Catharsis

 If you’ve been following my Facebook updates or reading these blog entries, you may have found yourself concerned for me. You may even have thought—“Wow, Ben’s really going through it.”

And fair enough. I’ve been writing openly about some deeply personal things, many of which are, by any measure, traumatic. I understand how that can land with readers.

For some, my candor might even feel unsettling. Perhaps you’re a colleague, or someone I haven’t spoken to since elementary school. Maybe you only know me through one narrow chapter of my life—Seattle classrooms, Montana summers, or the theatre stage—and these posts feel like stepping into a room you weren’t meant to enter. That’s the curious nature of social media, isn’t it? We catch glimpses of people we once brushed shoulders with, long ago, as if our paths are ships passing in the night and now—through a glowing screen—we peer into one another’s worlds again.

I know I’ve shared more than your average poster. Certainly more than the breezy snapshots of vacations and dinners out. I’ve been writing about estrangement, about the shadows of family-of-origin conflict, and I’ve tried to do so with sincerity and vulnerability. The truth is: I’ve lived in a long fog of gaslighting and manipulation. When people are skilled at it, they know exactly where your soft spots are and press them relentlessly. Over time, you start questioning not only your memories but your very sense of right and wrong. That disorientation has been part of my reality.

So yes—if you drop into my world for a moment and think, “He’s really going through it”—you wouldn’t be wrong. But I want to pause here and name something important: this is what catharsis looks like. Catharsis is not indulgence or wallowing. It’s a cleansing. A renewal. It’s the way writing, for me, becomes a tool not just for expression but for survival.

In a season when certain family members have tried to isolate me, to twist my actions into malice despite my attempts at peace, I’ve needed catharsis. I’ve needed change. And I’ve needed you.

I’ve needed witnesses. Observers. People who can connect, identify, or simply look on objectively. People who can hold me accountable, not as judge or jury, but as those who once crossed paths with me somewhere in the mosaic of my life. Because I believe we are measured not by the mistakes we make but by the way we meet adversity. At least, I hope that’s true. God, I hope that’s true.

Yes, I’ve made mistakes. We all have. And while I’ll save that catalog for another time, I will say this: the feedback I’ve received recently has been overwhelmingly positive. Many of you have reached out with sympathy, with encouragement, and—most strikingly—with recognition. So many have written to tell me that they, too, live with estrangement. That they, too, know what it feels like to be mistreated for years or even decades by people who were supposed to love them most. It makes me wonder: why do we put up with it at all?

But when the family-of-origin fails us—when they cannot or will not provide the feedback, affirmation, or love that allows us to grow—then we must find it elsewhere. That’s where you come in. That’s what this blog is for.

Your responses, both public and private, have been deeply gratifying. They remind me that struggle is lighter when shared. That community—however loosely woven—matters. They’ve even propelled me toward art: I’ve taken this energy, this catharsis, and poured it into a play that has now been published. I don’t mention that as a sales pitch, but as a testament to what can happen when we transform pain into story, and story into something that might resonate with others.

So let me be clear: I’m OK. In fact, I’m doing really well. This writing is not a cry for help; it is the help. It is my catharsis. And I’m so thankful to those of you who’ve reached back across the years, across the ether of the internet, to say: I see you. I hear you. I’ve been there too.

I’ve been writing my whole life. I have boxes of journals to prove it—volumes I never had the courage to share. Who would care? Who would want to read all that? That is the perennial author’s conundrum. And yes, when I once dared to share my writing with certain family members (the same ones who are now estranged), my words were met not with encouragement but with scorn. They tore them apart. And yet—here I am, still writing.

Because what do they know?

I’m good, folks. Truly. And I’m grateful for all of you who take the time to read, reflect, and respond. Please keep reaching out if something resonates. Please keep loving your people fiercely—whether they are family by blood or by choice. Please cling tightly to your compassion, kindness, and integrity in this era that so often tests them.

Thank you.

—Ben

What It Looks Like When a Mother Disowns Her Son

This is the letter I sent to my mother and my brother just days ago:

"I want to reach out with sincerity and openness. I believe the time has come for me to offer to meet—either with one or both of you—to talk things through. I hold the belief that even deep conflict can be worked through when met with humility, vulnerability, and honesty. If we choose to have a conversation, I will bring all of those values with me.

