And a Marshmallow Runs Through It.

I'm starting this blog on Father's Day. Well, 1:30 in the morning after father's day. My daughter E. woke me up with breakfast in bed. Soon afterwards C. and S. came in with some homemade cards.

It was a good day. I love my kids, and it is fun to watch them grow up. I am fortunate in having three kids who are already better in me in many ways. It is easy to be proud of them. As they get older they are developing tastes and styles that are uniquely their own, and not merely copies of what their mom and dad like. This really struck me a few weeks ago when I took my kids up my family's cabin.

My Grandparents bought a cabin up the canyon from Oakly, Utah in the late '70. It has only three rooms, a fireplace, running water, and a porch that looks over the river. There isn't a TV, and internect connection, or even a cell phone signal. The kids and I go up a few times a year. So far we only have two traditions, cooking hot dogs over the fire and making smores. And lately, my son has become somewhat of an artist.

Just last year, every time the kids put a marshmallow near the fire, it would instantly erupt into a ball of flame followed by shrieks of joy, frantic waving of the stick through the air, and a joint effort among the three of them to blow it out. Within seconds all that was left was a piece of char with a sticky center. I tried to show them the proper way to do it; but through mouths full of ash and goo, they assured me that this was the way they liked it. So, I returned to I focusing on ensuring that they didn't set fire to the house or eachother.

With time, S. developed his own style. At first he would slide a piece of chocolate into the middle of the marshmallow, and then toast it over the fire. The result was a confection of toasted sugar with a hot, melty chocolate center. Before, the marshmallow often didn't get hot enough to melt the chocolate in any meaningful way, but this was delicious. I began to follow his example.

This last time we went, Simon focused on perfectly toasting his marshmallow. It took some practice, but he developed a technique for perfectly toasting every side. I usually get tan spots on one or two sides of my marshmallow, this was beyond that. Some how he had managed to develop a thick, chewy, golden crust on every part of the marshmallow. The inside was just this smooth molten liquid.

After eating a few, he offered to make me one. He brought it out to me on the porch, and we sat on the swing and listened to the river.

As I ate the best piece of food involving a marshmallow I had eaten in my entire junk food swilling life. He said, "I think people who like smores just don't know how to toast a good marshmallow."

In Norman Maclean's book "A River Run's Through It", the author talks about the sense of pride and awe that he felt when he saw his brother break away from his father's "Presbyterian" method of fly fishing to developer his own style which he called Rainbow Casting. He said that at that moment he knew that his brother Paul was an artist.

Roasting a marshmallow may not seem like art, but I think it can be, and this is just the beginning. I can't wait to see what they do over the next few years. It's going to be fun.