There were eight of us on the ridge, roped together in two teams—my son Samuel (thirteen at the time) and me, Morgan, and our guide. … We climbed the Grand in two teams of four, using a hip belay. … It’s a choice made in favor of speed, being faster than using various climbing gear to set and then remove fixed protection at every belay station. And speed is one of the nonnegotiables on the Grand. You want to get up and off the peak before there are any thunderstorms so common to the West, which bring with them the deadly lightning strikes. …
Once you commit to the ridge there is no turning back, no down-climbing option is available. The only way off is up. The faster the better. It adds to the drama of the climb, facing each tough move with no choice but to do it. Several times I would make a move or climb a section of a pitch and think to myself, I hope Sam can do this—he’s never made a move like that before. We’d done quite a bit of climbing, stuff much harder than the actual moves on the Grand, except for the thousands of feet of exposure on three sides. There was no one to coach him up, and no communication between us except tugs on the rope to signal “Ready to belay—you can start climbing” and “Okay, I’m climbing.” Eighty to a hundred feet or so of rope lies between, and with the arc of the ridge sweeping ever upward, you cannot see the climbers above or below until you are nearly upon them, or they upon you.
So begins John Eldredge’s chapter on the next stage of boyhood, the Cowboy. 
He took his Boy 13 to climb the Grand Teton so he could challenge himself and confront the burning question at the heart of masculinity: Do I Have What It Takes?
Who are these superdads?? Are they independently wealthy? Unemployed? Parents of one child? How do they do it? (It’s rhetorical. If you are one of those dads fresh off your latest skydiving adventure with your adolescent son, I so don’t want to hear about it.)
And how’s the average Joe supposed to measure up to that? I mean, my Boy 13’s rite of passage is going to have to be his grilling of a steak all by himself (and it wasn’t easy NOT to go “help,” let me tell you). The day I climb a mountain with him is the day he carries my ashes up in a little sack on his back. (Hills near our home excluded because at no point do your feet leave the ground.)
You see, the Cowboy’s greatest need is adventure so that he can prove himself. A good dad, an initiating dad, will provide those opportunities. And he’ll do it by his son’s side, not having relinquished his responsibility to make the world safe for his wandering, wondering boy.
Maybe I’m too uptight. Is it wrong not to let him make bombs? Should I have let him keep his knife after he sliced his leg open while—I’m not making this up—cleaning it on his pants? (That was two weeks ago. The stitches are out. The gash is still open.) Scars are just part of the adventure, no? Part of the proving it to himself. His latest self-inflicted injury is a black eye. He was chopping wood with—I’m still not making this up—a shovel, and somehow the handle bounced up and smacked him. He’s lucky he didn’t send shards of his glasses into his eye.
I’m only human, is all I’m sayin’. An average guy with an average income and more demands on him than time or temperament to meet them. Maybe Boy 13’s big adventure and challenge can be proving himself despite me.
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