The first time you ever had hot chocolate

Dec. 28, 2010: Kieran and Dad
prepare to take the sled for a ride down
an incline on the Pacific Crest Trail.

As researching material for my upcoming hiking books (which includes a section on winter hiking), I recalled a time we'd gone up into the Angeles National Forest so you could play in the snow - something we rarely got to see or do when in Southern California's desert (Though you'll soon be playing a lot in the snow now that you're in Minnesota/Wisconsin).

I premade hot cocoa/chocolate for us to keep warm when up there and put it in the equivalent of a Thermos bottle. We didn't open it until back in the Jeep Patriot for the ride down the mountain. By then, you were a little chilled, so I changed you into warm, dry clothes.

And then I offered you a cup of hot chocolate. You took a sip, and your face absolutely lit up! You drank it quickly and asked for more. Though only 3 years old, you were so careful not to spill it lest you no longer have any to drink!

I think you enjoyed three whole cupfuls that drive down the mountain. And then, tuckered out from a day of playing in the snow, the warmth of the Jeep's heater, and all of the hot chocolate in your belly, you slipped off into the most peaceful-looking sleep I'd ever seen you enjoy.

OK, answers to yesterday's "Caillou" trivia:
1. Grandma
2. Gilbert
3. Brunette (black or dark brown, though the books showed her with red hair)
4. Rosie
5. Rexy (his blue T-rex dinosaur)

Remember 'Caillou' books and programs?

Do you remember watching "Caillou" on television? You started really paying attention to it when you were in your two's and then fell absolutelyin love with it during your three's and just as you turned four (mainly because Caillou himself was four - in fact, you used to say, "I'm four just like Caillou!").

We had quite a few Caillou books that I purchased for you or checked out from the library. You always enjoyed reading them, especially those you could interact with by pulling tabs or lifting flaps (Flap books by far were your favorite books as a toddler and preschooler!).

Because Calliou was made in Canada, not all of the programs were available in Southern California. So I sometimes would go on YouTube and find new episodes for you to watch!

Caillous toys were just coming out as you were starting to outgrow the series. And they were darn expensive! So I made Caillou "action figures" for you by printing out pictures of the characters and taping them to old blocks you no longer played with.

OK, time for some "Caillou" trivia:
1. Which character narrated the program?
2. What was the name of Caillou's cat?
3. What color hair did Caillou's mommy have?
4. What was the name of Caillou's sister?
5. What stuffy did Caillou once lose at a museum?

The top rated Beatles songs

Listened to my usual schedule of Sunday radio programs, and one of them played the Top 20 charting Beatles songs. I know you would have loved listening to it, too, while we played together and enjoyed breakfast. I didn't catch the first part, but here is the "countdown" of the top songs:
7. Help!
6. I Feel Fine
5. Yesterday
4. Get Back
3. Can't Buy Me Love
2. I Want to Hold Your Hand
1. Hey Jude

A good list, but I wouldn't say so those are my seven favorite Beatles songs. Of course, the countdown was of songs that made the Top 40 charts (so they had to be 45 rpm singles), and there are a lot of great Beatles tunes that only appeared on albums (or what you call now CDs). Here's my list of favorite Beatles songs:
7. Come Together
6. She Loves You
5. I Want to Hold Your Hand
4. Let It Be
3. Hey Jude
2. Strawberry Fields Forever
1. Yesterday

What are you favorite Beatles songs?

County fair memories of dad

Yesterday your cousins Bryan and Rebekah went to the county fair; sure wish we were together so I could take you there as well. It's a small little thing, really, nothing so fancy as Disneyland, but it's still a lot of fun.
As a little kid, it's about the only place I ever went to go on carnival rides! For me, a kid living on a farm miles away from anyone else, during summer the fair also was a rare chance to see other children and possibly even friends. One day should you ever read my fiction, any scene set at a fair almost certainly is a memory of mine from the county fair.

I remember that one year I saw a booth in which they had iron-ons and could make T-shirts for you. They had this great Beatles iron-on of the "Let It Be" cover. This was in the days long before the Internet, and Menomonie (the town outside of which was my parents' farm) had few stores, none of which would carry such stuff. So I saved up money the next summer before the fair arrived in hopes that the same booth would return with the same iron-on and T-shirt. It did, and that T-shirt was my pride and joy!

Maybe next summer we'll finally be together for the fair!

