Stephen L. Cain
January 20th, 2004, 02:21 AM
The beginnings, I find, are the hardest. What is an acceptable amount
of background? How much of it is sensitive family stuff, the skeletons
not quite in the closet? How much do I need to add to properly convey
how precious the time my father and I have? How growing up and growing
old make us dangerously close to one day regretting what we didn't do?
In any case, I went to visit my father in Washington on stolen time
with borrowed money. My wife and I braved the threats of terrorists on
planes, surly airport workers, redeye flights and airline food. When
you get to do this every year and a half or so, the importance
overwhelms the inconvenience. Once there, we did some obligatory
sightseeing, some shopping and quite a bit of eating. Monday, the
weatherman said, would be a clear day, but cold, and Dad and I decided
to go fishing.
In the pre-dawn, which in Washington is any time before 9:00 am, we
got up and stacked on clothes: layers of wool and polypropylene and
Gore-Tex. My stepmother, who is always anxious for my father and I to
go fishing and knows what it means, was up with us and made Eggs
Benedict and coffee.
We loaded the car, packed maps and books and more coffee and set out
for steelhead.
We crossed the Narrows Bridge in the dark, took the interstate through
Olympia and headed up 101. We stopped in a turnout at the mouth of a
creek and looked at the estuaries' channels spreading out to the
inlet. The gray was slowly oozing away and out of the sky and the cold
wind brought the smell of the tiny delta up to us. We thought it might
work better fishing a little upstream from the mouth, so we drove up a
portion of the old highway and parked on the shoulder next to a bridge
over the stream.
The sky was blue instead of gray, but the sun still hadn't come up
over the mountain as we kitted up. I noticed that the river smelled
strange, almost as if the smell from the estuary was blowing up the
stream. It wasn't too pungent on the cold wind, but it still smelled.
The creek was small, eight feet wide in most places, and the banks
were lined with alder, spruce and hemlock. Frost covered the
blackberry bushes and in the middle distance, a turkey wobbled his
song. The sun was bright on the frost and this stream could have been
in the Alleghenies but for the source of the smell. There were chum
salmon carcasses everywhere, strewn about like so much fishy cordwood.
The ex-salmon were clustered under deadfalls, wedged into rocks,
decomposing on the shore and disintegrating in eddies. Every one of
these corpses was equipped with fantastic teeth, startling carnivorous
dentition. The two-footers could make a Rottweiler blush and the big
ones had choppers that would give Griz an inferiority complex. They
looked vicious and alien.
I flew twenty-five hundred miles to fish with Dad, so we fished. He
tied on a flesh fly and I used an enormous black-and-orange beast that
does double-duty as a shad fly. I was hoping for a steelhead that
could hold its nose while it swam upstream. I swung my streamer
without success until it got stuck under a branch, and I started to
reach for it until I remembered that I was probably snagged on a chum
corpse, so I cut my leader and switched to a nymph in hopes of a jack
steelie or resident trout.
The stream was very clear for being so full of meat, and when you
looked at the pebbly bottoms it seemed hazy. Closer inspection
revealed that small strips of salmon flesh clung to the pebbles and
waved in the current, giving the river bottom an appearance of
constant motion.
After two hours or so of nothing, we decided to try the estuary in
case the rising tide pushed some chrome into the stream. We waded into
the semi-salt of the inlet and bucked the wind. It was cold, and the
smell of salt and bright sun felt good and I was fishing with Dad. All
that sentimentality got me into trouble. I stepped a little too far
from the march grass and found the edge of the channel. One foot
slipped in, the second slipped and I went backwards but I managed to
post myself on my left arm and regain my feet.
In the 28-degree air and wind, we were sure that a dunking meant the
end of the trip. I had my jacket tucked into my waders and my wading
belt was tight, so only a little leaked down the front and back. My
cuffs weren't tight enough, so water flowed soaked my glove and flowed
up my sleeve. After the initial cold shock and I wrung out my wool
glove, the polypro and wool did the trick. I was warm and we kept
fishing for a half hour or so.
Dad wanted a little lunch and another river along. At the car, I took
off my gear to survey the damage. I was using a fanny pack and a pouch
on a lanyard to minimize the gear I carted across the country. The
lanyard pouch was dry, but I hadn't closed the zipper all the way on
my fanny pack. There was about three inches of water in the bottom of
it, and everything was soaked. The little paper packets that leaders
come in were falling apart and every one of my fly boxes were full of
water. My cigars were almost completely ruined - I managed to salvage
two. It wasn't a disaster: nothing had vanished, I still had two
cigars and I was fishing with Dad.
We drove along the Hood Canal, talking. We come from a long line of
men who hardly talk to their fathers. Dad didn't talk to his father
until he was virtually on his deathbed, but we're trying to rectify
the situation. We talked about being a kid in Washington, what kind of
a kid I was, about when I was going to have kids, our relationships
with our wives, the nature of happiness in life. We talked comfortably
and it felt great.
We pulled into a little diner in Hoodsport, where the proprietress was
the waitress and one of the perkiest ladies I'd ever met. Her oyster
stew was excellent, hot and strong and full of fat oysters, completely
without grit. I highly recommend the place; I think it was called the
Hoodsport Inn. It didn't look like much but it certainly warmed us.
At the Duckabush, we tried to head upstream, but there was snow on the
roads and the old Towncar really wasn't up for it. I didn't want to
push that big ******* out of the mountains. We stopped for a bit on a
turnout over the Duckabush and looked down at the fast cold waters.
The hill behind us, with its raw cut for the road, slipped and slid
now and again, just to remind us that it was still ****ed about the
road going through. There was a lot of posted water on the Duckabush,
especially where access was easy. Up the road, in a National Forest,
there was a parking lot, but that was where we reached the limits of
the Lincoln. That parking lot had two men suiting up for fishing, and
they were the only two other fishermen we saw.
