One of the best things about fatherhood is teaching your son. There’s hardly a better feeling than seeing my son learn new things and smile because he is proud of himself. I often think of Dale Carnegie’s famous book ‘How to win friends, and influence people’. In that book, he recites the well known story ‘Father Forgets’ among other valuable quotes. The story, by W. Livingston, talks about how a father laments at his son’s bedside as he’s sleeping, about the transgressions of fatherhood & guilt he felt for not listening & engaging because he is too busy. PDF of the entire story can be found here http://bit.ly/8BIQ2J (Grab the Kleenex first). Carnegie also states in his book that people crave genuine appreciation, and respond to it like magic.
On our Sunday Drive in mid-January, I told Sebastian (my son of 4), our first point of interest would be the Painted Cave. Of course he asked “What’s a painted cave”. Ah, here we go, our first American history lesson. By the end of the conversation he asked “am I a white man?” (Maybe my lesson was a little advanced). Nevertheless, he was completely fascinated by the painted cave and could not come to terms with why there was a fence covering the entrance.
Nature holds a fascination for children that TV will never match. As we flew along the peaks of the Santa Ynez mountains along East Camino Cielo, my two year old daughter Sabrina kept saying “wow, daddy, it’s so pretty”. That’s about all I could say too because of the way the sun was shining off the ocean & how our very special Channel Islands accentuated the views. I say this a lot, but the only reason the Mediterranean has better views is because it’s dotted with castles. The residents of Montecito would agree.
Most of the road to Pendola is paved, just after the intersection with Gibraltar it turns to dirt but its very well maintained. One very important thing, if you do plan to take this Sunday Drive make sure to call the forest service & make sure the crossings are passable. Any rain produces trouble at these crossings so beware. We drove up in our Chevrolet Avalanche shortly after a rainstorm the day before and found that my upgraded tires & torsion bar lift were quite necessary. But then I saw a Nissan Sentra & a driver waving happily, go figure.
Once we arrived at the Hot Springs (the road takes you right to them), I was surprised to find a perfect square pool (empty) housing perfectly warm water. The kids couldn’t believe it and excited screams of “Wow Daddy, why is it so warm?” prompted another lesson-this time in geology, volcanoes and hot springs. ‘This is learning’ I thought to myself, if only schools could be more immersive. Perhaps with ‘augmented reality’ on smartphones this becomes a real possibility.
After frolicking in the water for a time (a little stressful because it’s not shallow), we all got out, froze our little tushies off until we were warm, and jumped back into the truck. I’m told during the summer the bugs here are unbearable, so it’s a good thing we came in January. January in Southern California is one of the best times of the year, no fog, maybe a little rain, and usually some green has started showing.
On the way back, we took a left at Gibraltar to behold the most beautiful day in history. Stark contrasts of green & black (from the fires) added purpose for our drive. As my children slept going down the hill, I took as many photographs as I could, trying to capture & hang on to the moment. Pondering the necessity of calamities such as fires, in order to really appreciate life. Renewal is our gift from god each day and every moment.