Whether we meet together or separately is entirely up to you. What matters most to me is creating space for the possibility of repair. If the distance between us is to remain, I want to be clear that it won’t be for lack of effort or willingness on my part to seek common ground.

I'm sending this same message to both of you in the interest of transparency. ****, I’ve included you as well—and I apologize if that feels unexpected—because the three of us are currently part of a closed loop that, in my view, is not helping any of us move forward.

This isn’t easy for me to write, but it’s written with care and hope. I remain open to whatever steps might lead to clarity, healing, or simply a better understanding of one another.

Warmly,
Ben"

I redacted the name of my brother’s partner here, but included her in the email. I wasn’t sure it was the right move. I’m still not. But silence and triangulation have done more harm than good, and I’ve grown weary of shadows. When I am accountable only to the two of them, and they are accountable only to each other, the whole dynamic starts to tilt.

The response came quickly:

“Ben,

I appreciate your note but unfortunately the bridges have been burned.

Lynne”

That was it. No follow-up. No questions. Just the striking clarity of a closed door.

She did mention, elsewhere in the message, that she’d still like to see my son—her grandson—and has asked to pick him up for an event. I’ve left that portion out here, but I’ll return to it.

Because first, I need to say this:
This is what it looks like when a parent finally decides their child is just too much.
Too direct. Too unwilling to swallow it all quietly anymore.
Too determined to speak a truth that’s been aching in his chest for too long.

Her response—the finality of it—reeks of defense and sanctimony. As I’ve said before, it’s the same posture I’ve felt from her for years: a thick fog of denial and wounded righteousness that leaves no room for anything tender or complex.

I am not claiming to be blameless. I am not.
But I do believe that my letter was written with sincerity, with humility, with a deep desire to understand and be understood. It wasn’t a weapon; it was a reaching hand.

And here’s where the irony cuts deep. My mother spent decades in ministry. She was a United Church of Christ reverend—an institution rooted in community, justice, and the sacredness of reconciliation. I was made to sit in those pews throughout my youth. And while the trappings of “church” never quite held for me, I still carry some of those deeper teachings. Especially the ones about accountability.

I remember the verses. The ones about logs in our own eyes. About forgiveness as a practice, not a performance. About conflict not as sin, but as an opportunity to grow closer, to listen deeply, to hold complexity with grace.

These teachings were not lost on me. They just didn’t seem to take root in her.

Everyone walks their own spiritual path, of course. And we are all prone to blindness when it comes to our own pain. I know that. God, I know that. But here’s what I also know: I tried. I reached out. I asked for a conversation. I opened the door.

And she closed it.

Maybe it’s pride. Maybe it’s shame. Maybe it’s a mix of both.
I’ve written before about her addiction—alcoholism—and how it shaped so much of my life. How I carried the weight of it silently for years. How I tried to speak about it without blame, without cruelty, just...truthfully. And how, when I did, I was met not with empathy, but dismissal. Accusations of exaggeration. Guilt. Minimization. Gaslighting.

So I stopped engaging. I set boundaries. I protected my peace. I chose to step away not out of hatred, but out of self-preservation.

And still, I never said the bridge was burned.
I simply waited to see if there was anyone willing to meet me halfway.

What’s especially painful is how this boundary I’ve drawn has been twisted—weaponized, even. My mother claims I’ve withheld my son from her. That I’ve imposed impossible conditions on their time together. These claims have been made to others, and more disturbingly, to my son and his mother. But they are false.

Every visit that has been requested has happened. I’ve made time. I’ve arranged logistics. I’ve never once said no, except when scheduling truly made it impossible. My son is not a pawn. He’s a person. And while I do everything I can to shield him from this mess, there are only so many layers I can protect him with.

Lately, my brother—who had long been mostly distant—has taken to frequent texts with my son. More contact in the last few months than in the prior several years. Suddenly there are invitations, overtures, even offers of international travel. The tone of these messages carries a familiar ring: guilt cloaked in suggestion, manipulation disguised as care.

It’s subtle. But I see it. And I worry about it.
And I trust that in time, my son will too.

