There are places in the world that feel mythic before you ever set foot in them. For some, it’s Paris. For others, it’s Machu Picchu, or that one Target that still has a working Starbucks inside. For me, it was Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, New Mexico.
When I was a teenager, sunburned and underpaid, I worked at Camp Friedlander Boy Scout camp just outside Cincinnati. My job was mostly mosquito-based: attracting them, swatting them, then explaining to scouts the difference between “first aid” and “bad luck.” We had a staff t-shirt, a walkie-talkie that only worked when you weren’t holding it, and a collective dream.
Philmont.
Philmont was our Everest. It was where the real scouts went. The ones who drank iodine-flavored creek water and told time by the sun. We told stories about it as if we’d read them in The Odyssey.
“Did you hear about Ryan’s cousin?” someone would ask, huddled around a lukewarm pudding cup. “He summited Baldy Mountain. Saw a bear. Came back different.”
A friend worked a whole summer there, once. He came back thinner, tanner, and with an expression that suggested he had seen God, pr at least someone who resembled Him, and smelled like freeze-dried beef stroganoff.
I, of course, never went. The opportunity just never aligned. There was always school, or a job, or a pressing need to gsther financies that never seemed to materialize. Eventually, Philmont faded from dream to regret, settling into the quiet cabinet of adolescent longings, somewhere between “owning a motorcycle” and “learning how to flirt.”
Fast forward a few decades. Five kids and, oh yes, 200 fewer pounds later, and my son is going. Not just going; returning. His second trip. Like he’s a regular. Like it’s his summer home in the high desert, and he’s just popping back in to see if the trout missed him.
He’s lean, strong, and almost sixtee . His backpack is bigger than my dreams. He’s not worried about anything. Not the altitude, not the weather, not the rattlesnakes. He texts me a photo from base camp. He’s grinning. Behind him: blue sky, mountains so sharp they could slice you, and a gang of scouts who all look like they know how to build an emergency shelter out of two sticks and a dirty sock.
I look at the picture and I feel the strangest sensation. It’s not envy, but something adjacent. Longing’s more mature cousin. I think they call it “joy.”
Because this is the thing they don’t tell you about parenting: it’s not just watching your kids grow up. It’s watching them walk through doors that were locked to you, and cheering instead of knocking.
I’ll admit, I Googled “Philmont adult treks” once. A flash of hope, maybe. I thought: You’ve lost the weight. You could train. You could do this. But the training would have to be so intensive that I’d have to quit my job, abandon my family, and maybe replace my knees with something titanium. I’m in better shape now, but I’m not in Philmont shape. I’m in “carry groceries without wheezing” shape. “Chase my kids one block and then gice up” shape. Not “twelve days above 8,000 feet with 45 lbs on my back shape.
So I don’t go.
Instead, I sit on my couch in Central Florida where the altitude isseven feet above sea level, scrolling through photos my son sends when he has service. I see pine forests and rocky ridgelines. A mule deer. A panoramic of Tooth of Time. And in every picture, he’s smiling. Tired, sunburnt, radiant.
I smile too. It’s enough.
Because the truth is, we all have a “Philmont.” A place we dreamed of going, a peak we didn’t reach. And if we’re really lucky, we get to watch someone we love climb it instead.
That’s the trick, I think. Knowing when to let go of your old dreams, and how to hold on to theirs instead. Not with bitterness, not with wistfulness, but with a quiet, campfire-lit joy.
Besides, somebody’s got to stay behind and wait for the stories.
