Solstice Fathers

Seems strangely fitting that Father’s Day falls so close to the Solstice. In some ways, fathers are like the sun. When we are young they are larger than life, we literally look up to them, bloom under their approval, and our world rises and sets with them.

I’m sitting here at PSG with the sun rising over the swimming pond and thinking about my own father. His smile was broad and bright like sunshine. I called it his possum grin. He’s the one who taught me to camp and gave me a love for nature. He was never happier than when surrounded by the wild beauty of nature.

Although Dad was a staunch Baptist, I think he’d like the concept of PSG. Of people coming together to create a community in nature. I think he’d understand the impulse to honor the sun at it’s zenith, even though his theology behind it would be different.

My father is buried in a high valley in the mountains of North Georgia. He is surround by green fields, lush woods and brawny mountains. Here in Illinois, in what may be one of the flattest places on earth, I too am surrounded by the extravagant green and I am thinking of him.

He wasn’t a perfect man. He wasn’t a saint. He worked hard. He tried hard to do right by his family. But I remember when I was small and my world rose and set with him. He gave me my first fishing pole, helped me pitch my first tent and taught me that there is no amusement park more exiting or beautiful than Mother Nature herself.

Hail to the Fathers!