“Hey dad, got H2O?”
Two summers ago we took a family vacation out west. Since we
were planning to go to Colorado, my 18 year-old son and I threw our backpacks
in the car with the thought that we might spend a night or two in the mountains
away from the normal camping crowd. My
wife and daughter decided they would find alternative fun sightseeing during
this backpack break.
Once we arrived in Colorado, we found relentless rain. The
forecast showed no mercy. Our carefully
planned vacation went down the gutter (pun).
Scanning the weather radar, my son found a county in Utah within 4 hours
drive with no rain, so we pushed on to discover Canyonlands National Park, an
amazingly beautiful area with no crowds.
(Sometimes the best plans are those that unfold while on your journey.) After a couple of nights in a scenic
campground, my wife and daughter headed south to see Four Corners and dropped
us off at a trail head with a guide book and backpacks. They looked more than just a little bit
doubtful as they pulled away.
The park ranger reminded us that in the desert we needed to
carry a gallon of water per person per day. Now, we are accustomed to hiking in
the cool Colorado Mountains, not the hot, desert conditions of the Canyonlands,
so we probably didn't listen very well to his advice.
My son filled his water pack, and I filled my water bottles.
We didn't have nearly a gallon apiece, but we had always been able to find and
purify our water on the Colorado mountain trails so we weren’t too concerned.
It was a hot and challenging day of hiking, but with
beautiful views. Time and again my son
challenged me to leap large chasms so we could stay on the ‘trail’. He was in top physical condition and seemed
to have no fear. I on the other hand was
wondering who was going to carry me out when I got stuck or injured on the
boulders. As we arrived exhausted at our
back country camp, my son sipped the last of his water and asked me if I had
more. Uh, no, it turns out I'm about empty too, son. And guess what? We're in
the desert and we haven't seen water all day, in fact we’ve only seen one other
person all day. We decided to tackle
that problem in the morning and enjoyed the peaceful, evening, desert sky, both
of us wishing we had brought our guitars to accompany the Milky Way light show.
The next morning I was surprised when my son nudged me in
the tent, saying, "Dad, you need to wake up. We need to hike up this
valley now because the guidebook says we might find a bit of water, and we need
to get started before it gets too hot to hike back out today."
Wait a minute! This sounded uncomfortably similar to my
admonition to him only a week earlier: "Son, get out of bed. You have a
several yards to mow and it going to get hot today. You'd better get moving so
that you can be finished before it gets too hot." If I hadn’t been so
tired and thirsty I would have laughed at the irony. Look what I have to look
forward to all the days of my life…..words that come back to me like a sharp
boomerang.
It turns out that he was right, and before it got too hot we
found a small puddle of warm dusty-looking water that we filtered and drank,
and all was well. We survived our excursion into the desert and lived to hike
again. We were drawn closer together and learned to trust each other more.
My advice? Pack extra
water and enjoy the desert sojourns with your children, discovering new
territory, gifts and strengths you didn’t know you both had. The shared time and adventure are something
you will both treasure. Now, if only we
could figure out how to carry those two guitars!
Duane Highley is the father of four grown children. He and his wife, Lisa, live in Little Rock, Arkansas. This post was originally written a few years ago.
