09 DecDad in Smoke

When I think of my Dad many images come to mind, but one in particular stands out. He’s sitting on a rock next to small campfire cooking pancakes on a blackened griddle. The griddle is balanced unevenly on a couple of rocks over carefully placed embers. The pancake batter is running to one side of the pan mixing with the pool of bacon grease. The smoke is rising and flowing into my dad’s face. His eyes are watering making it even harder to see through the film of smoke on his glasses. He doesn’t bother to move because “the smoke would just follow.”

This image stands out because I saw it so many times over the years. The better part of my dad’s life was in the mountains in one form of employment or another. It was never just to camp. As a Boy Scout Executive he was the guide on the High Adventure trips down the Middle Fork of the Salmon and the Main Salmon River. Although the scouts and their leaders were supposed to cook their own dehydrated food I remember my dad invariably sitting in the smoke doing most of it. Somehow he could make the dehydrated eggs almost edible.

Another occupation was that of trail boss. He was the foreman of several trail building crews that crossed the summers of many years. This occupation made him motivator, guide, and father figure to a crew of mainly teenage kids who thought they were pretty tough, but who would have starved to death in those remote mountain locations had it not been for him. He was the foreman, the boss, and yet it was he who sat in the smoke morning and night cooking us our huge breakfasts and dinners. We would stand around the fire, moving out of the smoke, waiting for our food. Sometimes we would complain that although there was enough quantity there wasn’t enough variety. Dad never complained about the cooking, even after the hard day of labor on the trail, or of the smoke that always seemed to be flowing into his face no matter which side of the fire he sat on. He just sat squinting, eyes watering as he cooked and then dished out the food.

Sometimes Dad did some extra cooking after the rest of us had dispersed to do whatever we did before the dark rolled in. I never did watch how he did it, but he would somehow bake me a birthday cake over that smoky fire. It was always a double decker with chocolate frosting. He used pitch-wood as candles. I don’t think many boys got cakes like that. Once Dad made an apple pie over that fire. He was particularly fond of that. He sat it on a log to cool, forgot it was there, and then sat on it. We ate it anyway.

My dad, like most of us dads, had his weaknesses; but selfishness wasn’t one of them. Never once in all those meals on the river or on the trails did one of us offer to take his place in the smoke and cook for everyone. He never asked us to. My dad died yesterday. I don’t think I was ever an ungrateful child, but still, if I could have my wish today, it would be to go outside and find him sitting in the smoke, cooking breakfast. I would sit down in the smoke with him and say “thank you” one more time.