Father and Son

AND SON A father and his teenage son were frequently at odds over ~ those things that fathers and sons often disagree: homework, friends, lifestyle, curfew, the family car, etc. It seemed that the two could hardly say anything to each other without get- ting into a shouting match. Finally, the father proposed that they go on a camping trip—just the two of them—to a moun- tain a few hundred miles away.

The young man agreed. For a week, father and son forded swift streams together, climbed over huge boulders together, trampled through thick brush together, slept under starlit skies together—and talked, talked, talked. They began to know each other as never before.

They began to see each other, not just in their usual roles of domineering father and rebellious son, but as genuine human persons, each with his own individ- ual hopes and fears and loves. The trip up the mountain became a turning-point in each of their lives. In the years that followed, they continued to disagree on many things, but on different terms.

When a problem loomed, one or the other would say, “Remember the mountain!” An ordi- nary mountain became their glory mountain. What began as a common camping trip had been transformed into a mountaintop experience.