San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
A GRIEVING FATHER DISSECTS ADVENTURE
Roman Dial, a professor of biology and mathematics by profession, is a legendary Alaskan explorer. He’s competed in winter competitions across the state and climbed some of its highest peaks. He wrote the standard guide to packrafting — using a small, inflatable boat that can fit in a backpack to cross the raging rivers of Alaska’s interior and far north, where bridges are nearly nonexistent.
In 2014, Dial’s son Cody went missing while traveling in the jungles of Central America. Roman Dial and his wife, Peggy, hadn’t heard from Cody for two weeks before they began to really worry, and worry hard. “Shock washed over me. Then guilt,” Dial writes in his memoir, “The Adventurer’s Son.”
The day after reading what turned out to be his son’s final email, Dial landed in Costa Rica to search for him and, hopefully, save him. “The Adventurer’s Son” is his gripping, honest, raw account of that search. Dial’s writing is clear, straightforward, stolid.
Cody Dial’s remains were discovered in May of 2016; he had been killed by a falling tree in the jungle.
Dial’s two kids grew up romping the world. They would accompany him on research expeditions to Borneo, Bhutan, Australia and across Alaska. Cody inevitably grew into an
adventurer himself. But Dial has doubts about the adventure-loving upbringing he provided his son: “Maybe we should have limited ourselves as parents to team sports, Chuck E. Cheeses, the local cineplex.” Dial writes. Later he adds: “I couldn’t shake the feeling that everything I had done with him in the wild had all been a mistake.”
That’s a natural sentiment for a grieving father. I wish he wouldn’t judge himself too harshly. There’s the small (but empty) consolation that Cody died doing what he loved. But what Dial and his son had, for 27 years, was a lifetime of thrilling shared experiences — enough to fill a beautiful and tender book.