In honor of Father’s Day, I spent a few minutes this morning searching for photos of my dad and me. It turned out to be a frustrating few minutes.

I’ve uploaded tens of thousands of photos to Amazon’s Prime Photo storage, which then proceeds to automatically group photos using facial recognition. It does a pretty good job, although I wouldn’t say errors are rare. But it did sort out several hundred photos of my dad at different stages of his life.

There were a handful of photos with him when I was in elementary school. Those occasions were pretty rare once I got to high school and college, if this sample of photos is to be believed. There are more pictures of him after I was married and living nearby, but few of us together.

I’ll have to tackle that absence at some point, but I won’t attempt anything like that today.

But I was glad to be reminded of several photos taken on a 1957 hike he led up Waialae Iki ridge with a group of friends from cub scouts. He didn’t volunteer for such outings very often, so it was a special treat.

There weren’t many houses built up the ridge at that time, as you can see in the top photo. We would drive up to the water tank, and hike up from there.

I remember the soothing sound of the wind blowing through the trees at the upper end of the hike, and their cooling effects, which were so welcomed.

For today, I’ll just send a silent “Happy Father’s Day” wish in his direction. A futile act, I know. But he is in my thoughts on days like this.