"Dad," I say one day, "let's take a trip. Why don't you fly out and meet me?" My father had just retired after 27 years as a manager for IBM. His job filled his day, his thought, his life. While he woke up and took a warm shower, I screamed under a freezing waterfall in Peru. While he tied a tie and put on the same Swiss watch, I rowed a boat across Lake of the Ozarks. My father sees me drifting aimlessly, nothing to show for my 33 years but a passport full of funny stamps. He wants me to settle down, but now I want him to find an adventure. He agrees to travel with me through the national parks. We meet four weeks later in Rapid City. " What is our first stop?" asks my father. "What time is it?" "Still don't have a watch?" Less than an hour away is Mount Rushmore. As he stares up at the four Presidents carved in granite , his mouth and eyes open slowly, like those of a little boy. "Unbelievable," he says, "How was this done?" A film in the information center shows sculptor Gutzon Borglum devoted 14 years to the sculpture  and then left the final touches to his son. We stare up and I ask myself, Would I ever devote my life to anything? No directions, no goals. I always used to hear those words in my father's voice. Now I hear them in my own. The next day we're at Yellowstone National Park, where we have a picnic. "Did you ever travel with your dad?" I ask. "Only once," he says. "I never spoke much with my father. We loved each other--but never said it. Whatever he could give me, he gave."  _  In Glacier National Park, my father says, "I've never seen water so blue." I have, in several places of the world, I can keep traveling, I realize--- and maybe a regular job won't be as dull as I feared. Weeks after our trip, I call my father. "The photos from the trip are wonderful," he says. "We've got to take another trip like that sometime." I tell him I've decided to settle down, and I'm wearing a watch. What does the author realize at Mount Rushmore?
His father is interested in sculpture. His father is as innocent as a little boy. He should have a specific aim in life. He should learn sculpture in the future.