With my left hand gripped tightly on the wheel and a cold diet coke in the other, I was concentrating on the dirt road and driving my Tahoe along the twisting route that runs through the narrow valleys of the north fork drainage. I was doing 30-plus miles an hour and kicking up a lot of dust, hoping to make it away from the creeks that feed the Clearwater River in Idaho and out to civilization in Montana before I got too tired to drive. It would be a four hour haul to the home of my wife’s parents back in Washington where we would spend the night.
Daren, a high school friend of my brother Mark, was in the passenger’s seat and my fifteen year old, Terry, was in the back. Daren had bummed a ride with us as we drove to Idaho to meet up with Mark who was out from Michigan for some trout fishing. We spent the weekend chasing wild Cutthroat Trout on small mountain streams in the Bitterroot Mountains and were now headed back home.
I adjusted myself uncomfortably in my seat and continued my conversation with Daren.
“Look, I didn’t want to admit this to anyone but I've been trying for a couple years to erase the memory of an embarrassing moment here...”
Daren had wet clothes and was sitting on a towel, listening without comment.
“I had climbed up on a giant boulder to fish the Big Rock Hole on Moose Creek and was doing fine until it came time to get down. I was only a foot or two from the ground when my foot slipped and I dropped off the rock. I hit, lost my balance, and fell over backwards into the creek.”
Daren smiled and I continued.
“I was soaked and had sand in every possible crack of clothing. My fishing partner, Duane, came to see what the noise was all about and got a real chuckle seeing me soaked clean through. Now, a guy can do that once and life is okay. But if you do it twice then you start to develop a reputation and I can’t afford that. I’m getting older but I’m not old and the last thing I need is wiseguys like the young one in the back seat here making cracks about me losing the battle with time and gravity. Know what I mean?”
Terry laughed quietly from the back seat and Daren nodded his head.
“I told myself I could get past that if I was careful and made sure not to slip in the river again. I haven’t done myself any favors here. And it hurts pretty good right now…”
Less than an hour earlier, Daren and I had agreed it was time to hit the road and begin the long trek back home. As usually occurs, there was the typical “just one more hole” agreement and Daren had commented that he really wanted to find a nice fish before we quit.
I took him to a favorite hole on Moose Creek where I could be fairly sure to get Daren into a nice Cutthroat. We grabbed our rods and started down the steep bank. It was a ten foot drop from the road to the creek and excitement at fishing the last hole possibly interfered with my close attention to the path. It was dry, loose sand and the felt soles of my wet wading boots quickly caked over. With no warning, both feet went out from under me.
I didn’t fall over. I didn’t tumble down the hill. I didn’t break my rod against a tree. I simply sat down. Hard.
It wouldn’t have been a big deal if it wasn’t for a sharp rock that protruded from the bank. I somehow managed to sit down directly on top of it. And I hit tailbone first.
I couldn’t breath or speak and simply dropped my rod, laying over sideways on the hill to get off the rock. Daren looked back and began repeatedly asking if I was okay. I couldn’t answer for a moment or two.
My wife broke her tailbone a number of years ago in what we now describe as “the tragic roller skating accident” and I immediately thought I might have joined her small club. But, in the end, it wasn’t that bad. I was bleeding but I was okay. And being the die-hard fisherman, I told Daren to continue on to the creek while I followed him like a guy in a Marx Brothers’ movie, holding my dusty fly rod in one hand and my right cheek in the other.
Daren made a few false casts and drifted a dry fly through the small hole. Two or three tries later, a fish splashed and was soon brought to hand. It was a pretty Cutthroat, around ten inches. Casting again, he found the magic seam and we both saw a nice trout take his fly. He immediately knew that this was the bigger fish he’d hoped for and aggressively raised his arm to put tension on the line. The move wasn’t quite enough and, instinctively, he stepped back to give it more tension and buy himself the time it would take to swing his off-hand up to strip in more line. But that one step cost him.
His right foot went back and slipped off a medium-sized boulder in the creek. He immediately lost his balance and fell over backwards, like a tree, into eight inches of water along the edge of the hole. As quick as he went down, he sat up and regained his feet, finding that his luck was consistent—he wasn’t hurt and he still had the trout on the end of his line. Within a couple minutes he was holding a fat 13-inch Cutthroat and smiling.
“That’s exactly what I was hoping for before we quit.”
As the fish swam away, he turned and looked at me. He was pretty wet and I was still holding my rear end. The jokes started in earnest at that point and they continued in the car on the drive out.
“Look at it this way,” Daren said. “If you don’t tell anyone, I won’t tell anyone.”
