Due to a quirk of my travel schedule, I spent Father’s Day away from my sons. It was a bummer, but I knew we have a trip coming up that would satisfy my Father’s Day dreams, so I didn’t mind … much. My substitute wasn’t bad, though. I went to Duthie Hill mountain bike park in Issaquah, Washington.
For anyone who has visited a mountain bike park, the appeal is as obvious as sunshine and the wonder I experienced the first time I visited Duthie Hill was akin to seeing Star Wars for the first time. These things really do exist? I’d seen photos of others and even video, but there’s nothing quite like facing the opportunity to ride the trails and features yourself.
Because I was by myself and had three-plus hours to devote to my visit, I decided I’d take the opportunity to work on my pilot’s license—getting air.
But that’s not really my purpose in this piece. Visiting Duthie Hill on Father’s Day was just the sort of thing to give me hope for the future. Let me explain.
Come one, come all
It is possible I was the only adult male flying solo at Duthie Hill. The place was packed with dads, moms, sons and daughters. All those traditional gender-relationship lines of dads with sons and moms with daughters blurred into irrelevancy. These were family outings. What’s more is that based on what I saw, dad hadn’t taken off to do the big ride while leaving mom with the kids at the park. Also, none of the moms were on the sidelines in lawn chairs. Everyone was playing.
I saw a group of a half-dozen tween boys chasing each other down a trail. A father and two daughters went off a drop I didn’t have the stomach for. A trio of famlies with kids spread between elementary school and junior high paused to wait for everyone at each intersection.
One of the best moments came when a kid, who couldn’t have been more than 10—he was on a 20-in.-wheel bike—sail over a table-top jump with a friend of his looking on in wonder. I cheered the juvenile pilot and looked at his buddy and thought, “Yeah, kid, me, too.”
A different paradigm
I’ve been to a handful of mountain bike parks and they have been exciting places, landscapes holding the promise of a braver you. Duthie Hill is different. And to be direct: Better. Part of it owes to the fact that there is such a big population to keep those trails busy. But there is also the way a culture of teaching and education has grown up around the park. There are multiple entities that teach courses ranging from the basics of mountain biking up to jumping clinics. I loved seeing the accessory of teaching—cones.
As a parent, one of the lessons I most want to teach my kids is how to recognize the feeling of flow, to register when they’ve experienced, which will help them begin to identify the conditions that lead to it. Play is a key piece of finding flow and if “play” is too structured—like stick-and-ball practice—it’s hard for kids to experience flow, let alone recognize it.
I’d been a later arrival to Duthie Hill on Father’s Day, so I was still doing laps when the families started to pack up and leave. There was a look common to everyone—That lazy smile that is all you can manage when you’ve played with all your might.