| western watershed romance |
| about | episodes | musings | voyeur room |
A pinnacle of a year the last few years has been
the weeklong backpacking trip, where I've really gotten down to life's
essence. This year, getting deep into the Warner Wilderness was etched
on my calendar, but with my left hip screaming like a banshee after a
fairly mild five-mile hike just two days before I'd planned to be off
on the much more serious trek, I knew I couldn't attempt the Warners
without fucking torturing myself or half-assing it, and such a
wilderness as the Warners deserves complete sublimation. So with a week
of now-vacant vacation time looming at me, I had to do something, I had
to rise above and kick my own ass to go where I've never gone before,
even if the Honda rather than the legs was the primary vehicle. Since
I'd let so much of summer's potential smother under the weight of my
pathetic, self-medicated bearable pain, I focused the week on trying to
attain all those lost summer chances, including the absence of the
Warners.
I chose Frenchman Reservoir as the
surrogate for the Warners, a reservoir instead of a wilderness cirque
lake, a Honda and a developed campsite instead of my legs and a
self-created nook along a small brook, but with one symmetry - rainbow
trout for rainbow trout. I'd longed for the Warners to rekindle a
little high-elevation lentic rainbow bug-eatin', which Frenchman,
though lower, potentially could also provide. It did.
On Monday in pre-dawn darkness, a billowing
valley wind scalloping Frenchman Reservoir's surface, I launched my
little canoe into a sharply curved, shallow, weedy cove adjacent to a
jutting rocky point edging off into deep, deep water. The habitat
resembled that in other summer still waters that produced lovely 'bows
in my past: Castle Lake, Emerald more recently, and even those San
Bernardino Mountain lakes eons ago. A water temperature of 64°F
provided additional hope - cool enough for rainbows to feel at ease
rolling into such a food-rich, shallow area. Unfortunately, I fished
rather maladroitly. Fucking slip-float rig tangled more than it turned
over. Snagged and broke off several precious, self-tied marabou jigs.
Lost two good fish on the jig, one shaking loose, the other,
heartbreakingly, breaking off with the jig in its jaw when I tried
pulling in the trout with too much heavy-handed force. Filled a bucket
with water, only to spill half of it in the canoe, soaking my gear.
Fumbled away several precious dawn minutes while unraveling the
snaggletoothed anchor line. Nevertheless, still, somehow, I maintained
my composure enough to land two fat, wild rainbows, two I fooled into
taking my bait, two I battled well, one I respected with a beautiful
photograph and a clean kill and a fine dinner, and the other I tailed,
unfastened the barbless hook from, then let slip back into the water with
not even a second of air exposure.
Back at
camp, reflective, trying to embed the morning's experiences with the
numerous nodes of the past, I felt my first few Arrowhead years pulse
powerfully into my mind. So many facets between Frenchman and those
early Arrowhead days paralleled each other. Of course, the
dawn-to-mid-morning bites at Gregory, always igniting in the young
day's indigo glow and ending around 9 AM, just as it had on Frenchman.
The languid afternoons, rhythmic pine trees beating to the upwelling
winds, me lounging on that red deck in the summery sun in Crestline, me
lounging in the chartreuse chair in the summery sun of Frenchman.
Eternal recurrence. Those afternoons on the red deck - I'd sprawl all
my tackle out after the morning's trout tussles, my spinners and spoons
and rods and reels and flies, everything. Like a jeweler hewing a
diamond for a regal wedding ring, I'd buff my metal lures to luminous
luster, I'd burnish the rods slippery smooth to enhance casting
distance, I'd meticulously dislodge with a toothpick any dirt or dust
or grime from the tiniest nooks in my reels. All the while, I'd pretend
I wasn't alone, I'd pretend I had a rapt audience listening to me
pontificate about fish and how to catch 'em. I'd pretend that I wasn't
in some overdeveloped southern California mountain town where the trout
are defined and defiled by the hatchery truck but was on a pristine
British Columbian lake where the salmonids were wild, where wild,
flame-flanked kokanee and full-finned, wild rainbows were the quarry.
Those afternoons on the red deck, they were studies in a blooming
misanthropy and a deepening dissociation. Lifeless chunks of metal and
graphite, they assumed life, I anthropomorphisized 'em, they, not the
humans I cohabitated with, they didn't grind down and disavow but gave
life, provided life, revealed life. And that fantastical location, and
those nonexistent listeners swirling around in my mind, they
subconsciously echoed and partially appeased my desire for some
recognition and a deeper connection to non-human life. The fantasy, by
that stage, had become safer than the reality.
