As the river guides strap our gear to the ra;, I wonder if bringing my kids along was the right thing to do. I’m to cover this trip—a six-day history tour of Idaho’s Salmon River—for a magazine. My ;;-year-old twin sons, Gabe and Dylan, are scheduled to begin middle school in eight days, and a “learning” vacation sounds a bit to them like starting school before school starts.
When we return from our trip, we’ll have only a day and a half to
prepare, and will have to register late for classes. How will we get back to a bedtime routine? It occurs to me that I’ve brought my kids along for a basically sel;sh reason: so that I don’t have to give up my last week of summer with them.
My boys live half the time with me, half with their father. ;ey’re fun kids, and neither their father nor I likes to give up a week with them. Friends warn me that this could change at any moment—the
boys are on the brink of puberty, and soon I may start to beg their father to take them. But for now, each of us still covets time with them, especially these last days of summer.
Once we push o; from the bank, the current moves in but one direction—there’s no turning back. As we ;oat into the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, I surrender to our fate. For the next six days we’ll sleep on sand, and
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