Because he’s bright. He’s loving. He’s discerning. And more than anything, I want to keep showing up in ways that he can be proud of. Not as someone who retaliated, but as someone who stayed steady. Someone who told the truth, stood firm in his boundaries, and loved without conditions.

As for me... my feelings about my mother’s response are still unfolding. I only received her message yesterday. There’s a strange confluence of emotion inside me: sadness, shock, and—if I’m honest—a sliver of relief.

Relief, because something final has finally been spoken.

Not by me. I never lit the match.
But now that she has declared the bridge burned, I can stop waiting at the edge of it.

The ambiguity that has clouded this relationship for years has begun to clear. There’s pain in that clarity, yes. But also—finally—space. Space to breathe. To heal. To walk forward without constantly glancing backward.

And so I walk.

I walk forward with sadness in one hand and hope in the other.
I walk knowing that the story is still unfolding, even if some chapters have ended.
I walk with faith—not the kind they tried to instill in church, but the kind I’ve fought for on my own terms.

Faith in truth.
Faith in time.
Faith in love that doesn’t require silence to survive.

I am held by a partner who shows me every day what care looks like. I am buoyed by friends who see me clearly. I do meaningful work. I am, I believe, a good father. And finally—finally—I’m beginning to build a life where I don’t have to prove or explain my worth in order to be at peace.

The rubble of a burned bridge is painful to stand in. But it is also the beginning of solid ground.

And from here, I move forward.

Brotherhood

 It’s time I wrote about my brother, Jaxon.

This isn’t meant to shame anyone—but it is time to be honest. Time to bring things into the light. I’ve been wrestling with the meaning of family—what it is, what it was—and what it has cost. That struggle has brought me, unavoidably, to Jaxon.

You may know him as 'Dan' or 'Daniel.'  He changed his name some years ago from Daniel Fitch to Jaxon Ravens.

Trying to make sense of our relationship is difficult. There’s no clean thread to follow—just a tangle of memory, grief, and bewilderment.

About ten years ago, I was going through a divorce—one that defied simple labels like “amicable” or “messy.” My ex had entered a new relationship before she found the courage to tell me. She decided she wanted to move across the country with our son. It was, to say the least, a deeply destabilizing time. In the midst of the custody proceedings, my father died—and then, within a week, my brother Kevin passed too. It was a devastating period. I was unmoored.

My father, a photographer of civil rights leaders and cultural moments, had donated much of his work to Stanford shortly before his death. He left the modest proceeds—and his remaining possessions, including his prints and personal items—to be divided equally among his three living children: Jaxon, our older half-sister, and me.

At the time, I was living in Los Angeles. Jaxon was in Seattle. We met in the Bay Area to settle our father’s affairs and to hold memorials for both Dad and Kevin. I had come prepared to take on the practical burdens: I installed a hitch on my battered Crown Vic so I could haul a U-Haul trailer filled with my father's belongings—prints, instruments, recording gear, a canoe, even a car.

Neither Jaxon nor our sister brought anything to transport items. I assumed, given the circumstances, that I was temporarily acting as caretaker of what our father left behind. I packed the prints—images of King, Chavez, Dorothy Day, and lesser-known faces that made up my father’s body of work—while Jaxon took friends, and my son, to the beach to scatter our father’s ashes. Later he mentioned that he had gifted some prints to friends. He didn’t specify which ones, nor whether he’d consulted our sister.

Back in Los Angeles, I became the quiet steward of these artifacts. Though my father’s photographs were made public domain—he had always said they were “borrowed” from their subjects and should be returned—their emotional significance remained intact. I didn’t see urgency in redistributing them. They moved with me from apartment to apartment, finally landing in a secured closet when I settled in Seattle. I hung three on my wall—ones that had always hung in my father’s home. Familiar. Meaningful.

Years passed in silence on the topic—no questions, no offers of help, no mention of the photos from either sibling.

Then one summer, Jaxon reached out, ostensibly to coordinate plans with my son during his visit. I assumed he wanted to plan a trip with us—something outdoors, as we often did. But I soon realized that he wasn’t asking to join us—he was trying to find out when we’d be gone. He proposed coming into my home while we were away to “catalog” the photographs.

The pretense alarmed me. After years of no engagement on the subject, his sudden interest—and the method by which he pursued it—raised every red flag. I told him no, but assured him I’d prioritize organizing the collection in the fall, once my son was back with his mother.

