Yeah just to add to the chorus, I know that post was a lot of work that you were basically doing for our benefit, and it was much appreciated on my end as well. Made me nostalgic for backpacking and fishing trips in the Cascades with my folks. Exposing a Jersey kid to that kind of wilderness has to be one of the best possible things you could do for him. We live in such a controlled environment back here. Everything is stoplights and orange cones and picket fences and forests of plastic and concrete and steel, all minded and maintained by an army of teachers, lawyers, cops and other people we pay to protect us from ourselves. I remember how it scared me being above treeline. How it sharpened my senses, being in a place where the elements and the scale of things made a mockery of human enterprise. Experiencing that kind of wildness changes you forever I think.
I can say with 100% confidence that your boys will remember that trip clearly for many decades to come. I still remember the shape of the rock where I caught two large rainbows in Alaska lake as an awkward 11-year old kid with a thing for trout. I remember the glacier and the slide across the lake, a tumble of house-sized boulders. I remember the campsite under the fir tree. And I remember the look on my parents' faces when I whistled from the rock, gleefully holding what was probably only a 10 incher. Your obvious pride in your boys accomplishments on that trip will be their best memory of all.