So you want to know what you should do

One of my regrets in being kept apart from you, my son, is that I'm not there to listen to you when problems arise. You're rapidly approaching that age when other people's seemingly inexplicable behavior leads you to wonder what to do and why they behave that way, when the black and white ethics of childhood that says what one's parents dictate as right all so often proves inadequate. I myself am facing that difficult choice today about someone I deeply love and care about.

You'll notice that I didn't say "answer your questions" when you face such problems, because often after explaining them to someone you love and trust, you'll ask, "What should I do, Dad?" or "What should I do, Grandma?" If dad and grandma are wise, they won't give you a lecture about what to do but instead will ask you a series of questions to help you wrap your head around the problem. You're a good, intelligent kid, and you probably have the answer inside you; you just needed someone to help you think through it and listen to you, just to show that someone cared. That's what you really wanted - and needed - after all.

I wish I could be there to listen to and help you think through the problem. In my absence, let me simply ask you, "What would you want someone to do to or for you if you were in that situation?" The answer probably is what you should do for that person. It's basically the Golden Rule: Do unto others as they would do unto you. Treat others as you expect to treat them. To wit, if your friend is getting robbed of his lunch money by the school bully, and you're wondering what to do, ask yourself what you want a friend to do if you were the kid getting robbed of his lunch money.

I don't know if that really helps. A problem almost always is more complicated to resolve than what I've described. But it's a good question to ask. Just look at a picture of me, tell me what's on your mind knowing that if I really were physically there I'd listen with as much attentiveness, and know the first question I'd ask is "What would you want someone to do to or for you if you were in that situation?" I'm betting that you probably know what is the right thing to do.

You're in the newspaper again!

Your name and picture again appeared in a newspaper this week, this time the Hudson (Wis.) Star-Observer. It was a story about my new hiking book. Of course, your picture is on the cover of my two hiking books, and your name appears in the article.

You've been in a lot of newspapers and articles since being born. Guess it has something to do with me being in journalism and promoting my books, but it also has something to do with you being one damn cute kid.

When I was the editor of the paper in Crescent City, Calif., your picture appeared twice, once with an article I wrote about hiking a trail there and the other as part of a lifestyles story about parents getting help with thier children. You were an infant in both instances. Later that same year, your photo appeared in the Halloween contest section of the Eureka, Calif., newspaper.

When we live in Palmdale, you got in the the local paper, The Antelope Valley Press, with us looking at planes during a monthly Mojave air show.We also appeared a couple of times in the California City, Calif., paper that covered the air show.

And you've been in tons of newspapers (and on blog sites) in association with my hiking books. Among them is the Dunn County (Wis.) News and the North County Times out of Esconido, Calif.

I've saved all the clippings I could find. Can't wait to show them to you one day!

Excerpt from essay I wrote about hiking, fatherhood and you

I've been going through my files and found a wonderful essay, "Leap into the Void," that I wrote in January 2010. It is to be the lead essay in my book "Trails and Trials: Tribulations of Being a Father" in which various hikes I go on with you serve as metaphors or analogs for the insecurities and growth one undergoes in fatherhood.

Other matters have sidetracked me from working on the book, but I have each of the essays outlined; this is the only one that is finished. I plan to eventually complete the other ones. For the moment, though, I'd like to include a bit of it here for you:

We stepped over boulders that diverted the creek away from the cliffside, then headed right up to the wall. I placed my hand upon it, realized how delicate the formation really was as sandstone rubbed off beneath my palm. Wind and rain – though more of the latter than the former in the desert – over millennia had picked holes in the Narrow’s walls, like my hand hollowing out the canyonsides a few grains at a time. I grinned like a child making a new discovery. Up close, the rock really was more gray than white; the gleaming bright walls were another optical illusion. Still, there were plenty of white splotches, or leached calcium carbonate, which water easily had flushed between the formation’s individual sand grains down through the ages.

Kieran pressed against my back, stretched his hand toward the canyon wall. I turned to the side so he could reach it. His fingers ran against the siltstone, and he squealed with delight.

My eyes followed the canyon wall upward past the pockmarks and the barren tops. The moon, as white as the sunlit rock above us, hung motionless in the turquoise sky. Now there would be a hike to take, I thought, a walk on the moon, bounding gleefully at the edge of ancient craters, the stars above sharper than any man had ever seen them before, on a fantastic journey in which humanity finally left its womb called Earth.