He did not take that well.

What followed was pressure, then demands. He began sending curt messages insisting I return a ukulele and a bottle of rum—items he claimed I’d borrowed or consumed. I returned them. Then I documented every photograph, created a full catalog, and shared it with both siblings. Still—nothing from our sister. Jaxon, however, escalated.

He began sending daily emails. The same message, over and over: “Where are Dad’s photos and what have you done with them?” Every day. For over a year and a half. Not a mass-mail automation. He was sending them manually, obsessively. A ritual of suspicion. A practice of hostility.

Never once did he pick up the phone. Never once did he say, “Let’s talk.”

Instead, he leaned further into pressure tactics—persistent, exacting, and devoid of empathy. I responded with transparency. This was during the height of the pandemic, which made physical meetings difficult, but I offered to coordinate a virtual conversation. I even offered to fly our sister out. I shared all updates and emails.

He did not engage.

Then something unsettling happened. My son and I were walking through a thrift store parking lot when a car pulled up beside us. We looked up—it was Jaxon. He saw us, made eye contact…and then accelerated away, fast, kicking up dust behind him. My son, around ten at the time, looked up at me and asked, “Was that Uncle Jack? Why did he do that?”

A fair question.

Eventually, I had enough. I told both siblings: if we didn’t meet to discuss distribution, I would divide the collection myself. There was no more room for endless deferral, and I no longer wanted to carry the emotional burden of stewardship alone—especially as it was being twisted into an accusation.

I sorted the photos into three groups. I kept three pieces—the same ones that had hung in my home for years. The rest I split between my siblings, giving the majority to Jaxon, as he seemed the most invested in the outcome. I placed his collection in a storage unit and gave him the code. He retrieved them within hours.

Still, it wasn’t over.

Despite refusing to participate in any collaborative process, he declared my distribution illegitimate. On my birthday, he sent a long message accusing me of violating state and federal law. He claimed my home would be searched, that I was harboring stolen property, and that I could face arrest and fines of up to $10,000.

Then, the night before Thanksgiving, he escalated further—sending a similar email to me and to my friends, asserting that I was a liar and a thief. He warned them that if they had any prints from me, they were now in possession of stolen goods.

The response I got from friends? Concern. Not for me—but for him.

I reached out to my estranged mother, thinking she should know her son might be struggling mentally. Her reply? “You and your brother have obviously had a falling out. You should talk.”

A masterclass in ignoring the obvious. And perhaps a glimpse into a family dynamic I’ve only recently begun to recognize.

Then, on Christmas Eve, another message—more accusations, and a new low: he invoked our dead brother, Kevin, and our father, saying they would be ashamed of me.

All this, after receiving the vast majority of the photographs.

I tried. I held the line with boundaries that anyone would find reasonable. I acted with integrity. But the fallout was heartbreaking. Friendships were lost. I can only imagine the narratives he spun to others—if he sent those kinds of emails to people close to me, what might he have said in private, behind closed doors?

This kind of sustained hostility leaves marks. I’m sad—for what was lost, and for who he’s become. I worry for him. There are signs of instability, maybe even substance issues—something my sister once quietly suggested.

But I’ll never really know. Because there’s no way back that I can see.

Some conflicts aren’t meant to be resolved. Some stories don’t get a reconciliatory ending.

And that has to be enough.

Mother’s Day

I am estranged from my mother.

She once said—though not to me directly, but loud enough for me to hear—that I “want nothing from her.” What she meant was that I refused the gifts she offered. A more accurate statement would be: I declined what was on offer.

Because of course I wanted something from her. She’s my mother.

But I’ve come to accept that she lacks the capacity to offer the things I truly needed—empathy, forgiveness, grace, humility, and above all, love. The gifts I longed for were never on the table. And the ones she did extend—plane tickets, event options for my son—were never given freely. They were conditional, transactional. They required me to engage in a kind of emotional barter, to name and acknowledge the price of what I was receiving.

That always felt wrong to me. Dirty. Weighted. A gift, in my understanding, should be freely given—not something I’d be made to pay for later, emotionally or otherwise. My instincts told me that accepting anything would come at a cost I wasn’t willing to bear. And so, I declined.