“You don’t understand,” I continued. “I can’t be that guy with the reputation for falling all the time. That’s just not who I want to be.”
“Want to be... what you are... whatever…” said the mischievous voice from the back seat.
Daren, a high school friend of my brother Mark, was in the passenger’s seat and my fifteen year old, Terry, was in the back. Daren had bummed a ride with us as we drove to Idaho to meet up with Mark who was out from Michigan for some trout fishing. We spent the weekend chasing wild Cutthroat Trout on small mountain streams in the Bitterroot Mountains and were now headed back home.
I adjusted myself uncomfortably in my seat and continued my conversation with Daren.
“Look, I didn’t want to admit this to anyone but I've been trying for a couple years to erase the memory of an embarrassing moment here...”
Daren had wet clothes and was sitting on a towel, listening without comment.
“I had climbed up on a giant boulder to fish the Big Rock Hole on Moose Creek and was doing fine until it came time to get down. I was only a foot or two from the ground when my foot slipped and I dropped off the rock. I hit, lost my balance, and fell over backwards into the creek.”
Daren smiled and I continued.
“I was soaked and had sand in every possible crack of clothing. My fishing partner, Duane, came to see what the noise was all about and got a real chuckle seeing me soaked clean through. Now, a guy can do that once and life is okay. But if you do it twice then you start to develop a reputation and I can’t afford that. I’m getting older but I’m not old and the last thing I need is wiseguys like the young one in the back seat here making cracks about me losing the battle with time and gravity. Know what I mean?”
Terry laughed quietly from the back seat and Daren nodded his head.
“I told myself I could get past that if I was careful and made sure not to slip in the river again. I haven’t done myself any favors here. And it hurts pretty good right now…”
Less than an hour earlier, Daren and I had agreed it was time to hit the road and begin the long trek back home. As usually occurs, there was the typical “just one more hole” agreement and Daren had commented that he really wanted to find a nice fish before we quit.
I took him to a favorite hole on Moose Creek where I could be fairly sure to get Daren into a nice Cutthroat. We grabbed our rods and started down the steep bank. It was a ten foot drop from the road to the creek and excitement at fishing the last hole possibly interfered with my close attention to the path. It was dry, loose sand and the felt soles of my wet wading boots quickly caked over. With no warning, both feet went out from under me.
I didn’t fall over. I didn’t tumble down the hill. I didn’t break my rod against a tree. I simply sat down. Hard.
It wouldn’t have been a big deal if it wasn’t for a sharp rock that protruded from the bank. I somehow managed to sit down directly on top of it. And I hit tailbone first.
I couldn’t breath or speak and simply dropped my rod, laying over sideways on the hill to get off the rock. Daren looked back and began repeatedly asking if I was okay. I couldn’t answer for a moment or two.
My wife broke her tailbone a number of years ago in what we now describe as “the tragic roller skating accident” and I immediately thought I might have joined her small club. But, in the end, it wasn’t that bad. I was bleeding but I was okay. And being the die-hard fisherman, I told Daren to continue on to the creek while I followed him like a guy in a Marx Brothers’ movie, holding my dusty fly rod in one hand and my right cheek in the other.
Daren made a few false casts and drifted a dry fly through the small hole. Two or three tries later, a fish splashed and was soon brought to hand. It was a pretty Cutthroat, around ten inches. Casting again, he found the magic seam and we both saw a nice trout take his fly. He immediately knew that this was the bigger fish he’d hoped for and aggressively raised his arm to put tension on the line. The move wasn’t quite enough and, instinctively, he stepped back to give it more tension and buy himself the time it would take to swing his off-hand up to strip in more line. But that one step cost him.
His right foot went back and slipped off a medium-sized boulder in the creek. He immediately lost his balance and fell over backwards, like a tree, into eight inches of water along the edge of the hole. As quick as he went down, he sat up and regained his feet, finding that his luck was consistent—he wasn’t hurt and he still had the trout on the end of his line. Within a couple minutes he was holding a fat 13-inch Cutthroat and smiling.
“That’s exactly what I was hoping for before we quit.”
As the fish swam away, he turned and looked at me. He was pretty wet and I was still holding my rear end. The jokes started in earnest at that point and they continued in the car on the drive out.
“Look at it this way,” Daren said. “If you don’t tell anyone, I won’t tell anyone.”
“You don’t understand,” I continued. “I can’t be that guy with the reputation for falling all the time. That’s just not who I want to be.”
“Want to be... what you are... whatever…” said the mischievous voice from the back seat.
No comments:
Post a Comment