How My Dad Inspired a Love of The Outdoors
My dad took me backpacking for the first time when I was in middle school. I was ostensibly making a short video about hunting Bigfoot for my English class. Three of my friends, my dad, and I went into the Trapper Creek Wilderness in southern Washington with a camcorder and a vaguely Blaire Witch-inspired premise. Within the first mile of the short hike to our campsite, my friend Dan nearly fell into a creek, barely arresting himself by grabbing a handful of stinging nettles. My friends Jakob and Robbie had brought steel throwing stars, which they later told my dad they’d “found” in the woods (he believed them about as far as they could throw those heavy chunks of metal).
We left the woods – miraculously – uninjured and with enough footage to create our final project. The film centered around our “encounter” with the unseen Bigfoot, who subsequently ate my friend Jakob, and then a close up of my Dad yelling, “run boys!” followed by lots of shaky footage and screaming. I think we got a C on the project.
When I lost my dad last year, I thought back to all of the ways he showed up for me and how he inspired my love of the outdoors. I’ve gone on to complete many more backpacking trips; some were longer and more remote, all had fewer novelty weapons. And more recently I’ve gotten into ultra running. Although my dad wasn’t much of a runner, he would still show up to support me how he could.
During the pandemic, my wife Megan and I decided to do a self-supported run around the Timberline Trail – a 40 mile loop of Mt. Hood, near Portland, Oregon where I’d grown up. My dad offered to meet us halfway and serve as an aid station for our DIY adventure. We accepted, but I was worried he wouldn’t be able to find the remote trailhead. Just in case, I had us bring enough food to finish the run unsupported.
After spending a night at the Timberline Lodge, Megan and I set off at dawn, encircling the mountain in the counterclockwise direction. On the Eastern, rain shadowed side of the slope, we were hot and looking forward to a break. There was no reception on that part of the mountain, but when we passed a hiker going the opposite direction they asked, “Are you Megan and Kyle?”
“Yeah,” I responded to the stranger. “Who are you?”
“Your dad told me to bring you a message. He’s a few miles up ahead!”
My doubts gave way to amusement as we passed additional hikers who all declared, “Scott’s waiting for you!”
The rendezvous point was back on the side of the mountain that gets most of the rain and it was densely forested like you’d imagine the Pacific Northwest to be. My dad was sitting in a camp chair on the side of the trail. He told us that there were biting flies, but if you sat still enough they’d forget you were there. Worried that he’d miss us, he’d arrived hours earlier. But as we tore into the bags of chips he’d brought and refilled our water, he never complained and wished us luck as we set off on the rest of our journey.
Like most sons, I butted heads with my dad. Especially when I was a teenager. He drank too much. Sometimes when he did, he’d yell at me, my mom, and my brother. When I was eventually big enough to stand up to him, I would. And it usually didn’t calm the situation. By the time I was 18, I was ready to leave and never look back. But with more space between us, there was room for a mature relationship to grow. Our shared love of the outdoors, camping, hiking, and cycling, brought us closer together than we’d been when I was growing up. And I came to appreciate how the passions that filled my life were ones he’d nurtured in me. As a young man, I would still measure my success by outdoing his own - backpacking farther than he had, riding faster than he had, climbing bigger mountains than he had. The male competitiveness might not have entirely gone away, but at least it was more productive.
When I was 25 I moved to California and like many adults busy building their lives, I saw my parents a lot less. But I would go back to Portland for the holidays and every once in a while they’d visit me. One time I convinced my dad to come down and ride the Levi’s Gran Fondo with me, a century bike ride in Sonoma County. We pedaled along the route together at what felt like a glacial pace, but I knew my dad was giving it his best effort. On one particularly nasty climb, my dad even had to get off and walk his bike. Throughout it all, he exemplified the type of grit that I had come to regard as one of my own defining characteristics.
About 18 months before he died, my dad had a stroke that took away a lot of his freedom and fundamentally changed his personality. Once loud and gregarious, he became quiet and reserved. Before the stroke, he was always buzzing around town. He was on a first-name-basis with the employees at the bike shop and the organic grocery store. Afterwards, he could barely leave the house and wasn’t permitted to drive. Worst of all, his balance was impaired to the point where he could no longer ride a bike. This was a man who’d dreamed of retiring and riding hours every day. Now he was finally retired – and stuck at home.
