My dad disappeared on our camping trip to the Thousand Islands when I was sixteen years old. My father and I had to go home without him.

It happened like this….

It was the fishing and camping that brought my dad and I to the St. Lawrence River and the Thousand Islands from the time I was eight. We would visit this liquid border between Canada and much of New York State at least once, sometimes twice a year. Our lodgings would vary from tent-covered campgrounds to friends’ houses and we would stay anywhere from three to ten days. My dad was an avid fisherman who loved the quiet, waiting times as much as he enjoyed the thrill of the fight. I loved that about him. His outlook was a good thing as he wasn’t always a very successful fisherman.

We could spend six hours sitting in our nine-foot Boston Whaler without a single sincere nibble from the fish teeming beneath us, and he would be perfectly content. I remember leaning over the side of the boat and looking through the sunlit water at the dozens of fish inspecting our premium bait on a hook. They were window shopping and soon moved on to more appetizing distractions. My dad, having watched the same scene, took a drag on his Marlboro and sat back onto his cushion.

“Groups of fish like that,” he said, “are called schools of fish. That’s why they’re so smart.” I looked at him and smirked, probably shook my head at the same time. “We’d probably have more luck if we knew where the school dropouts hung out.” I laughed aloud and temporarily scared the fish away. They were back soon enough but it didn’t truly matter. We had beauty all around us and a half-full thermos of lukewarm coffee in between. These were our bonding times away from his work, my school, and our family, and I think he cherished them as much as I did. I prefer to think so anyhow.

We camped many times on the river, and more often than not that meant Grindstone Island. Specifically, we would stay at Canoe Point. The park consisted of ten to twelve docks ranging in sizes suitable for our tiny boat on up to the deeper sailboats and the larger trawlers that my dad dreamed about. Numbered campsites lined the main shore while small, spider infested cabins dotted the backside of the point. In between lay a large hill smothered with trees and bushes. There was a path around the point’s extremity, but that was reserved for adults and other folks lacking an adventurous spirit. There were fire pits for each campsite, a recreation building consisting solely of a well-used ping-pong table, and an outhouse.

Canoe Point was my favorite place in the known world. I hadn’t traveled much yet but I failed to see how anyplace else could hold as much fun, excitement and beauty. Wild animals of unknown origin snuck around outside our tent at night. Spiders that I absolutely knew to be deadly poisonous hung precariously over my head while I sat in the outhouse. Lightning storms and thunder claps played across the water in flashes and echoes that I see and hear to this day. We trekked through thigh-high swamps and scaled three story walls of rock. Our boat almost capsized once as we hit the wrong wave at the wrong speed and found ourselves perfectly vertical in the air. It was incredible and in the center of it all were the two of us. My dad and I fishing together. Before, during and after everything else, there was always the two of us together. At home he was preoccupied with work and marriage issues, but in the islands, with the fish and I, he was free to be a boy again. Free to have fun.

We didn’t always come alone on these trips. My mother eventually forced dad into bringing my two sisters and occasionally their friends along as well. For the most part, their inclusion enhanced more than detracted from the trips. One of the more memorable times involved me getting my first look at live, female breasts at the age of fourteen. The girl was a beautifully designed eighteen-year-old friend of my older sister. She was getting dressed. My eyeball happened to be pressed against a small hole in the bottom of the tent wall. Let’s move on. We continued to have good times as a family on these trips and my dad learned to enjoy my sisters’ presence. He grew close to them as he had to me many years prior, but I was still his son. His favorite.

One of the many folks we met on the island was a man known to me only as The Pancake Man. His real name has left my memory but his nickname is with me forever. He was a retired gentleman who came to Canoe Point every year for the week before and the week after Labor Day. Fishing was his great love but it came second to his visitors on Labor Day weekend. That Friday, he would take his trawler to the mainland and return with boatloads of his children and grandchildren. It would take him three or four trips to bring them all, but the look on his face was one of pure joy all weekend long. They would laugh, party, reminisce and laugh some more for three days straight. We were invited numerous times to share their breakfasts, lunches and dinners.

