![]() ![]() ![]() Irvin and I had both worked as backcountry guides and trained in emergency medicine, and Steve had the skills and demeanor of an Eagle Scout. ![]() ![]() And Irvin, a Filipino-American Forest Service biologist and wildland firefighter from Southern California, was a solo dad with a 4-year-old bruiser of a son. Steve, a gray and grizzled orchard farmer from western Colorado, had a 10-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy. I’d come with my two boys, aged 6 and 10. When he sent out children, it was usually one or two in a clump of athletic, keenly dressed outdoor folk. It was the ratio that worried him: too many kids, not enough grown-ups. “You can do whatever you want, but this looks like a mistake waiting to happen.” “I won’t turn business away,” the man continued. We were about to set off on a nine-day expedition with seven adults and five children into the wilderness islands of Prince William Sound, a country of dark, mountainous forests and vast glaciers unloading into the sea where icebergs ground on rocky shores. “As a father, I’m appealing to you,” he said. A broad-shouldered man, middle-aged like the rest of us, he leaned against his desk in the corner of the room. In the glacial enclave of Whittier, Alaska, the man who rents sea kayaks asked the three dads in our group to step into his boatshed. ![]()
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