What happened to the boy who expected Dad to help him blaze trails through the world?

One of my favorite stories is the one about the dummy who slogged through a long, difficult journey and came out at the end as a real person.

I don’t mean Pinocchio: He was a marionette, not a dummy. The dummy I’m talking about was me.

At least that’s what my 15-year-old son appeared to see more than once when we started a 10-day backpacking trip through the Sangre de Cristo mountains back in 2021.

It hadn’t been too many years earlier that he’d looked at me as a nearly infallible genius he trusted would blaze his trails through the world and figure out a way around every obstacle. So even though I’d been braced for the transformation from hero to blockhead that everyone said would be reflected in his eyes during his teenage years, it was still a jolt.

And it only got worse on that mountain trek we made with some of his friends and three other parents, as the long miles, tough climbs and tricky descents wore away the last of everyone’s patience. Any advice I gave my son there in the wilderness was likely to start a squabble. I’d say he and I growled at each other like the bears that circled our campsite one evening, but I hate to slander those peaceful bears like that.

The worst thing about a trek like that is that even though you’re in the great outdoors, there’s no real escape from the people you set out with, no matter how much you get on each other’s nerves. The guy you snapped at for being too slow hauling cooking water from the creek on a night you’re on cooking duty? Everyone else needs you to patch things up with him real quick so the two of you can cooperate at the camp stove.

The best thing about those trips is that you come to realize what a blessing forced companionship can be. When you can’t afford to stay angry, it’s easy to remember that everybody’s giving their all to power through the same trying journey you’re on.

So the boy started to show a grudging respect for me as we got further down the trail, until by the end his exhaustion had stopped wearing down his patience and it was that “grudging” that disappeared instead.

By the time we got on the train for home, he was treating me like a respected peer, someone whose advice and opinions suddenly might be worth considering alongside his own. By getting through the same tough journey that had pushed his body to its limit — and forming the same fun memories through it all — I’d earned recategorization in his head from out-of-touch old dummy to real man, just like he considered himself to be.

I’ve been thinking about our trek a lot in the past couple months as that boy and I have been on another difficult journey together.

Shoot, there I go forgetting again: Not “boy.” My older son, who I still vividly remember sleeping in my arms as a tiny baby, is 18 now, but I’m having a hard time keeping him fixed in my head in his new category of “man.”

Anyway, yeah, that man and I have been on a difficult journey together lately. This one’s been testing our spirits, not our bodies.

Right after he graduated high school and turned his focus to leaving home for college, the hard-earned respect between us started to fray. I felt like this time in his life, when he was about to leave the safety of our home, was when he most needed advice from his mom and me. But the more we tried to share the wisdom of our years with our son, the worse we’d see him tense up and roll his eyes, like he could barely stand us.

I was getting more and more fed up with his attitude, telling myself that I wasn’t going to put up with that kind of disrespect from my boy.

Then I happened to read Goethe’s observation that the hardest thing to see is what’s right in front of you, and I noticed that what had been in front me all summer was a remarkably capable man. Still young, sure, but also book smart, streetwise, strong, resourceful, self-motivated and kind.

I might not have been treating him like a dummy, but I was definitely treating him like a kid who needed adult help to stay on the right trail instead of a real person eager to start his own life.

That son is away at school now. My wife and I miss him, but I’m thankful I managed to start seeing him for who he is in time for us to share one more trip, on the day he moved from his childhood bedroom to his dorm.

He sat confidently in the driver’s seat while I rode passenger and listened to some of his high-school stories that I’d never heard before. I told him about my college days and couldn’t stop myself from giving some advice. He heard me out, thought about what I said, and offered up his own opinion.

It’s a treasured memory, just me and my son on the road, talking man to man.

Richard Espinoza is a former editor of the Johnson County Neighborhood News. You can reach him at respinozakc@yahoo.com.