It was during one of these breakfasts that my dad first coined the name, The Pancake Man. The man basically fed us every morning whether his family was there or not. He would make heaping mounds of the fluffiest pancakes ever tasted and not a single one ever went to waste. Fresh maple syrup, fresh fruit, chocolate chips . . . they were all at our disposal and they were delicious. The Pancake Man was a god to my dad. I could tell even then that my dad held him with a high degree of respect. The man spent two weeks a year in this beautiful place. He fished when and where he wanted. He apparently had little or no money issues. And most importantly, he had a family he loved and that loved him back with such obvious devotion that they would spend their vacations visiting him in the islands. My dad respected him. I realized much later that he envied the man quite a bit as well.

We went to the islands twice more before my dad disappeared.

When I was fifteen, my dad and I went to Canoe Point with a friend of his from work. The man had two sons, ages fifteen and thirteen, who went along with us. We were two days away from leaving and had run out of real food. There were still snacks and drinks but no real meals. That morning, we set out in two boats on a half serious, half jesting quest to catch enough fish to feed us all. My dad and I spent much of the day fishing without success. We talked and went swimming before returning to our pursuit of a meal. I would have been fine with junk food, but he was really looking forward to fresh fish. Fresh fish that we caught. As the afternoon began to turn to dusk our soon-to-be dinner hit my pole hard.

The rod almost shot from my hand from the impact, but I held on and arched it up into the air. As the line ran deep and away from the boat my dad let out a whoop and reeled his own line in. I began to alternate between letting the fish take some line and reeling more back in. My dad coached and cheered me on as my arms began to ache from fighting this aquatic behemoth. Minutes ticked away and after almost half an hour we got our first glimpse of the beast as he broke the water. It was the largest pike I had ever seen. After more minutes of struggling and tiring the fish out, my dad netted it and lifted it into the boat. It was massive and from head to tail was as long as our boat was wide. My dad began planning the meal in his head. I could almost smell the seasoned and cooked pike as memories of my dad’s past fresh-catch culinary delights wafted in my mind’s nose.

The fish was hung from one of the thick poles on the dock. While one of the boys held it still, the other dragged a blade across its body from end to end. He was scraping off the scales while it was still alive. The fish’s ravaged body flailed limply against the knife. I wasn’t particularly surprised or shocked by this display, but as I watched this creature bleeding and suffocating in the open air I began to feel a pain in my gut not related to hunger. I’m not naïve and I won’t pretend the fish looked me in the eye, but the effect would have been the same. It hurt to watch this brutality. I asked them to club the pike to kill it before continuing on with this atrocity, but they simply laughed at me. The older boy turned to me with sharp, disbelieving eyes beneath a furrowed brow.

We returned to camp with our prize and found the others holding a pitiful string of perch in their hands. “We caught the main course,” my dad said with a grin, “you clean it.” The three of them were awestruck as they nodded their heads and licked their lips. The boys grabbed the still breathing fish as my dad told them all about my fight with it. I was assaulted with accolades from the two adults and headed toward the dock to watch the other kids prepare the fish for our feast. My dad was looking at me with a smile and I was sharing it as I reached the dock.

“Freakin’ pussy,” he muttered. His younger brother grinned and hurled the name at me again. It was followed quickly by one of the pike’s gouged-out eyeballs.

I returned to the campsite, claimed an upset stomach and passed on dinner for the evening. My attitude had begun to change in those minutes with the fish. Both the minutes spent fighting with it and the minutes spent watching it die. There was no on-the-spot transformation or epiphany, but it was the start of something.

My growing understanding and appreciation for other animals was leading me towards vegetarianism and an inability to perform certain actions that had never bothered me before. I knew I could no longer fish. Images of the pike being scraped raw and disfigured played in my head alongside new, static pictures of other crimes I had been viewing in books and magazines. I looked forward to an upcoming return to the islands with my dad and my friend, Chris, but I knew I wouldn’t be fishing.

