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S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 89 I f you are fortunate enough to have been blessed with a daughter, you eventually come to realize that someday, somewhere, some guy is going to come along who wants her for his own. So you begin collecting big guns and big dogs in preparation for that dreaded time. You know it will be the worst day of your life, and the only thing that could possibly be any worse is facing the fact that she might actually want him as much as he wants her. I mean, we're talking about your daughter—your capitalized, italicized, up- on-a-pedestal, one and only Daughter! No one else could possibly understand, because no one else has ever had a daughter . . . well, at least not one like her. She was your treasure, your dream fulfilled, your little curly haired fishing buddy, wader of trout streams, shooter of bows, stalker of deer, caller of wolves and coyotes, and the subject of your most heartfelt songs and poems from the moment she was born, until he showed up and you realized you were gradually becoming the second most important man in her life. As it should be. Just the way God intended it. D ad, this is Philip," she had said, neither of us realizing at the time that this would turn out to be The Guy. I had known I would meet him some day. From time to time I'd even asked myself if this or that guy might be him. But they never were. I didn't know who he was or where he was or what he might be experiencing, good or bad, at any given moment in our parallel lives. But I had realized early that while I was asking God to take care of her, it might make sense to ask Him to do the same for this, as yet, unrevealed little boy—for his life was still a great unknown to me. And so I prayed. I prayed for them both. It was all I could do. Then late one Thanksgiving night when she was home from grad school with family and friends, and everyone had gone to bed, Philip quietly came back down the stairs and took a seat in the big leather Ramblings by michael altizeR IF YOU THINK FISHING WITH YOUR DAUGHTER IS ENGROSSING, TRY FISHING WITH HER NEW HUSBAND. chair across from me and calmly and with great respect and purpose asked if it would be okay if he married my Daughter. And suddenly all the big dogs and big guns became totally irrelevant, for I realized I had grown to like, even love, this young man I had come to know so well over the last few years. A couple of months later he finally asked her, and the following October I walked her down the aisle and gained a Son. P hillip's only noticeable deficiency was the fact that he had never fly fished. He didn't even own a fly rod. So I bought him one as a wedding gift, and the following July I took him and her and Mary Jane into the San Juan Mountains of northern New Mexico to fish the high country I knew and loved so well. I had meant to take him fishing long before now, just the two of us, but somehow his schedule and mine never quite meshed. So the first trout he caught with his new rod and reel was a four- pound rainbow out on the north end of Charlie's Lake, below Bobcat Rock.