“Did you sharpen your axe?” I asked my dad yesterday. He was looking weary as he sat behind his desk at his engineering office.

“No,” he answered. “I’m too busy to sharpen my axe.”

I put my hand on his shoulder and prayed for him. This is the meaning behind sharpening your axe to my dad and me: it means have you prayed today?

I can’t quite remember when this axe/prayer became something special between us. Like just about every other thing I love about my dad, I can’t place the moment that thing became special to me.

This 4th of July we went to our cabin with my parents. I have spend nearly every one of my forty-two years at this rustic, little cabin with my mom and dad for the fourth. I have all kinds of memories of my dad in the mountains. This year a new memory of my dad was made there. We’d just started a bonfire in the meadow like we always do and were setting chairs around it. My dad noticed a nest of baby mice that had fallen out of one of the bagged folding chairs. Gently, he gathered up the nest and the bald, wiggling babies, cradling them in the palm of his hand for all the grandkids to see. Two men in the camp urged him to stomp on the mice, or throw them in the fire. Moms agreed, warning of the diseases rodents carry. Without a word, my dad tucked the nest close to his chest, folded and rebagged the chair, then returned the nest and chair to the supply room with the hope that the mommy mouse would return and care for her young.

This is my dad who grabs rattlesnakes by the tail and kills them by the dozen each summer on his ranch. Who lives to hunt and fish. Enjoys beer, skins deer with his pocket knife, and then cuts up his cheese and salami with the same knife to put on his saltine crackers.

To this day, I still love buttering saltine crackers to go with homemade potatoe soup which my dad taught me to make. Both the buttered crackers and the soup.