Doc: Father and son find common ground hiking through mountains
All the world we could ever want rose and fell before us, at the top of the Upper Falls at Graveyard Fields. This part of the southern Blue Ridge heaves and rolls, like linen sheets on an unmade bed. Mountains are tributes to the beauty that patience can create.
I turned to my son and said, "I wait all year for this.''
He said he knew the feeling. "Best days of the year.''
Kelly is 29 now. When he was 14, he and I made our first trek to these fine old hills. Back then, I referred to him in print (and occasionally in person) as The Kid Down The Hall. The label was supposed to be funny, but not lacking truth. Fourteen is not the kindest age for boys. It's not the greatest time to be a parent, either. Mutual tolerance is the best we can expect.
From 2014:A father, a son, a mountain of memories
Kerry and I saw him at dinner and occasionally on those weekend mornings he didn't sleep until noon. Kelly lived in that middle distance familiar to adolescence, a world apart from his parents. I joked that I couldn't always recall his name. Hence, The Kid Down The Hall.
For several years, I'd made the trip to the mountains alone. I liked it that way, a few days knocking through the deep woods, just me and my head. Hiking solo can be cleansing, if you don't mind your own company. Kerry suggested I take Kelly with me.
"Absolutely not,'' I said.
The last thing I wanted on that trip to contemplation was to worry about a moody companion. Even the notion of it annoyed me. Kerry suggested it would be good for him and possibly for both of us. Wonderful, I thought. Two people who didn't especially like each other's company, forced to spend 72 hours together. What a great idea.
I agreed to it, reluctantly, because the part of me that wasn't always mad at Kelly wanted very much to connect with him again, to rejoin his life. To be where we were just a few years earlier, when I was Dad, a pretty smart, cool guy.
"OK,'' I said. "I'll take him. But he's doing everything I do, when I want to do it.''
The first year wasn't great. One day it rained, so I ended up taking him to the mall in Asheville: A fate worse than death. Kelly had his earbuds and his GameBoy. He brought his silence with him.
The second year wasn't much better. "We didn't say 10 words all weekend,'' I said when we got back. "I'm not taking him next year. He doesn't enjoy it.''
Kerry said that was wrong. "He loves it. He tells me all the time how much fun he has with you.''
You could have knocked me over with a rhododendron bloom. "He what?''
"Yeah. He raves about it,'' Kerry said.
I knocked on Kelly's bedroom door, Down The Hall. "You like going to North Carolina with me?''
"Yeah, Dad,'' he said, in that weary voice 14-year-olds use to fix the boundaries between themselves and their clueless parents.
"You don't say anything.''
"I don't need to. The time down there speaks for itself.''
Well.
I was stunned that a 15-year-old could fashion such a poetic tribute to how I felt about those precious few days. I was floored that it came from this particular 15-year-old.
OK, I said. Same time next year.
It got better after that. We'd mention the trip on the hardest of winter days. We'd plan the hikes. We fussed about the music in the car on the way down. We spent lots of time conquering trails and saying nothing. Meaningful silence, because the time down there spoke for itself.
Every year got better. Gets better, 15 years and counting. Kelly snapped out of his kid funk (they all do) and has become a man in full. I like to think I helped with that, but I know most of it was just a matter of evolution. And, possibly, an annual festival of wandering. A tribute to the beauty that patience can create.
Kelly and I still share the simple solace of tromping trails. What a joy we found, 15 summers ago. What started as a way for a dad to try to connect with his sometimes wayward and unreachable son has become a gift and an heirloom. Someday, he will take his kids, and he will say, "This is where grandpa and I hiked.''
In January, when the days are pinched and hard and summer seems a rumor, I will close my eyes and see the perch we occupy atop the Upper Falls at Graveyard Fields. Sun on our backs, all the world we want. Feeling the need to do nothing. Connecting, the way the mountains connect to the sky.
And I will smile a grateful smile.