The youngest and the oldest of our children, although only three years separates them in age and so does geographic distance, one living in Toronto the other in Vancouver, decided to spend some time together, camping out. One is interested in astronomy the other in biology, not all that different, one might suppose.

So off they went, on a trip before summer entirely faded into fall. Each took turns cooking, and while one wasn't too enthralled with the prospect of canoeing on the lake, the other was, and hied himself off for hours, doing just that. While the other contemplated the universe and set up one of his telescopes to view the sun's life-affirming activities.

Viewing the sun during the day and the other stars in the firmament through the night-time hours when dark silently enveloped them. Not entirely silent, since owls roosted and called; a lulling and fully satisfying atmosphere for a biologist and an astronomer. Milky Way? check. Shooting Stars? check. Venus, the Big Dipper, the North Star? check. Bats flying about? check. Nocturnal sounds of animals snuffling through the night, outside their tent? check.

And during the day they did other things too, aside from exploring forested trails. They scrambled up a cliff face and saw there what they had meant to view; pictographs. Nothing like those at the caves of Altamira, but impressive enough as a human expression of what confronted people who lived there a century-and-a-half earlier in a more primitive culture.

A week later, there he was, with me, at the table in the breakfast room, and it was evening and we were playing Pictionary, a challenge for the inventive mind to construct images that would convey an idea, an object, a phrase, an action.