We did what we could together in what would turn out to be his final months. Last Thanksgiving, I took him to a 5k Turkey Trot along with Megan and her brother’s family, who had a newborn. Megan and I ran while the rest of them set off to walk the course together. They met us at the finish – but they’d dropped my dad somewhere along the way. Even with the baby in a backpack, my brother-in-law and his wife had walked the course 20 minutes faster than my dad, who continued to struggle with his coordination. But when he finally shuffled in, he was as positive as ever. For him, it no longer mattered how long he took. What mattered was that we were together.
On Wednesday, October 9th, 2024, my friend from middle school, Dan, flew down to California and I picked him up from the Oakland airport. He was going to crew and pace me for the Kodiak by UTMB 100 mile race in Big Bear that weekend. It was my birthday and he’d come in early so that we could hang out before driving down to the race together. After sweeping him up from the terminal, we’d gotten lunch, had coffee and were relaxing at my house when I received a call from my mom. I answered, assuming that she’d called to wish me luck. I was sitting on the green couch in our guest bedroom when she said, “Your dad is dead. He had a heart attack.”
It felt unreal. Like being told the oceans had all suddenly evaporated. Or a mountain that you’d looked at every day had spontaneously crumbled into the Earth. What had always been no longer was and never again would be.
So I sat there with Dan and talked to my mom on the phone and tried to make sense of this new reality. Eventually she asked if I still planned to run the 100 miler. She encouraged me to do it. And I said I would, because it’s what my dad would have wanted. When I was planning the race, my dad had asked if he could come down to crew me. Because of the impairment from his stroke, I knew he would require more support than he’d be able to give and gently discouraged the idea. But maybe now, in a way, he’d be able to watch me race afterall.
The next day, Dan, Megan and I drove down to Big Bear where we were met by Megan’s parents. When they arrived at our Airbnb, they gave me a big hug and told me how sorry they were. As I prepped my gear for the race, I wrote “For Dad” across the side of my number.
Running 100 miles is hard. Running 100 miles on a course like Kodiak’s – that never dips below 6,000 feet and has over 14,000 feet of climbing – is very hard. But running 100 miles days after losing a parent is a different kind of challenge. I still felt numb and the physical pain was a welcome distraction. In the late stages of a long ultra, the body starts to break down. Trudging up a steep ascent at mile 60, I felt like I’d burned through all of my stored carbohydrates, passed by fat oxidation and was beginning to metabolize grief. Staring up at the bright stars on the spine of the Sierra Nevada, I had miles to go before morning and hours left to think.
Dan was my first pacer and I picked him up around 3 a.m. We talked for a while, mostly one-way conversation of him telling me rambling dad jokes (which, admittedly, I had asked him to prepare). After I couldn’t take another horrible pun-ch line, I took out my Airpods, thrust one towards him and said, “Music.” We spent the remaining hours slowly jogging to 80’s rock as the sun crept past the horizon.
My wife Megan paced me for the last 18 miles. When I traded Dan for her, I was about as empty as a runner can be. The first part of our section together was a steep ascent that I wouldn’t have considered a trail had it not been carefully marked out by race flags. The course followed a dried riverbed that was filled with large, precariously balanced rocks. On swollen ankles, I hobbled like a newborn baby deer and used a stick to keep from falling over. After that climb, the trail mellowed out and before long I was into the last ten miles of the race. “Single digits!” Megan said. To run 100 miles, you have to break the race down into sections and focus on one bite-sized piece at a time. Because if you think about how far you have to go when you’re 40 or even 70 miles in, you’ll just sit down at the next aid station and never leave it. But now, with single digit miles remaining, I could start to think about the finish.
The final section was a long downhill. As tired as I was “smelling the barn” gave me one last kick. Megan and I flew down the descent passing a few of the 50K runners who had started earlier that morning. As we entered the final straightaway, I pointed down at the race number on my chest. It was crumpled and dusty, but the dedication was still legible. Megan and I crossed the finish line holding hands, and I began to cry.
The week after the race, I flew up to Portland to be with my mom and my brother. People say that running 100 miles is like life in a day. The facts were the same as they had been when my mom gave them to me less than a week ago. But in the time that had passed, they’d somehow fit their way into my reality a little more. Looking out to the east, I saw the familiar summit of Mt. Hood. It was still there, as it always had been.
