My dad loves the outdoors and, when I was a kid, he did everything he could to pass that love on to me.

He would pack up our Econoline van, and off we’d go, camping in a valley, hiking up a mountain or fishing under a bridge. My dad had his favorite spots where we would return over and over.

But there’s one thread that ties all of my memories of these trips together. At some point on each of our adventures, my dad would look at me in the rearview mirror and shout, “Get your nose out of that (bleepin’) book and look around!”

No matter how hard he tried, he could not really make an outdoorsy girl out of me. The raw materials just weren’t there.

Now that I’m a parent, well, the shoe’s on the other foot. Only now it’s not a hiking boot — more of a classic variation on something trendy, done in black or dark brown or even green.

I tow my daughter through the marble hallways of art museums or drag her around the perimeter of art galleries pointing out the merits of contemporary installation art.

My sermons elicit pretty much the same response I had to my dad’s lectures (his were on the varieties of North American songbirds, wildflowers and fungi). Outwardly the child acts interested but on the inside they are rolling their eyes. And like my dad, I don’t think I’m lecturing, but my kid does.

Here’s the real irony. She just wants to hike up mountains, go fishing and camping and discuss the attributes of a wide variety of snakes. I guess it skipped a generation. Oh well. As my dad likes to say these days, “I guess that’s just another feather in Grampa’s cap.” Whatever that means.