Grandpa

“Grandpa”. The word seems foreign, the reality surreal. I look in the mirror. I don’t look like a grandpa. Somehow the features that gaze back at me bear no resemblance to my mental image of a silver haired, crinkled, oldster with a slight tremor and large smile who proffers gifts to beloved grandchildren.

However, it is a fact. I am now a grandpa. And, putting aside my own disbelief, I am thrilled.   My daughter and her other half have that same glazed look of “this must be a story, and I am an onlooker.”

I smile and imagine a time ten or twelve years from now. It appears to me I will have a great little buddy, and my very own pal to share the love of outdoors and ranching that has been a long time family tradition.  I look forward to teaching him about the wild and remote and to have a willing co-conspirator.

“Son, go fetch that elk.”

“Saddle the horses, will ya? Let’s go for a ride and check that fence.”

“OK, boy . . . this is how you handle a river current with a flow structure like that”, (said of course by grandpa standing in the bow of the drift boat, casting furiously, as grandson labors at the oars.)

It is all very fine indeed. Somehow this grand event all dovetails  with the writing of the Three-Quels. The western generational theme ties in perfectly with a fourth generation of my family now born beneath the jagged snow-capped peaks of the Rockies.