From Kemp

Some ten hours or so before the dreaded middle-of-the-night phone call, I’d been thinking how dad and I were due for another road trip. 

Our friendship took root in the closeness of a car interior — back from Calgary, out to Vancouver, dozens of runs back and forth from North Bay to Toronto—and blossomed on the trails we walked: Cape Hatteras, Alaska and Ft. McPherson, the German island of Rügen, and the many paths in and around North Bay.

Earlier that day I’d seen him through the screen and at the end of the conversation he lit up and took the device to the window to show me the out-of-doors. Outside that last window, there wasn’t much to see: a parking lot with a white truck in it, some trees standing off to the left.

But this was our shared place, and one of the many treasures he has left me: keenly observing the world around us.