What’s the Average Dad to Do?
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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.
August 4th, 2008 at 8:00 am
It could be that Eldridge just isn’t right. Maybe one day we wake up with a family, kids, a job and people just see us as men. Maybe it happens sooner. I think it’s less about feats of physical or mental daring as it is about doing what needs done. Don’t get me wrong, feats of physical daring are cool (mental less so), I just don’t think they’re a prerequisite to manhood. Either way I’m going to find out where the heck the Grand Tetons are and climb em.
August 4th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
I hear ya Joe. I do think Elderege is onto something here. I agree with his phases of a man’s life and the need to challenge the boy to take his place in the company of men. I’ve looked at this topic for some time. Our boys (Westerners) need rites of passage, need to achieve manhood and know who they are.
But you expressed one of my deepest reservations with the whole “get out there and climb Everest” philosophy I read in Elderege’s books and others. I’m like you” average guy, average income and (this is me now) less than average fitness levels. I don’t have the time or the fitness or income to do things like this.
What I do have is the ability to plan within my means, to extend myself and to save money even a little bit. I plan to provide experiences over a year which touch on themes like responsibility (as Samson eloquently alludes to above), challenge, journey, using your strengths for the joy of it, using your strengths for the welfare of others. I also plan to have a bunch of men I respect AS men (and only one won’t be married with kids) to speak into the lives of my sons, to share their insights for the journey ahead, to affirm the strength they see in them. I’d love to take my boys to Kokoda or to the Anzac graves in Flanders (look it up you Americans
- I imagine that’s kind of like taking boys to the beaches of Normandy for you guys)… Will I have the money to do that? Who knows. I want to , but the money certainly ain’t in the bank and the boy turns 13 in 7 months’ time. And I won’t promise what I can’t deliver … that’s another side to being a man…
Good conversation, Joe. Thanks.
August 4th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Pete and Samson, thanks for the substantive comments. I do find myself quibbling with a lot of what Eldredge says. For instance, he’s very adamant that most men today are wounded (his term) because they were not properly initiated through the stages by their fathers, most of whom didn’t know any better. I can’t quite go there with him because it depends on a manchild remaining static and somewhat victimized by circumstances. Remnants of Freud. I believe we are here to act, not be acted upon.
His stages of development have a lot of explanatory power, though. By which I mean they match what I’ve observed and help explain much of what I see in my boys.
I may not have done him justice…he doesn’t insist that climbing Everest is a necessary part of the adventure of being a Cowboy. He only described rock climbing as one activity he did with his son as an initiation rite.
Pete is the one that got me thinking about initiation of boys, or rites of passage if you prefer. I think there’s a lot to the theory. In fact, I wish I’d had some explicit instruction on how to become a man and what it meant. I did wake up one day not too long ago and realized I had become a man, but it was something I stumbled into rather than climbed toward. It should have come sooner so as to be less stressful on the family who’s stuck with me for better or worse.
In that regard, I think the idea of initiation, or guiding a boy from stage to stage has a lot of merit. I’m not quite committed to doing a year of initiation like Pete, and I’m eager to hear all about it. I hope that money doesn’t get in your way. I’d love to hear more about your plans if you’re inclined to share them.
August 4th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
I think a rite of passage is an outdated concept. Isn’t it a little ridiculous to think that in one event or one year a boy can become a man? (No offense here.) I believe rather it is a series of moments that string together as the boys grows. He doesn’t have to kill a bear, it isn’t at the top of the Tetons, but a piece of it and maybe a very large piece of it may be in those activities.
A boy becomes a man as he learns the philosophies of elder men in his circle of influence or from heroes, adopts and adapts those ideas into a set of beliefs that are his. I can’t think that this happens any other way, but over time. And hey, if you catch a few fish or climb a few mountains along the way it might be fun too.
August 4th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Will share as much as he is comfortable with. But in any case, I will still be able to share generalities if not specifics.
I wasn’t particularly lambasting John Elderege with the “everest” comment; he has my utmost respect and has helped me immeasurably over the past 8 or 9 years. I just have struggled with the almost Survivalist element in some of the male initiation orthodoxy out there. I see some definite value in overcoming the forces of nature, but much of it is irrelevant to what it means to be a man in 21st Century Urban Life…
I think the moment I knew I was a man, strangely enough I guess, was when an older and more successful man I admired looked at me and told me, “You know what you’re doing. Keep going.”
I hear what Samson’s saying. I think both are true somehow, and I think that each of us finds out in our own way. I just want to make sure my son doesn’t get lost in that 20th century construct “Adolescence”.
August 4th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Samson, the idea is not that in one event or even a year, he would “become a man.” The idea is exactly as you say–to provide an environment in which his elders can direct and interpret his experience. The rite of passage event or year is meant to deliberately create those moments you speak of instead of just hoping they happen and hoping that the boy will grow from them.
Ritual is indeed an outdated concept by modern western standards, and that’s unfortunate. And yet rituals define spiritual life and properly understood, they make abstract, non-material concepts (like love and commitment) into a tangible event (a wedding ceremony, a baptism, what have you). They’re affirmations of the ineffable. If a ritualistic setting, even a toned down one like a tough hike, can make a boy think about where he’s headed and what he should look like when he gets there, then count me in.
Pete, that survivalist element is what gives the men’s movement a bad name. I wonder why some proponents gravitate toward that? (Lack of imagination, I suspect. Too much Dances With Wolves.) When I told Her Hotness that I wanted to do some kind of initiation activities with Boy 13, she suggested dancing naked around a fire!
August 4th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Now I feel like we’re getting somewhere. Thanks boys, I appreciate you sharing. I feel wiser already. Seriously, thanks.
August 4th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Hey, that’s what Joe’s here for.
August 5th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
No super-dad ego here… I’ll stick to wallowing in fatherhood mediocrity.
Mother watches husband, kids die on Italy climb:
http://www.komonews.com/news/national/25880504.html
August 5th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
That’s horrible, Bad Dad! I’ll wallow right along with you.