The importance of setting expectations

When hiking half-frozen sand dunes in Colorado, our son marched full steam uphill as we stopped to shoot the views, and before we knew it, this was the distance between us.

Despite making exaggerated X motions with our arms, he enthusiastically waved to us before continuing on. He disappeared from view for a disconcerting amount of time, below the dune between us until emerging crawling up the next. As we followed what we assumed were his boot prints, we’d be told that if we were looking for a kid in a camo jacket, he blew by them 10 minutes ago. We didn’t catch him till the summit, 700 tough vertical feet and a lot of exasperation later.

One simple instruction about the expectations of the hike and how we were approaching it would have prevented a lot of stress, an important lesson we’ve all remembered since. Either way, he had the hike of his life and made great time doing it, capping it off with a handstand on the summit.