Wyoming Wildlife May 2024 - 46

The father-son
camping trip
Story by Tom Reed | Illustration by L. Eslick
I
t has been said that men truly never grow up. I would add the
caveat " some men " to that statement, but certainly it applies to
the fellas I know who take their children camping on public
lands. Myself included. There are few things as boy-like as a grown
man showing his kids the skills associated with camping. This
includes starting, tending and building a fire. Tent staking. Dutch
oven cooking. Marshmallow burning. Target shooting - arrow,
bullet or BB. Worm-drowning, aka bait fishing. And so on. The
woods bring out the boy in the man.
My dad was a tinkerer on the weekends.
That means there was always something to
fix or build around the house and my dad
was often in his workshop. He was an outstanding
carpenter, using skills he learned
in high school shop class in the 1940s to his
death in 2021 at the age of 91. I inherited
many of his tools and every time I use an
adjustable wrench or a screwdriver he once
held in his gentle, generous hand, I think of
him. It's a great, physical reminder of a man I
loved whose style I can only hope to emulate
for my own children. But it is the mental
reminders, those rare moments when it was
just the two of us playing in the woods, that
are even more tangible. Time and attention
given from one human being to another is
a gift far greater than an object of any kind
- gold, silver and gems included.
It was the 1970s and inflation was on a
gallop across our economy. Our nation was
upside down with political nonsense, and
feeding, clothing and housing a family was
not easy. Besides, there was stuff around the
house to repair. Still, we took long family
vacations by car into the flung-out deserts
of Arizona, the high mountains of Colorado,
the wide-open sagebrush sea and geysers of
46 | May 2024
Wyoming and Charlie Russell country in
Montana. But these were family trips. Fatherand-son
trips were a luxury, as was extra time
to take such a trip.
But as much as those shop tools, the intangible
memories of those events are as vivid as
if they were done yesterday, and a core piece
of my immersion into the great outdoors. Not
all of it - much of my land ethic came from
the women in my life including my mother
and her mother - but my father-son trips
were different. Perhaps this is a primal thing
dating back to a time when fathers showed
sons how to hunt the great mammoths, or
perhaps it is just a chance for a man to be a
boy and a boy to pretend to be a man.
My parents had a big Army surplus tent
they used for camping trips. It was hard to
set up and it leaked during a good rain, but
it smelled musty and wonderful. Lying in the
tent on a slowly deflating rubber air mattress
in a flannel, rectangular-canvas sleeping bag
on a mountain summer evening listening
to a light rain was magical. Sometimes on
these rare camping trips, I'd lie awake listening
to my dad snore and think about bears
and mountain lions, but mostly I felt safe.
Nothing was to be feared because my dad
was there.
Our father-son trips included elk and deer
hunts and an epic fishing trip into the Wind
River Mountains near Pinedale when I was
in my 20s and my dad in his 50s. I still have
his 1979 Ford F-150 that we bounced all the
way up to Green River Lakes that September
in 1986.
My dad also had a sidekick, a man he
almost exclusively called by his last name.
Parker was a high school football teammate
and best friend. The two grew up in
the shadow of a 14,000-foot peak in a tiny
mountain town. They kept a friendship from
beginning to end. Parker was even more outdoorsy
than dad and became my first in a
string of mentors. He showed me how to
fly-fish and gut my catch. They were about
the same age and after my dad died, I stopped
by his ranch up Sybille Creek where he lived
by himself in a ranch house and remembered
the good times in the outdoors. I wrote Parker
a long letter letting him know how pivotal
he was in my early life. It's important to let
those you treasure know your feelings before
they step out of this world.
When my own son came along I was well
into my camping, fishing and hunting years.
Wyoming Wildlife May 2024

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