Dad 2022. Venturing Forth.

This week you experienced the great outdoors. Well, Acacia Park, at least. Just a mile from where we live. We parked the car on the street and in your stroller we took you around the grass and grounds. Past picnic tables and the playground and the fields and the creek. Your eyes were closed for most of it, but you breathed in the open air and I like to think you felt the world roll by underneath. I want you to know and appreciate and hopefully love nature, those spaces with dirt and trees and streams and vistas and not as many hints of human-built things. I’ve spent a part of my life seeking out these places, climbing up mountains, canoeing down rivers, trekking across valleys, skiing down slopes, running on wooded trails, camping under big night skies. From New Hampshire and Maine to Texas and New Mexico to Montana and Wyoming to Utah and California and beyond. In recent years, Mom has joined me in these explorations, from rambles around the hills and beaches and coves of Orange County, to hikes around the north rim of the Grand Canyon. I hope some day we can all seek out these spaces together. It’s good to get outside. It’s good to get away. It’s good to see the world majestic by day and the stars endless at night.

Life with you is grand. You are growing. You open your eyes more. You are starting to wriggle with vigor. Mom swears she sees a dimple in your hint of a smile. You are becoming you. We are still sleep deprived, mom especially. It’s hard for her to nap with all she has to do, the feeding and the pumping and the feeding and the pumping. I think she’s running on love and adrenaline. We spend our time giving you comfort, keeping your belly full and your body dry and your spirit untroubled. To know as a parent that this is what I must do each day—it’s a gift. This sense of mission and focus, this clarification of the hours and weeks unfolding ahead. To be a father is to live in a state of lucidity. My life is Autumn, for now and for all the years to come.