.Pistos

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I need to tell a story with this one, so pull up a chair. I've been running a camp for 12 years for families who home school. The whole family goes, though sometimes one parent can't make it due to work. This young man has been hiking with me since he was nine. His dad often couldn't make the camp, but the boy was dying to go on long hikes with the teenagers. The first one he went on was 11 miles. I told him he could come, but I wasn't carrying him back. He and I were the last to return as the teens ran ahead. He really dragged the last 1.5 miles (I took a short cut so it was only 8 miles), but he made it and he was so proud. The next year he wanted to go again. He was going to prove to his dad that he was strong enough to hike with him in Arizona for two days. That year, it was near the end of the week and no one else wanted to go on a long hike, so it was just him and me. He had a battered old camera that barely worked, but he started taking pictures. We pulled over 50 ticks off of him that year. The next year I "just happened" to bring an old camera that I loaned to him. Again only he and I wanted to go on a long hike. I think we pulled over 40 ticks off of me. I learned not to wear purple in the woods. Two years ago, he was running with the teenagers and decided to climb a cliff. He didn't make it and rolled all the way down. At least his dad was there on that hike and saw the whole thing. The boy jumped up and said, as boys do, "I'm all right!" I caught up with him as he was hobbling down the path in a torn t-shirt. All I said was, "I told you years ago, I'm not carrying you back." The boy is now a 6'4" athletic 18-year-old. We went on several hikes with others, but he told me on the next to last day of camp, "I really just want to go on a hike with just you." So off we went on a short one, which was all we had time for. "Mr. Hamilton, I remember this trail being a whole lot longer." "You were a whole lot shorter then." Ah, the memories!