Camping with boys is the same as camping with girls in a global sense. But there’s a world of difference in the details.
My daughters don’t care much for blood and guts, and that’s a healthy lesson for a Montana-born hunter-fisherman to learn.
When our kids were growing up, special occasions and vacations usually involved doing something special outdoors. My favorite Father’s Day treat was loading one of my daughters in the bow and making a splash in the annual Spokane River Canoe Classic.
The wolf serenade had started with a solo, a deep bass introduction to the wildest choral arrangement a human will ever hear.
My dad gave me an aluminum canoe in 1971 for my high school graduation present. It’s still in the family, mostly retired since we entered the age of Kevlar but earning its keep as a durable roof over our dog pen. Every dent signifies an early lesson learned, and there’s a lot of them.
Only as an afterthought did John and Jess Roskelley talk about the corpses in their route through the Death Zone of Mount Everest. On May 30, 2003, their first morning back in Spokane and 10 days after standing on top of the world’s highest peak, the father-son team woke to other concerns in a strange land they call home.
For 16 years after becoming (briefly) the youngest American to summit the world’s highest peak, Jess Roskelley continued to pack his life with achievement – earning income and accolades as a welder, tying the knot with the woman of his dreams and climbing into an elite echelon of American mountaineering – before it all came to a sudden tragic end in the Canadian Rockies.
The pureness of the Bikecentennial mission captured my heart and led me years later to serve on its board as the nonprofit transitioned to Adventure Cycling. I could think of nothing more purely beneficial to civilization and the planet than encouraging more people to ride bikes. I was a wide-eyed Montanan who knew little about the real world except that I wanted to see it. The bicycle was my vehicle to that end, breaking down barriers like a tank.
Pedaling across the United States stands out from my numerous lifetime adventures because of the time invested.
