RENAISSANCE DAD
Love Means
Never Having to Wear Hiking Boots
Ah, my life is good. She leans down, her lips brushing my ear, and whispers…
, wa iia n Cruise Ba bymo on Ha d! ire qu re ing no hik
20th Ann iversar y, Os ter ville Wa shingon
My hiking boots? Oh yes, today we’re going hiking.
Each year I swear that I’ve learned my lesson, that next year I will find us a cushy resort with a nice ocean-view wayside to sit and compare notes while sipping my bacon-mocha latte, and enjoy the beauty of God’s creation as He intended . . . from the padded comfort of heated bucket seats.
Crap.
Apparently, a year is too long to remember such things.
Our annual State-of-the-Perkins Hike began on our second anniversary, while strolling lazily down the beach and holding hands as we remembered aloud the highlights of our first year. Now it’s an entrenched activity, complete with maps, notepads, planners, and pens. It’s our opportunity to sum up the events of the last twelve months and set goals of the coming year.
The parking lot is cool and quiet, and blanketed in the soft whispers of the sea and a scent of brine. The trailhead map shows a chipper dotted line leading through the forest. Starlings warble a sweet spring song from high above.
Example: Vic: “What do you think about paying off the car, and putting that payment in Gracie’s college fund?”
An hour later I’m slogging the muddy edge of a dizzying cliff-side trail, scraping pine needles from my dragging tongue as I suck curious chipmunks from the surrounding branches with each gasp.
“Don’t forget to wear your hiking boots.”
Me: “Gasp . . . WHEEZE . . . Gasp . . .” It’s a very productive time for us. Increasingly, however, it also tends to be a grueling, sweating, death-march up some nearly non-existent goat-trail (a very small, inebriated goat) to some gray stretch of ocean, a waterfall or, heaven help me . . . another lighthouse.
It’s all a trap.
What the chipper little line didn’t elaborate upon is that the peninsula runs, like a rocky spine, all the way out to the point (and lighthouse), crossing and re-crossing this ridge, and dropping far down the slope on either side before starting back up, gaining and losing altitude like a seagull on crack. Freely translated: 49 percent of the hike is straight up, and my bulging eyeballs are continued on next page
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Vancouver Family Magazine • www.vancouverfamilymagazine.com • February 2019
Photos cour tesy of Perr
Spring sunshine creeps through the curtains, throwing lacey shadows across the thick comforter of our hotel bed. Victoria, the amazing woman who became wife on this very morning, years ago, appears with a tall, steaming carafe of coffee.
y P. Perkins
By Perry P. Perkins