I have so many wonderful memories of Fr. Mat! We got to know each other more personally when he and I joined a backpacking group composed of several Oakland priests and several lay men. We planned backpacking trips every summer for years. In fact, this last summer with COVID was the first summer in at least 6 years that we didn’t have a summer trip together. Our destinations included the California Sierras, the Grand Canyon, Lake Tahoe, Hawaii and Yellowstone. We’d start planning in January and by summer we were all ready and raring to go! There are two stories from these trips that I particularly want to share with you. On one of the Sierra backpacking trips we had all stopped for a lunch break in an area where a small lake was nearby. Most of us were enjoying our lunch when, very excitedly, Fr. Mat came running to us yelling that he had caught a fish! With his hiking pole he speared a fish in the shallow water. We got up from lunch and move toward him to him to see it, fascinated. As we got closer, we saw that it was not a fish at all! It was a piece of bark that looked remarkably like a fish. He had completely sold us on the joke. He laughed and laughed, and we laughed with him. Here’s the photo!!