I went back to the same cove the next dawn,
wanting to repeat what I accomplished the day before but with more
grace. Once again in pre-dawn darkness, the canoe slid into cove water,
but while yesterday's wind ruffled the surface, this day's gales boiled
it into one-foot rollers, meaningless swells to an 18-foot V-hull but
harrowing to a little canoe. Undaunted, I set up in the exact position
as the day before, and was immediately rewarded on the first cast with
a solid take and immediately blew it with a weak hook-set. Still,
promising, but it was an illusive promise. For two more hours, hours in
which yesterday, had I exhibited peak performance, would've yielded
four thick fish to hand, I received nothing but lost - two more marabou
jigs donated to the reservoir's craggy bed with not one salmonid kiss.
Disheartened, I riffled through my previous experiences to explain my
zero catch - the big wind had to have something to do with it. I found
Frenchman thick with small minnows, either redsides or tui chubs, prime
prey for trout in autumn during morning when shallow water's cool,
prime prey that trout love to concentrate against rocky points, prime
prey that especially love cobble-sized rock to hide in, prey like those
lake trout love to feast on when giant winds and rollers shake the
little fishes free of the concealing rock. I craned my neck to that
rocky point sidling off into abyssal water, and I felt possibility. I
ditched the bug imitations, switched spools to bigger line, tied on a
fish-imitating jig, and with the second cast, felt the confirmation of
my hunch, a confirmation that turned out to be a leopard-spotted 'bow
about a foot-and-a-half long. Unfortunately, like the previous day, I
fumbled and stumbled - in each of the next half-dozen casts, in the
bashing, blasting waters, I coaxed trout to bite my lure, but I just
didn't have the right sensitivity to hook 'em firmly without breaking
'em off. Still, I managed to hand another fish, a repeat of the first,
and felt it worthwhile to document the reenactment, for that's what it
was: damn near no difference existed between what Frenchman's rainbows
were giving me and what Berryessa Reservoir and Eagle Lake trout had
given me years ago. I kicked that fish back after the photo shoot, and,
pining for just one more, one more, a fifth fish in hand, I observed
several in very shallow water hunting methodically over those cobbles.
I switched to a small jerkbait, a more effective lure in such a
situation, stalked one 'bow, threw a great cast, then juked and jived
the lure just enough to attract the trout but not spook it. The fish
ate, the rod loaded up, and then, elated by a subconscious false
assumption that this fish would hit my hand, I let the animal roam
wild, let it jam with the line underneath a rock rather than keeping
the rod tip high and the fish's head up, and that most painful
sensation to a fish Romanticist, that dirge, that fucking black-hole
vacuum that occupies the gut - I felt the line go oh-so limp, and I
realized that my haughtiness had not only voided touching that fifth
fish, but that fish, it was fucked, what with a two-treble-hook
jerkbait anchored to its face. The water now glass, the sun now high,
signaling the end of the trout's feeding activity, still, I felt I
couldn't end it like that, end it with a stupid fucking break-off, so I
donned another jig and fished rather sloppily for another 15 minutes or
so, ultimately losing that lure to the cobbled bottom and having the
reservoir, by proxy, tell me that the interaction was complete. So I
left.
I had a small audience while I tangled
with the minnow-chomping trout: several trollers trailed their
thoughtless lures by fruitlessly. I'm pretty sure that a few of them
were stationed at my campsite, but, regardless, they all looked the
same, whether on water or land. Man, these people - all of 'em looked
horribly out of shape. The men: Jupiter-sized beer guts slung over
unseen belt buckles. The women: flabby and diseased-looking, wrinkled,
crinkled tangerine skin. Both looked pained when walking, waddling,
really, waddling their lumpy forms from their opulent RVs to their
opulent trolling boats. And that, all the civilized creature comforts
of home brought to a developed campsite, that's their outdoor
adventure. I wondered what came first: did the giant RV come after the
obesity of the average American to allow such people access to areas
not totally urbanized? Or did the RV come first, allowing people to
lose themselves while still allowing at least the ghost of an outdoor
experience? Likely neither: they developed together, a frightful
synergy, a positive feedback that, if taken to its logical extension,
will result in a completely sedentary, totally urbanized American, an
evolutionary fragment, homogenous and vulnerable. The lamentable cause
of these people's physical condition is at least threefold: lack of
will, ignorance, and an unquestioning obedience to instant
gratification. I'm the contrast that proves the cause: I used to be
there, like them, but I learned how to eat better, I maintained a good
diet as well as an exercise routine, and I subsequently experienced the
precious jewels of delayed gratification (e.g., the strenuous
backpacking trip into Piute Canyon and the amazing golden trout I
experienced). Nevertheless, as at Almanor so many years ago - not one
of these ugly, fat Americans was anything less than warm and gracious
and friendly to me, so shame on me.