My dad’s preoccupations at home probably kept him from realizing my view had changed so radically. I was currently embroiled in a silent battle of wills with my mother over a separate issue altogether, and informing my dad of my new beliefs wasn’t a top priority. I finally told him as we were setting up camp on Canoe Point. He seemed incredulous and I tried to tell him that it didn’t mean I would stop boating with them. I would just read or sightsee while the two of them fished. He wanted to argue the point, and we did briefly before he went to the boat to prepare it for the following morning. It was the Thursday before Labor Day weekend, and in addition to our squabble my dad was upset because The Pancake Man wasn’t there yet. The old man had been late on a previous year and not shown up until Friday morning, so I wasn’t concerned. My dad watched the campfire as Chris and I went exploring. The three of us went to bed early after a quiet dinner.

I awoke the next morning to the first beams of sunlight filtering through the tent screen. I was alone. Chris and my dad were gone. I figured they were already up having breakfast, so I got dressed and hopped outside. Our boat was gone. There was a note on the picnic table held down with a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies. I looked from the empty dock to the note and picked it up.

“Went fishing. Figured you’d rather sleep. We ate already.  Have some cookies or wait for The Pancake Man. Be back later.”

I found it difficult to believe that they would just leave me like that so I read the note again. No mistake, they had left me. I remember being confused and then slowly feeling anger course through me. I walked fiercely down to the dock and scanned the river before me for our boat. The only boat I recognized was the one belonging to The Pancake Man as it came slowly towards the big docks. Its arrival did nothing to soothe the conflicting anger and guilt I was feeling. I returned to camp, threw the crumpled note into the ashen fire pit and hiked into the woods of orange and brown. I returned a few times over the next several hours to an empty camp until finally, four hours after I had found the note, I saw our boat tied to the dock.

My dad was lying in his hammock watching the water. His eyes closed as I approached him. The Pancake Man’s family was milling about setting up their tents. They seemed to be moving slower and heavier than I remembered. There weren’t as many of them.  I didn’t see the old man.

Chris told me that the Pancake Man had died a few months prior. The family members were here one last time to drop his ashes into the river he loved so much. My dad passed this on to Chris before telling him that he was going to lie down for a short nap. I looked to my dad, sleeping or pretending to sleep in the gently swinging hammock with the netting wrapped around him like a cocoon, and I sat down. I opened the cookie bag, began to eat my lunch, and calmed myself down. My anger subsided. My guilt was assuaged. I could see in my dad’s tightly pressed eyes some of the pain he was feeling. I wouldn’t see it all until years later, but I could see enough. I would talk to my dad when he woke up. This was a little thing. It would pass.

My dad didn’t wake up.

My father crawled from his nylon and string chrysalis and mumbled something about a storm building near there and we would have to cut our stay short.  We would be leaving in the morning. The afternoon and evening passed. Chris, my father and I went home the next day.

My dad disappeared on a camping trip to the Thousand Islands when I was sixteen. I hadn’t seen him in the years since.

Until last June.

There was a knock on my door at eight thirty in the morning. I looked through the peephole and saw my sister and my father. It was a surprise visit from New York. I hadn’t seen him in over two years. I opened the door to a boisterous “Surprise!” and two strong hugs. One set of arms released me. The other held tight. When he finally let go of me, my dad had tears in his eyes.

My dad reappeared on my doorstep in Pensacola last June.

I can’t tell you how it happened because I don’t know. I don’t care how.

Rob Hunter currently resides in Pensacola, Florida, where he is oh-so-close to his B.A. in English Creative Writing. When he's not playing, working or sleeping, Rob can be found chastising himself for not writing more. He recently attended his girlfriend's college graduation, co-adopted a new dog, and discovered the joys of pickled okra. He has a 100-word limit here so he also wants you to know that he enjoys speaking in Suessian verse and pretending he's the Lorax. Ooh, and Asian films. He likes Asian films. Rob thanks you for your time, and he hopes you've enjoyed reading his tale.

Copyright 2003, Rob Hunter. This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.