me realize my son struggled appropriately with the concept and how anything in the world could simply just end.

Embracing the rain.

In the ensuing years, when my son has asked if something is dead or not, I usually reference the white chameleon. “Dead like the white chameleon, remember that?” I say. This is now a part of our language; our syntax to help define what a father and son may discover. I can only hope the effects of our trip and the memories do not fade. I like to think it has, and will shape who he is. Frequently, however, we reflect and rediscover through our digital images, our distant life on the big, red island.

I now have a better understanding of the transitory nature of wisdom: that children, often times, harness a more measured and deliberate approach in exploring the new. They teach us to understand in their terms. The real education of parents- and all adults for that matter- unfolds during a lifetime; most often we are forgetful of the nuances that make it relevant.

The paradox of teacher and student often goes unexamined; and remains perhaps a misuse of terms. The relationship is in the education, the process of experiencing. I too have said things to my son illustrating this most harmful aspect of hubris, of the assumption that I am teacher. I know of no other way to describe how I ultimately accepted the lessons I need to learn as we towed our child to the apogee of our tent-bound lives.

Jason Albert lives in Bend, OR with his family.