Outdoor dad steps inside for ultimate adventure

My daughters don’t care much for blood and guts, and that’s a healthy lesson for a Montana-born hunter-fisherman to learn.

A son might have had more interest in the 20-gauge and the five-weight fly rod I’ve made available to my daughters, but he wouldn’t necessarily have any more wilderness miles under his hipbelt.

The girls have always been game for the route less traveled.

Only recently — as the oldest daughter reached 18 and made the shift toward blazing her own trails — did I feel desperate for the waning opportunity to launch the ultimate parent-child trip.

A Canada backpacking expedition with two other father-daughter couples last summer came close, complete with a show of northern lights. But it only left the dads wanting to take one more step.

Oh, sure, my daughter and I have enjoyed plenty of quality time — breaking ski trails through the powder to backcountry huts in winter, plunging into icy wilderness lakes to rinse off the sweat and trail dust of summer. I’m humbled that she trusted me to tie the figure-8 knot securely on her harness and set the belay as she scrambled up her first vertical pitch of rock.

Now she’s 18, and so are her blonde, brunette and freckle-faced friends.

I was poring over the reasonable possibilities for the ultimate father-daughter trip — circumnavigating Mount Rainier, maybe, or rafting the Grand Canyon or bicycling across America — when Bob and Wyn, the other backpacking dads, crawled out on a limb and made an even bolder proposal:

An evening of dancing.

I had used M&Ms to lure my daughter up the last mile of trail when she was little, but we agreed we might need trickery and magic to make this plan work with teenagers.

That’s what brought 18 dads together at 5:30 p.m. one recent Saturday, standing in a corner of a large room at Center Stage. Like any good expedition, the night had been well-planned through secret meetings and e-mails, yet considerable uncertainty lurked ahead.

The trickery involved Kelli, a youth group leader who had talked the girls into welcoming some girlfriends outside their group to dress up and join them for a “Rotic Night,” that is, a romantic night without the “man.”

That’s all they knew.

As we waited for the girls to be delivered, the dad’s busied themselves with chit-chat, getting to know some of the men who hovered in the shadows of our daughters’ friendships.

We put out childhood photo displays of our daughters and ogled over the exotic strawberry desert one of the girls’ aunts had made.

Two guitarists and a fiddler were setting up at the end of the room. A slide projector held clandestine photos of the girls’ messy bedrooms for a humorous interlude to come. Wyn was getting ready to distribute a rose for each dad to give to his daughter.

When the girls arrived outside, the dads huddled out of sight in a corner. We knew we’d be the last thing on their minds on a Saturday night, and we wanted to be the last thing they saw as they entered the big room.

We grew quiet and apprehensive, like climbers waiting out a storm under a rock ledge and wondering whether lightning would strike.

Several moms had diplomatically warned us that teenage girls might not necessarily rank dancing with dads at the top of their favored ways to spend a Saturday night, especially in the last weeks of their high school careers.

I started to feel amazingly alone as I stood shoulder to shoulder with the other dads. My hands were a little clammy and I thought to myself, “My God, this is like a first date.”

I can pitch a tent against the rain or apply insect repellent to fend off mosquitoes or reach into my pack for a chocolate bar to cheer up a moody moment on the trail.

But if she doesn’t like this surprise I’m up the proverbial creek without a paddle, I thought.

I glanced over at a dad with whom I’ve shared countless father-daughter adventures. We’ve confidently teamed with our girls to canoe through whitewater rapids. But his wife confided that he’d been somewhat insecurely practicing his dance steps in the bedroom late at night when he thought everyone was asleep.

As we heard the girls’ footsteps in the hallway, his face looked as though he were dropping the bow of his canoe into a Class V.

The only major difference between this and the most important date of our lives was that none of us had developed big zits on our faces.

But I was beginning to fret about my deodorant and nose hair when the girls walked wide-eyed into the room.

They gasped, groaned, giggled and sprouted huge smiles.

They hugged us and we hugged them.

We seated them for dinner and each dad stood up and honored his daughter. The short speeches turned out by accident to be the perfect mix of humor and sentiment, laughs and tears.

Several dads mentioned they’ll miss the evenings when they found some excuse to putter and linger in the house while their daughters were home practicing the piano, flute, viola or other musical instrument.

One dad thanked his daughter for challenging him to strengthen his faith.

One recalled the day they drove out of the neighborhood with her behind the steering wheel for the first time and headed into rush-hour traffic. He estimated it was a good six minutes before his heart started beating again.

Every dad agreed the past 18 years have gone too fast.

Then we each took our girl by the arm to one more vivid memory and a hint at what we hope our daughters will expect from the other men in their lives.

The magic was provided by the musicians and Penn Fix, who trades in diamonds for Dodson’s Jewelers by day and moonlights to spread the joy of dance.

When they realized what we were going to do, the girls made the ultimate gesture of faith and confidence: They kicked off their shoes.

Fix guided us through contra dances as well as the polka, waltz, swing and fox trot, cleverly switching the couples so every dad got a chance to kick up a heel with every girl.

Some of them squealed at the thrill of a good arm-in-arm swing.

They looked us in the eye, followed our lead and assured us they don’t need it anymore.

We could see their mothers in their faces and reasons we love them both.

“My daughter seems so grown-up and happy,” one dad confided at a break. “She’s not always like this at home.”

“I think you’re seeing her for what she really is,” I said.

We recognized them for all they are — gracious and sassy, brilliant and confusing, beautiful and stormy.

It was the epiphany people reach with nature during long wilderness journeys, but an adventure you couldn’t experience without a daughter.