With my left hand managing the 297 pages of soft cover, I read.
Tim Cahill was in Mali talking to a local about money laundering. It was a crazy story and got me thinking about adventure travel. Not to West Africa to be tempted by a local with a money laundering scheme, but to a place where adventure awaits – and when the fish are on the run.
I looked at words in the windows. The gray of the afternoon became the deep blue of the evening. I looked at the eyelids facing me. My two-month-old daughter was sprawled across my chest, rising and falling to the rhythm of my breathing, making adorable sleeping baby noises.
My wife returned home after checking the game cameras on the hill behind the house. I put the book down and quietly discussed the results. There was a deer and a black wolf Tuesday morning and a gray wolf and a deer Thursday within a few hours of each other.
“I think it’s the same price.”
“It looks like it.”
It was a nice fork with a slot in the back on one side, technically a 2×3, but a deep, pronounced fork warrants that distinction, not one that is only slightly more slotted than a crab claw . That was it for the week, but my wife was happy to have a mini-adventure up the steep hill made slippery by the rain.
The baby continued to sleep while Abby went upstairs to take a shower. I returned to my book.
Intellectually, I knew I would be giving up a lot of my freedom to focus on being a father, but experiencing this made me think a lot about how my parents handled my brother and I when we were young. . Before moving to Alaska, they owned a small piece of land on a Nebraska lake and a heavy fiberglass boat that they took out on the reservoir to fish for walleye. I was in an insulated vacuum box with blankets so I could sleep. We moved to Alaska when I was five, so the memories I have are the gooey ones with salmon and the smoky ones with campfires in Forest Service cabins.
Now that I'm a dad, these memories make me even more grateful to my parents who continued their lives and careers after my brother and I were born. They included us in their adventures as much as possible so that we never became the reason they weren't having fun anymore.
I've written a lot about gratitude, but I have a whole new appreciation for the resilience of my grandparents and parents this year. Mom's father died when she was 13. He was an eighth-grade educated farm laborer who participated in the Allied liberation of Italy during World War II. Grandma grew up poor and lived on a railroad car during the Great Depression. Her mother died when she was three and her father sent her to live with cousins. She worked in a university bookstore and then survived retirement. At the time of her death, she had outlived two husbands and was broke again, but she had given my mother a better life and Mom was able to pay for her final years in a nursing home.
Like many other parents, relatives and guardians, Mom and Dad gave me a better youth than they did. We hear a lot about generational wealth, but generational security is extremely important and instilling the values of hard work and education so that we can enjoy what our parents provided for us will allow Abby and I to provide Haleigh a safe and adventure-filled childhood. .
• Jeff Lund is a freelance writer based in Ketchikan. His book, “A Miserable Paradise: Life in Southeast Alaska,” is available in local bookstores and on Amazon.com. “I went to the woods” appears twice a month in the Sporty & Juneau Empire Outdoors.
