A Mile High High
On the Road Part 4
We finally, after thousands upon thousands of white dotted lines have rolled past our Outback, after hundreds upon hundreds of miles have slithered beneath our tires, after hundreds of times Sentimental Journey has been played on Sirius Radio, we cross the border of the Sunflower State to the Centennial State. Funny how eastern Colorado looks just like western Kansas. We will have to drive another hundred miles, still suffering from mileage mania, past Limon, Colorado, until our straining eyes get a glimpse of the shadowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains.
We drop south and spend the night in Canyon City at a motel which has brass-plated labels on the doors of its rooms, the labels identifying the names of celebrities who allegedly slept there. James Caan, James Arness, Goldie Hawn, I am pretty certain that, upon our departure, on our door, there will not be a brass plate with “Ralph Maltese” on it. Canyon City is also home to the Museum of Colorado Prisons. I would like to stop and visit the museum, but there are trout to catch. Next trip….or perhaps on the way home.
It is the next morning when we step outside our motel room that we know we are in Colorado. The sky is the deep entrancing blue like the eyes of a lovely blonde….like Polley. Snow-capped mountains in the distance lure us with the promise of adventure, and the first breath of Colorado air cleanses my lungs and fills my body with a vibrancy that only the unspeckled mountain air can instill. We are happy.
A fly fisherman, I remember pools and the fish I caught in them (or didn’t catch in them which is more the norm) the way other people remember certain meals at fine restaurants. “There is a pool near a campground on the Taylor River where a sixteen inch rainbow trout inhaled an Elk Hair Caddis I tied.” “There is an undercut bank on the Eagle River near Edwards where a Moby Dick-sized brown trout broke off my tippet.” “There is a Colorado cutthroat trout on the Horseshoe Pool on the Gunnison that refused every fly I floated by it.”…..not all memorable meals are good meals.
But despite my penchant for cataloging my memories by fly fishing adventures, almost all our trips are anchored, like geographical waypoints, by the people we meet on our trips.
There is the lady, the wife of a pastor, whom we met while I was fly fishing the Lodgepole Pool on the Taylor River. She and Polley exchanged pleasantries and within minutes she alerted Polley that she was “very conservative.” Polley assured her that that stance was fine since she, Polley, was “very liberal,” and here they were enjoying fishing the same river…..except the pastor’s wife was fishing with worms—a no-no since live bait is not legally permitted on that stretch of the Taylor. Polley politely reminded her of the law, but she dismissed it. “No, fishing with worms is okay here.” I offered to give her some of my flies to use, but she refused. One of those people to whom the law does not apply….well, at least not man’s law, I guess.
On another day, at the same spot, I caught what I seem to catch on every outing—a pine tree. I tie my own flies, so losing a few to tree-fish or rock-fish or log-fish or, even better, fish-fish is no big deal, but then I have to tie on a new fly and between my eyes which suffer from myopia, hyperopia, dystopia and any other opias one could think of and my Parkinson’s, tying on a tiny fly to a thin tippet can be frustrating. Imagine Ray Charles threading a needle while tumbling around in a dryer. So in my efforts to disengage my fly from the evergreen, I found myself, almost in slow motion, sitting down in the Taylor River. The cold wetness of the Taylor River quickly caught my attention. Getting up out of the Taylor River was enormously difficult since I was still holding onto the rod which was connected to my fly, since I was wearing a heavy vest loaded with gadgets and flies for every situation, and since half of the Taylor River was now filling up my waders. I still tried to save the fly along with a second-by-second diminishing dignity. A young man and a young woman who were fishing upstream came to my rescue and helped me stand up. Colorado public school teachers, (ah, public school teachers, my favorite kind of teachers), they were not only newly married but new to fly fishing. I don’t suppose they thought much of the fishing advice given to them by a dripping veteran fly fisherman who was still attached to an evergreen, but they did appreciate the copious number of flies I gave them. I hope they read this blog and, more importantly, know how thankful I am that they helped me up.
The Fly Gobbling Evergreen
There are the three guides who took us on float trips, Eric on the Gunnison, Alex on the Colorado, and Joe on the Eagle. Every guide has his or her own style of guiding which includes tips on fly fishing and what I like to call “corrections” to my fly fishing technique. “Keep your wrist straight when casting!” “Add more power to your back cast!” “Mend your line! BIG mend now!” “Cast to that slack water!!” “Point the rod tip at the fly!” All of these “corrections” are listened to when standing ankle deep in the water next to the guide, or when I am in the boat drifting calmly down a river. Listening to the “corrections” and converting them into useful actions during battle situations is something else.
What are battle situations in fly fishing? I am in a raft, standing in the bow, fly rod in hand, balancing myself between two aluminum bars like the handlebars of a bicycle without the seat….or wheels. See picture below.
Doesn’t this look leisurely?
Now imagine standing in the bow, between the horseshoe bars, casting to prime spots (lies) where hungry trout might be waiting to engulf your fly while you are zipping down the rapids at what seems to be lightning speed. See this picture
“Keep your wrist straight when casting!” “Add more power to your back cast!” “Mend your line! BIG mend now!” “Cast to that slack water!!” “Point the rod tip at the fly!”
Time, for me, has increased exponentially. Standing up, trying to make all the “corrections,” I find myself listening to the Prime Directive reverberating in my brain which dictates I NOT join my quarry at the bottom of the river. “Stay on the raft!!”