Saying “He wants nothing from me” is easier for her than asking why I didn’t accept. Because the answer is complicated—and painful. The truth is, the emotional toll of accepting her gifts always felt far too steep. I learned, over time, that nothing came free.

There are many reasons we’re estranged, but this—this dynamic of withholding and debt—is central.

Children often hope to inherit something meaningful from their parents—not just wealth or property, but a legacy of care. A foundation of love. A sense that, “My parents built something for me because they believed in me.”

But the equity I needed—emotional, not material—was never invested in me. That account is empty. And when I finally accepted that, I stopped trying. Or maybe I stopped hoping. I’ll never really know if she ever tried at all.

Meanwhile, my brother—calculating, obsessive—has ensured he inherited all the tangible family assets. The house I lived in with her while he was away at college, the house where she drank herself into unconsciousness in the basement—its years of appreciation in the Seattle real estate market now belong solely to him, although he never lived there as a child. He made sure of it. He guards his stake with threats and vitriol, daring anyone to challenge him. It’s a fight I’ve chosen not to have.

If it was ever a contest: you win, brother. I just hope you find peace in those bricks and deeds, because greed and malice extract their own price in time.

As for me, I reached a point where I simply couldn’t keep engaging with this version of family. My mother’s offers—however well-intentioned—were too fraught. Gifts that required negotiation, measurement, a receipt of worth. I would rather go without than bring that weight into my relationship with my son.

I would have told her that.

I would have told her that I remember the years in high school I spent alone while she drowned in her sadness and wine. I remember sometimes forging my own permission slips, or praying no one would notice her shaky drunken handwriting or bizarre phrasing: “I suppose I’ll have to let him go on this field trip.”

She may have quit drinking, but she never said, “I’m sorry.” That’s a gift I would have cherished.

I would have told her how hard it was to raise myself at 15 in a new city while she disappeared into bottles. I would have told her that.

And the truth is—I would love to be seen. To be valued. To be part of a family that prized kindness over status, compassion over piety. I would love to be acknowledged for surviving what I did, for making it through without serious harm, for earning a master’s degree and a meaningful life surrounded by love.

That kind of recognition—freely offered—would have meant everything.

I would love to be able to say “Happy Mother’s Day” and mean it. To look at my parent and know we had endured something together—and that they were proud of me, the way I am proud of my son.

But that’s not my experience.

Instead, her defenses, her denial, her shame and victimhood fill the space between us. I tried counseling. Paid for it. She came to one session and spent it reciting my flaws. I tried taking her out to dinner once, more recently, and the silence between us was deafening. Maybe there is no path back. Maybe I walked away, and maybe she slammed the door behind me.

So I turn instead to the mothers in my life.

To my son’s mother, who deserves to be celebrated.

To my colleagues—elementary teachers who spend their days nurturing not only their own children but everyone else’s.

To the moms who give freely, who love with abandon, who show up every day with patience, humility, and kindness.

To the single moms, the moms with big families, the new moms, the soccer moms, the hippie moms, the mama bears.

You are the ones doing the real work.

The material things? They’re secondary. You already know that.

I see you, mothers—and despite my personal experience, I honor the way you raise your children, and sometimes all our children, with the things they truly need: grace, compassion, and love.

 My son's affinity for fishing is somehow always surprising to me.  I grew up fishing, but never really liking it all that much.  I like catching fish, and I love being on the river....but it's not a passion the way it is for some.  For my son, it is a passion.  And he seems to be really skilled.  He goes slow and pays attention.  He watches for spots where he thinks the fish will be and he pays attention to the bugs and other critters around that he thinks the fish might be eating.  

Within minutes he's landed yet another modest sized rainbow trout.  As it would happen, despite the fact that I would also fish all weekend, he would be the only one to catch fish.  

The lake is a bowl of crystal clear water held in the palm of a rising rock face rising up on the far bank.  The shore where we're standing is not easy to access...there's a slim muddy berm on the lake shore, backed by marsh and mud and reeds and logs.  There are signs that beavers have been busy here.  My son stands on the berm and fishes while I explore a bit and try to figure out where we might camp for the night.

