In the Giant Fin were Magical Things. The first of these were streams that had cut down into the rock to make secret canyons full of trickling water, big trees, and rock-carved pools. The pools in late March, when he visited the Fin, were full but cold and stagnant. The dogs loved the pools, though, and went sloshing through them. The boy thought about taking a drink from one of them, but his parents freaked out and he himself decided, upon closer inspection, that a nice clean pool would be more desirable.

The second Magical Thing about the Fin was how it had caves up those little canyons. The best cave was called Fishmouth and really looked like the mouth of those golden Japanese fish he had seen swimming around in fountains in the strange places he had traveled with his parents. But best of all, when you climbed up to the cave (hard! Lots of rocks sliding out from under you) and sat in it to look out, you felt like you were in the fish. As if it had popped you in its mouth and was just waiting to swallow you. That was cool.

Corn cobs littered the cave floor. His mom noticed craters in the dirt and bet, "10-to-one" (whatever that meant), that "pothunters" had been up there, looking for loot. He knew that pothunters were people searching for Indian stuff. Because that was the third Magical Thing, the best of them all: Indian ruins. There were two on the way up to Fishmouth, though none in the cave itself. And on another hike, at the very head of the canyon in a cave hanging over a deep, deep pool, was a ruin with buildings that looked like little castles. The little castles had rounded outer walls and teeny windows and when he got up there - which was tricky - he looked through the peepholes and imagined shooting arrows at enemies. This was way cool, too.

The third hike was boring. They hiked on something called slickrock and crossed over a natural bridge and wound up to a panel of rock with animals and human figures carved into it. The adults in the party oohed and aahed, but the boy by that time had had enough. The wind was picking up, and the best, Most Magical Thing of All, was about to be over. For the best, Most Magical Thing of All was simply camping. He loved sleeping in a tent next to his mom and dad. He loved how the dog spent hours watching for a lizard to appear from under a bush. He loved the campfire, and he especially loved making s'mores. He'd been given a Swiss Army knife for his tenth birthday, and whittled, with enthusiasm, the perfect roasting stick.

Sometimes he knew that his mom wanted him to love the Giant Fin more. That she wanted him to be as amazed at the stone houses tucked up into it as much as she was as a little girl. That to be able to discover such things on Spring Break - when so many other kids would never, ever, even know of the existence of the Giant Fin - was a true gift of grace. But his mom has almost always been wise enough to know, in these circumstances, that he is living out a very different childhood than she did, and that the thing he will most grow wistful about when he's old and fat is less likely to be the hikes and their magical properties, but the company he kept in them. And that - the connection of human community with the earth from which it arose - is what his mother was seeking in her love affair with the stone houses, after all.

He knows this the way children always know their parents' hearts. He loves his mom and dad a lot, and he hopes they go camping again sometime really soon.