“Cast behind that rock!”
Much to the dismay of my guide, my cast is off target, but to me, I am successful due to the fact that I am still in the raft.
“Cast to the Slack Water on the Right!!!”
I am currently facing the port (left) bow. Grasping the right handlebar and turning around while bouncing on this trampoline of a river I turn to my right and I am now well past the slack water to my right.
“Mend your line!!!”
I make a mental promise to mend my soul if I ever get out of this alive.
“Cast to the Slack Water on the Left!!!!”
I am facing right. Imagine standing on a roller coaster hanging onto a handlebar with your left hand and a fly rod raised high in your right hand facing right and holding on for dear life and you are asked to, while the ride is going down a steep slope, to turn around.
By the time I am facing left, whole geological eons have passed, the slack water on the left filled in by sentiment or evaporated.
Amazingly I make an accurate cast and a trout, who obviously received low SAT scores, inhales my fly. Now the adventure begins. The trout wants to stay in its lie, its home, and I would like to stay near his home, play him for a while and then gently release him, but the river stops for no one. I zoom past his home downriver, and now a new set of corrections lash at me.
“Don’t Give Him Slack!!” I release the handlebar which forever has the imprint of my right hand, and I try to reel in some line. The rod is over my head in back of me, I am facing the foamy water in front of me. My whole body is arched like a Russian ballerina only without the grace.
“Keep the Rod Tip High!!!!” The trout wants to return home upriver, all of us, Polley, the guide, the raft, my rod, and I are all going downriver–fast. I am determined to hang onto this fish, and I am also determined to obey the Prime Directive which has been almost violated half a dozen times since I attached myself to this trout. We finally slip into some slack water by the bank.
The guide nets my beautiful rainbow trout, and we take pictures. Lee Wulff, noted fly fisherman, said “A trout is too beautiful to catch only once.” Eric, my guide, slides the trout into the river. He calls it the Trout Relocation Program. We shake hands, catch our breaths, and look around us. I exclaim, “Let’s do it again!”
My other guides on our trip, Alex and Joe, are equally proficient and wise and offer me many corrections. I catch quite a few trout, cruise two other rivers, and slip by some beautiful country.
There are other people, other waypoints that anchor the memories of our trip west. There are Cindy and Rick, Polley’s cousin and cousin-in-law, retired National Park Rangers who are always wonderously hospitable and who offer great insight into the workings of nature, great conversation and great wine. They suggest we visit the Arches National Park in nearby Utah. Next trip…..or perhaps on the way home. Wait!!! We are leaving Cindy and Rick and going home! It is time. All the should-haves, all the places we should have detoured to, pose no challenge, no deliberation. It is time to go home.
On the trip home we again stop in Hays, Kansas, at a fast food hamburger eatery. There a young lady in a wheelchair rolls up to our table, asks us if we are enjoying our burgers, and takes our trays. She is an excellent hostess for the establishment. She returns and asks us how we enjoyed our meal. We reply in the affirmative, enthusiastically, and she tells us the vanilla custard is to die for. We order the vanilla custard. The young lady in the wheelchair is also an expert salesperson.
So the memories of our vacations are anchored by the people we encounter—-even the people we don’t encounter like James Caan, James Arness, and Goldie Hawn.
But there is something else, something perhaps belonging to a primordial instinct, something indistinct and palpable. Ironic that, as a young boy, a boy from the Bronx, New York, I felt more comfortable in the forest than anywhere else. My best sleep ever was on an aromatic spread of spruce leaves on a snow-covered slab of rock while hunting with my Dad. I have spent joyous hours in the woods contemplating the mystery of a tree. I have stared at stones and wondered what they have experienced. I sit in my small backyard and ponder the same mysteries, but it is so much easier to slide into that river of contemplation when surrounded by wide blue skies and purple mountain majesties.
I am not referring to “using” nature, although I suppose that is part of it. I am trying to explain the connection I feel…..a connection to all there is. I belong to the trees, the streams, the stones. I become the trees the streams, the stones.
Standing in the blue water of a mountain stream, listening to its voices, I travel far, much farther than any man-made vehicle can take me, my thoughts and soul searching the bottom of the stream I am fishing, my thoughts and soul caressing the distant snow covered mountains, my thoughts and soul exploring the outer recesses of the universe, and the realization returns to me….no, not the realization but the sensation, the feeling, envelops me that I am significant and insignificant at the same time. What we know of the universe, like our knowledge of a supreme being, is a construct of the brain, a perception of the mind. While the mass of its stars and the distances between them are measurable, the being of the universe remains, like any supreme being, unfathomable. Despite that truth, or perhaps because of that truth, I feel the universe is both within and without me. John Muir, naturalist, said, “Salvation can be found in immersion in the natural world.” As usual upon my return from any outdoor experience, I feel saved.
On the drive home we follow the Arkansas River and round a bend where the water snuggles up against a flower festooned bank, a green meadow dotted by purple and yellow, and white flowers. The meadows hosts a copse of Aspen. I would love to fish there. I would love to stand in that water casting toward the meadow, toward the flowers, toward the Aspen. I would love to be in the middle of all that….to be one with all that. Next trip.
Safe journey…….
Related
A fellow Penn State parent shared your blog with me as I too have PD. I just moved to Alabama but was born and raised in the Colorado mountains and I loved this post 🙂 Thank you for sharing!