Parenting mistakes — losing my kid in the wilderness

In the summer of 2015, our vacation was in Yellowstone.

We went with our friends — neighbors in Cupertino, in California’s Bay area. We have four kids, they — three. Our kids attended the same school, and the moms became friends. I didn’t make friends with that mom’s husband, at least not immediately. If you meet me, I can appear good at small talk, but I am quite introverted. I was in no rush to meet Rodney. But my wife Natasha (she prefers to go by her formal name Natalia, but she’s Natasha to me!) and Eva socialized a lot and went on a few local hikes, and, eventually, we all decided to arrange a vacation together. My mom and stepdad were visiting from Russia like they do every summer, so they joined.

Yellowstone turned out amazing. We’ve visited quite a few national parks and Yellowstone is #2 on my list (Death Valley #1!). Driving back to the park’s exit on one of the days, we saw a wolf devouring a dear and then suddenly a bear chased that wolf away. There was also a pitiful coyote observing all that action from the distance, its chances for leftovers not looking promising. It was like watching Animal Planet from the window of your car. And then, of course, there were geysers and the talk about the supervolcano erupting one day, causing incredible destruction. Would we survive a thousand miles away in California? Apparently, the volcano is now in that part of its cycle (plus-minus five hundred million years!) when it can awake. If there is a nuclear war, Russians would target this…