In the final few weeks of his life, my father showed me again the simple kernel of truth of his life. He wasted little time in complaining or lamenting about his illness, but as he had done all his life, tried to express his joy in the things that the Good Lord had put before him. With his children gathered around him he repeated over and over until he finally broke through my thick skull that the words were for our benefit as much as his own – “Isn’t this just wonderful”, he said, “Aren’t we having a lovely time.”

At different times in my life I’ve come to recognize my father in myself. From the small things like how I stand or walk to the sacred items that are closest to my soul. I can still remember vividly an incident that changed forever my view of the world from a place to live in to a place to appreciate and cherish. Our family had stopped alongside the road on our way up to the mountains and my mother had gathered us at the base of some large pine trees out of the wind to eat lunch. My father had wandered off and was just returning as we finished lunch. We asked him where he had been, expecting he would say he was fixing something in the car. He told us instead that he had been out walking in the woods and wasn’t it wonderful how everything smelled, and wasn’t it wonderful how the trees were swaying in the wind. Here was my big tough father, unafraid to proclaim that he was enraptured by the trees, and the smell, and the wind, and the woods. Since then I’ve had the opportunity to wander sometimes by myself and sometimes with my good friends through some very high, wild, and incredibly beautiful places in the mountains with no other purpose than to appreciate their beauty. I got my inspiration to do this from the writings of John Muir and from the photographs of Ansel Adams, but I got the permission to do it from my father a long time ago.

Every year when I was a boy our family would spend several weeks with the Arringtons, the Newells, and the McManus’s at Lake Alpine – camping, fishing, and playing cards in the evening. Those were some of the best times I can remember. My father had to work much of that vacation time but he would always make it to the three-day church camp at Camp Sylvester.

If there ever were a heaven on earth, a Utopia for me, it would be based on the three days we spent each summer at that camp. There I got to be with my family and watch my father at ease with his friends. The camp had cabins, a mess hall, volleyball nets, a Ping-Pong table, and horseshoe pits where the older guys would gather around and rib each other. In those days you could rent a horse at the stables without a guide. I can remember that my father would show up at our cabin mounted on some huge animal at seven in the morning and we would all go outside bleary eyed and stare up at him and suddenly his claims of having ridden with Wild Bill Hickock in a former lifetime became a lot more plausible.

But most importantly, right in the middle of the camp next to the mess hall was a dusty old beat up baseball diamond. The first base line was bordered by an enormous fallen log. The third base foul line was marked by a big standing pine tree that had the dinner bell hanging from it. Way out in center field there was a straggly grove of saplings that the ball could get lost in and in deep left field there was a fine grove of four or five Ponderosa pines with huge trunks and no limbs until about 30 or 40 feet off the ground.

From the moment that people arrived at the camp to when the cabins and mess hall were finally locked up, there was always a baseball game in progress – from morning till night. This was a true Utopia: you could play a few innings then wander off and go swimming or horseback riding for a few hours then slip right back into the game.

Baseball was always a strong point of connection between my father and I. Long before I had a favorite team he would buy me ball gloves and help me oil them and put a pocket in them. His favorite player was Stan Musial but he allowed me my own choice of Willie Mays. When the Giants moved to San Francisco he took me first to Seals Stadium and then to Candlestick. One time he arranged to have a friend fly us to the ballpark in a small plane. Another time we drove in our station wagon and I fell asleep in the back seat on the way home from the game only to have my father and uncle tease me about how they had stopped for banana splits but couldn’t wake me up. There is only one thing better than a banana split when you’re a kid and that’s being gently teased by your father and uncle.

The lessons we learned from our fathers on that little diamond at Camp Sylvester were small but important. It was always puzzling to me how my father who never used a glove and would catch line drives hit by the adults in his bare hands, would mysteriously drop the ball or miss the tag when some kid was about to reach base. Most of the time we played work-ups and if you caught a fly ball you could go immediately up to bat. But my father and his friends would stand all day in the outfield and every time they caught a fly ball they would “game it” and let everyone else move up one position. Oh, I can remember as kids how badly we wanted to be able to have the spirit, the patience, and the “bigness” to say “I’ll game it”, but we never could. It has occurred to me that for much of his life my father was “gaming it”.

Every once in a while instead of work-ups we would play fathers against sons, or my favorite, fathers and sons on the same team. I’ll leave you with this final image of my father that I have treasured for a lifetime. It occurred in one of those father/son games when I was about the same age as my son is now. There were two outs and I had somehow beat out an infield hit, or more likely Clyde Oden had dropped the ball at first base on purpose. As my Dad came to the plate behind me, I heard the infielders telling the outfielders to “move back, move back” – the magic words that make a kid swell up with pride. The left fielder moved back as far as he could and stood in the pine needles at the base of the giant Ponderosas. Now with two outs, I should have been running with the crack of the bat, but I can remember stopping in mid stride and watching in wonder as the ball slammed into one of those pine trees way high off the ground. And then as the ball ricocheted back and forth between the trunks on its way down I heard that booming laugh of my father ringing out behind me as he limped around the bases. I put my head down and ran as hard as I could. As I crossed home plate I looked out and saw my Dad laughing and limping into second base on his bad knee. He had gone as far as he was going to go. He had a big grin on his face and the second baseman was slapping him on the back.

Last week we had the opening day ceremonies for our Rio Vista Little League and as the president of the league it was my responsibility and pleasure to sit in the dugout among all the eager young players as they started their first games. In the middle of the day, Kathleen got a phone call from Janie to tell us that my father had passed away. The call came just as Willie had gotten a hit and his team had come from behind in extra innings to win the game. As the boys ran off the field in celebration, I looked for my father because I felt that somehow he was there with me. I looked across the empty field to second base where I had left him in my mind so many years before. But instead of my father, I saw myself chugging into the base, out of breath, struggling, and distraught, but with my friends there to pat me on the back and console me with their hugs. And then I finally saw my father standing there at the back of the empty diamond. We had switched places this time. He had gone before me and finally made it home.