Back at the campsite, slouched in my garish
green camp chair, shaded by cooing pines, I cracked open my lunch and
proceeded to mope about my mistakes of the last two days. Just felt I
couldn't end the relationship with Frenchman's trout on such a dour,
sour note. So I wondered - what would I gain by going out a third dawn
to the same spot to replicate the previous days' patterns? And patterns
I did garner, patterns I'd established at other waterways and in other
years: eight pounds of trout the first day on bug imitations with a
smaller wind had I landed all, and I probably could've beached more
than 10 pounds of trout the following day under big wind with fish
imitations if I'd been more in tune. I had at least one good photo of
each pattern at Frenchman, so what would I have gained by torturing
more fish that I wouldn't be killing since my freezer was still
well-stocked, that I wouldn't be photographing since I already
possessed good pictures, that wouldn't be affirming a previous pattern
by being caught but in a new context? That I could do so gracefully?
Hadn't I already proved that countless times with countless species in
countless conditions, even with bug-eating and fish-eating lentic
trout? Of course I had, so a reason for a third jaunt didn't exist. But
the lesson, the lesson materialized, and it epitomized this year:
though I didn't flourish gracefully, I persevered and got my fish.
Time for something new.
The little stream, Little Last Chance Creek,
below the dam, sandwiched in a volcanic canyon. Thought it'd be a good
candidate for gifting a few nice trout on a spinner, given late summer
and copious ochre grasshoppers fluttering about in the afternoon sun.
After only a half-dozen downstream swings with the metal lure, however,
I realized a terrestrial bite was just not on the water - I had nary a
breath of a trout on the lure. Flipping some rocks in the cold, cold
riffles and finding many baetid naiads in the size-16 range, I switched
the spinner for a hare's ear nymph, hiked the terrace above the creek
downstream a half-mile, then descended back down to the water and began
drifting the nymph while slithering upstream. I hit pay dirt: rare was
the drift that my float didn't drown from a trout's take. Among the
litany of juvenile 'bows were a half-dozen fantastic small-stream
ruby-streaked rainbows measuring from eight inches up to a surprising
fish close to the 14-inch mark. When I maneuvered into a position
marked by a big-ass rock shielding deep, shaded, viscous water, I
deepened my rig and threaded it right along the boulder's edge, and
just as you would've thought, two brown trout, one a stunning fish of
about 13 inches, revealed themselves. My casts were gentle and
accurate; my drifts were elegant; my playing and landing and releasing
of the trout were correct; and man, I waded and battled through some
tough water, not getting knocked over once by the powerful flows. When
I climbed out of the canyon, I realized I'd absolved my sins.
I left early Wednesday morning, before the
Mountain Bluebirds and White-breasted Nuthatches began their
bug-huntin', complementing the dawn bug-huntin' of the water's sleek
denizens. I took many things from Frenchman. I took Frenchman's life
and subsumed it into my own, becoming one, when I ate that
orange-fleshed trout on the reservoir's shores. I conducted
freshwater-predator rites that I've been plying since I was a teenager
so long ago in the baleful San Bernardino Mountains, and I took home
those additional passages to add to my life's picture book. I took a
little wisdom, a little humility, a little restraint, and was rewarded
with baptism at Little Last Chance Creek, so perfectly named for its
role in my little vacation. I reaffirmed the correctness of my life's
choices when contrasted to those of my fellow transient neighbors; my
neighbors, in turn, reinforced that in the context of a Wild place, no
matter how domesticated it may be, what someone looks like and how they
behave, they ain't consonant. If anything, I took from Frenchman that I
still can live even when my own body and my own mind, they fight me.