My Dad (AKA Grizzly Adams)

Time to take a minute out for my dad. He's kinda a mystery man because all my life I was daddy's little girl and then one day when I was 12 he packed up and moved to Alaska. It was as if someone took a laser gun from the future and vaporized him. I mean, when I was a kid we'd sing along and dance to that song "North to Alaska" but when he did so with extra relish I never imagined it was because he really MEANT it. Anyways, that's all water under the bridge for now. I'll be seeing him in a couple weeks and doing the whole "THAT side of the family" thing for the first time since I was a kid. Water under the bridge I tell you.
But for most of my friends, my dad remains a mystery. I rarely talk about him because 1) I rarely see or talk to him, and 2) I mean, the situation is awkward and weird, is it not? But now he's made his way onto--ta-da!--my blog.
My dad IS Grizzy Adams. He met Eddy once and took an instant liking to him. Eddy likes him as well. Every time I tell Eddy a story about my dad, he goes, "Whoa! That's a MAN. Think he can teach me to do that?" See, my dad has been a nature lover all his life. He got a degree in forestry from Ohio State and works for the government traveling all over the country doing...well, stuff with nature. It's his dream job. Many a time he's called me from the road saying, "I just canoed down this river all day and camped out here all week--and they PAY me for this!"
After he left NY, he spent several years in Alaska just being a nature nut. He camped OUTSIDE in -60 F for weeks on end. That's right. NEGATIVE 60 F. He had run-ins with grizzly bears, moose, elk, strange windego-fearing natives and just about anything else under the sun you can imagine. He saw the Northern Lights. All this is, mind you, just after he hit middle age. We shan't go down the lane of the "first" part of his life, wherein he traveled the world by sea, drinking a Singapore Sling at the Raffles Hotel, staying on a Coast Guard ship in Pearl Harbor, and--you get the point.
And I'll leave out his 20+ year time in NY with "our" family, because, how could I fit all this into one blog entry?
Anyway, my dad's the guy who can literally live in almost any environment for any amount of time on like a compass and some rope. Forget the compass. I think he can read the stars.
Growing up with my dad was a trip. He always had to be OUTSIDE. I was a mall rat. If you've ever read Calvin & Hobbes, my dad was THAT dad, chiding me for watching TV, and ranting about why any kid would rather be in a department store than the forest.
In the woods together, Dad would find us both good walking sticks and then point out every tree, every bush, every berry we found along the way and explain whether you could eat it or not, what its full Latin name was and what else it was good for. Of course I forgot everything he said almost instantly, and besides I was too busy running from spiders and searching for newts and salamanders. I was convinced we found priceless fossils up on the coal bank behind my grandmother's house. It was true to a degree, but most were only fern fossils, and the one I thought was a T-Rex skin imprint was probably just some plants.
What else can I say about my dad? For the moment he's stationed in Ohio, and for the few years he'll have to be there, he bought himself an actual cabin and lives there, with snowshoes pinned on the walls. Really. He sent me pictures. The man chooses to live in a cabin instead of an actual house. Can you believe it? This is my dad we're talking about. Sigh.
So it is sorta cool in a way. I mean, how many people can say their dad mined for gold in the Yukon, worked with forest fighters in Oregon, learned the ways of the Aleuts, and saw the Ididerod first-hand? Pretty cool stuff, I must admit. And all that other stuff? Water under the bridge I tell ya--water under the bridge that I'll be kayaking on later this month somewhere in the wilderness of PA. Seriously.