is that he was never lagging behind
all those afternoons on the trail
when he would recede farther and
farther from view until vanishing
altogether and I would think, Great.
Should I keep going or head back?

He didn't care one way or another
what I did.  He had everything
a man could possibly need in that
immense fanny pack of his, and he
was advancing at a pace that fit him
(if you could call it a pace at all):

stopping to sniff the air, peering into
the canopy at some bird, dropping to
his knees before a bloom, lying down
inevitably in the speckled shade
to nap.  And when at last I'd find him,
he would squint up at  me with a grin,

as if I were the one who had been lost.
He would open his palm upon his
latest totem—a pot shard, perhaps, or
a trilobyte—and, his cheeks flushed with
the pleasure of knowing, would recite
for me the litany of the wildflowers.