The lake is about a half a mile across, and is roughly circular.  To move clockwise around the lake is almost impossible.  The huckleberry bushes and undergrowth are impassable.  To move counter clockwise would bring us to a high rock outcropping that I know (since I've been there before) has a fire-ring and would make a perfect place to camp for the evening.  While my son fishes, I push around to the right to try and access this rock outcropping.  Moving without my heavy pack I can move pretty quickly, but the undergrowth is thick and makes going rough.  I push through a large swampy bog and see definitive signs that beavers are present...there are stumps of trees gnawed off to a cartoonish point with wood chips lying all around.  There are trails through the reeds and water that, when viewed from above look like an urban subway map; the routes that the beavers make to get from one place to another.

With persistence and some serious damage to my shins from the bushes (I wore shorts??) I finally make it to the rock outcropping which sits at about 3 o'clock on the clock face of the lake.  As I climb out onto it the lake opens up before me and fish rise all across the calm surface.  The air is hot and dry- the lake cool and inviting.  I know I'll swim later.

I hear my son; "Dad?"

He's not raising his voice, just speaking at his natural volume.  Despite the fact that I'm about 1/4 mile away across the water I can hear him as though he's sitting right next to me.

"Dad?"

"Yeah buddy."

"I caught a frog."

"Sweet!  Is it big?"

"No.  Perfect for bass fishing."

"No bass here I think.  Just trout."

"Yeah.  Rainbow?"

"Probably."

The conversation continues.  It's surreal to have a voice level conversation with him across the lake.  The cliffs that rise to my right cradle the lake so carefully that even sound cant escape...it's all funneled back down to the surface so all can hear.

Eventually I push my way back through the brush to get to my son.  He's put his two fish on a stringer and placed them back in the water so we can clean them later.  He needs to learn how to do it.

We gear back up so that we can push through the brush together to get back to the rock outcropping where we'll sleep for the night.  He holds the fish on the stringer...a prize that he's rightfully proud of.  He's fed us today.  My little boy is a young man now.

 The world that I try to build for myself is full of river colors.  Deep rich greens and maroons and all the colors of the stones at the bottom of the river and the leaves that dress the cottonwoods along the bank.  The blood crimson and browns that dress the brook trout.  Wood and stone and growing things.  Calm and peaceful and best when the sun is just about to rise, or just after it's fallen below the horizon on a day late in summer.

There are smells too.  Sweet grass and wood smoke.  The fecund smell of a river that lives and pulses with life.  Mud and fish and stone flies and huckleberries.  The ever present bed of pine needles and the sweet butterscotch smell of sap and bark.

Ravens and squirrels complain in the trees.  Who knows what they're angry at, but they always sound angry.

Still- these are the sounds and smells of my favorite places.

And I live in the city.  So I try to re-create this.  I don't even think it's a conscious decision to try to create this- but as I look around my living space I see these colors and scents reflected in the things that I bring to my home...and it's only now that I've just returned from an extended period of time in a natural place like this that I realize I am clumsily trying to build it here for myself in my urban home.

John Muir suggested that we

“Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”

Wash your spirit clean.  Hm.  Is it that easy?  Just how dirty am I?

My son is 13.  He likes video games and his smart phone.  He likes playing D&D.  He likes puppies and babies and snuggles and playing with his cat.  He also loves me deeply and will follow me just about anywhere.

Last week we drove to the mountains.  To a friends rustic cabin where we made our basecamp.  We slept in cots on the deck under the multitudinous stars and stayed up late counting satellites and shooting stars and wondering how far away things were and just what it was that made some of them red and blue and some of them flash.  We slept deeply in the warm evening air and woke early with dew on our sleeping bags.  The sleep of the dead....the waking of the re-born.

Our basecamp cabin is a rustic place.  Owned by a friend, it's full of family memories and souvenirs of people and events that have grown dusty and faded with the years.  Pictures of loved ones that have passed and mounted antlers from someone's first hunt.  Hand drawn maps of the region mounted in frames made of branches found about the place.  

Despite all this history, the place is a work in progress.  With all the generations passing through, it's got a quant sense of being not....yet....finished.   There's no running water, but a big barrel on the deck that you fill when you arrive serves.  A generator will give you lights and even refrigeration if you really want or need it.  Propane stove, and an outhouse.  It's buttoned up- and dry...but it's not fancy.  In the winter the giant wrought iron woodstove keeps the place warm but on these warm summer days it just sits there in the middle of the room serving better as a place to prop your feet.  You can smell all the meals cooked...the heavy breakfasts of eggs and pancakes and meat...lots of meat.  It's perfect.

There are guns and ammunition there.  Because guns are fun to shoot and because hunting has been a part of this cabins history for a long time.  But also because wolves and grizzlies in the area are a very real possibility that you need to at least be prepared for.  50 miles down a dirt road from the nearest 'civilization' you need to be able to fend for yourself.

I prepare our backpacks the night before we leave.  Our trip into the back country is not going to be long, and the hike in (from our vehicle to our camping destination) is not long at all, so I pack light on clothing and heavy on fishing gear and luxury items like campfire treats.  Sleeping bags, freeze dried meals, and of course little packs of instant coffee that somehow taste like ambrosia when you're packing and like total shit any other time.  I pack extras so that my young son can experience his first morning campfire coffee...it's a rite of passage and I know that the sensual experience must be complete.  We have water bottles and a filter.

The weather has been very hot and dry during the day, and cooling down at night...but still dry.  So I forego the tent and pack our hammocks instead.  We've had success sleeping in them already this summer and placing them by the shore of the lake that we're hiking to - falling asleep there, then waking with the sun coming across the water sounds just about perfect.  The tent stays.  We have rain gear and warm hats and gloves.  And long underwear.

I also pack bear spray and a .45, which I'll wear on my belt.  Overkill?  Maybe.  But the bears that you see in this area might be grizzlies and I don't really want to take any chances.  We pack some fishing gear and representative flies and lures that we have had luck with and figure might look interesting to lake trout that are busy eating as much as they can in the abundance of late summer.

I try my pack on and it's light.  Which is a nice surprise.  My son puts his on and complains a bit that it's heavier than he's ever packed, which is true...but the real problem is that he's 13 and is carrying a pack that doesn't fit him perfectly.  He's growing, so is in between carrying an adult pack and a kid's pack.  It's his first time with an adult pack and I've adjusted it as much as I can to fit his still growing frame.

We throw the packs into the back of my truck and go to sleep, planning to leave after breakfast in the morning.

The drive to the trailhead is 11 miles up a switchback dirt road.  Dusty and dry.  Even in a truck it's slow going...the road is washboarded from summer storms and there are deep holes that keep out anyone without a truck or a car that they're willing to destroy in an attempt to get to the back country.  There's no question that you could find a more remote place, but this place is certainly a gateway to very real wilderness.

I have a cb radio mounted in my truck and in my little boy fantasy of '10-4's' and 'good-buddy's' I have set it to scan the channels in hopes of listening in to conversations and talking to people to discuss weather and road conditions.  Nothing.  The radio remains silent.  We still get an FM signal up there though...all Christian music and bible verses.  Amen.

We park our truck at the trailhead and hop out to gear up and begin the climb to the lake.  We gear up quickly, fill our water bottles for the last time, and climb up the steep dusty bank that takes us to the trail.  We are immediately surrounded by huckleberries.  They are everywhere.  Small purple bits of exotic blueberry-forest floor tasting goodness.  I have been asked many times to describe the taste of huckleberries and, even though I consider myself to have a pretty good palate, I find myself at a loss when talking about huckleberries.  They are also something that, when purchased at a market, will taste completely different from when they are picked directly off the bush.  We are carrying trekking poles to keep our footing on the rocky trail, but we stow them so that our hands are free to swipe at the berries that line either side of the trail as we go.  And swipe we do.  Within minutes our fingers are purple with berry juice.  My son turns to smile at me with purple teeth and lips.  It melts my heart.  He's wearing long pants and a hoodie (with the hood up) to keep the flies and mosquitoes away.

The trail is not long, only a couple miles, and soon we're seeing an opening through the forest canopy ahead of us that clearly indicates the presence of the lake.  We've been following the drainage creek from the lake so the approach to the lake ends in a boggy delta of sorts.  There are logs and reeds and mushy ground.  My son is eager to fish so we drop our gear, he grabs his fishing pole and within minutes has landed his first rainbow trout.  He hunts for frogs and catches moths and grasshoppers to use to entice the fish.  He moves about the woods as though he's born to this.