At the Dosewallips State Park, we stopped to fish again. I was
slightly chilly until I put my wading gear back on, and then I suppose
the excitement of fishing somewhere new made me warm.
If the other stream might have been a transplant from Pennsylvania,
this river could have been from Alaska. The river ran down braided
channels through pale gray stones and dark gray sand, with walls of
firs on either side making a square canyon. The river bent in the
distance and above it a hill of the Olympics stood with its blindingly
bright snowcap. The river ran clear, with the depths turning turquoise
and the cloudless chill sky had a serious winter blue. At that point,
I was in the most beautiful place on earth. When we first emerged from
the underbrush, onto the river, I stood there, slack-jawed, and stared
at the strength and power of the vista. It was by no means pristine,
because there was some sort of construction yard and some houses
across the river from the park, but I think that added a dimension, it
gave the whole scene realism and showed that this wasn't just a post
card from a story-book place.
We fished there beneath the mountain and marveled at three bald eagles
doing their dance right overhead. There were dead fish here, too, but
the scavengers had done their jobs and all that remained were a few
spines and skulls with dagger teeth. We saw lots of elk sign; tracks
crossed the sand everywhere and droppings were abundant on the frozen
sand. I was taken by the little crusts of snow that held on in the
shadows of the ripples of sand, making certain bits of riverbank look
scaled, like a carp. I sat on a log with one of my last cigars and
contemplated the wonder of it, to be there fishing with Dad. I offered
the smoke to the near bank, the far bank, to the water yet to meet me
and to the water already passed. It felt good.
I could see my orange and white streamer deep in holes, and I struck
at even the most subtle of cues, but again, we were in the right place
at the wrong time. In the cold riffles there, I saw my only fish of
the day. It was a chum, upright and swimming. I could see the orange
patches of mold and fungus on it as it feebly swam with the current.
The fish was dead, it just didn't know yet. I thought, for a brief
moment, of throwing my fly at that exhausted and ravaged fish, but I
really wanted it to die in dignity, unmolested now in the end.
As the sun died, the chill got stronger and eventually Dad waved me
over. He hates the cold and I was surprised that he stayed out as long
as he did. As I was putting my waders in the trunk and shivering in my
slightly wet pants, I asked Dad if he thought the people in the houses
across the river knew how good they had it. He was sure that if the
guy didn't know, his friends surely did come chum season.
It was a long ride home with the heater full-on against the cold, and
the play of the water and the sunset and the hills made a million
beautiful colors, from the midnight green of firs to the luminescent
lavender on the water. We sipped our coffee and rode, just looking at
the land.
At home, we ran loads of laundry and heard about the shopping in
Seattle from the ladies. The weather was supposed to be more of the
same for Tuesday so we made plans for more fishing in new places. One
of Dad's friends called to say that there were a lot of fishermen on
the Puyallup, and so something must be running. That night, visions of
steelies and bent rods and humming lines danced in my head, but it
turned out to be a fever's delirium. I woke up with nausea, cramps and
a high fever. After I recovered from that, Western Washington got what
was the first of a series of serious snows, confining us to the house
and then there was the New Year's entertaining to do. Fishing was
over.
Steve
of background? How much of it is sensitive family stuff, the skeletons
not quite in the closet? How much do I need to add to properly convey
how precious the time my father and I have? How growing up and growing
old make us dangerously close to one day regretting what we didn't do?
In any case, I went to visit my father in Washington on stolen time
with borrowed money. My wife and I braved the threats of terrorists on
planes, surly airport workers, redeye flights and airline food. When
you get to do this every year and a half or so, the importance
overwhelms the inconvenience. Once there, we did some obligatory
sightseeing, some shopping and quite a bit of eating. Monday, the
weatherman said, would be a clear day, but cold, and Dad and I decided
to go fishing.
In the pre-dawn, which in Washington is any time before 9:00 am, we
got up and stacked on clothes: layers of wool and polypropylene and
Gore-Tex. My stepmother, who is always anxious for my father and I to
go fishing and knows what it means, was up with us and made Eggs
Benedict and coffee.
We loaded the car, packed maps and books and more coffee and set out
for steelhead.
We crossed the Narrows Bridge in the dark, took the interstate through
Olympia and headed up 101. We stopped in a turnout at the mouth of a
creek and looked at the estuaries' channels spreading out to the
inlet. The gray was slowly oozing away and out of the sky and the cold
wind brought the smell of the tiny delta up to us. We thought it might
work better fishing a little upstream from the mouth, so we drove up a
portion of the old highway and parked on the shoulder next to a bridge
over the stream.
The sky was blue instead of gray, but the sun still hadn't come up
over the mountain as we kitted up. I noticed that the river smelled
strange, almost as if the smell from the estuary was blowing up the
stream. It wasn't too pungent on the cold wind, but it still smelled.
The creek was small, eight feet wide in most places, and the banks
were lined with alder, spruce and hemlock. Frost covered the
blackberry bushes and in the middle distance, a turkey wobbled his
song. The sun was bright on the frost and this stream could have been
in the Alleghenies but for the source of the smell. There were chum
salmon carcasses everywhere, strewn about like so much fishy cordwood.
The ex-salmon were clustered under deadfalls, wedged into rocks,
decomposing on the shore and disintegrating in eddies. Every one of
these corpses was equipped with fantastic teeth, startling carnivorous
dentition. The two-footers could make a Rottweiler blush and the big
ones had choppers that would give Griz an inferiority complex. They
looked vicious and alien.
I flew twenty-five hundred miles to fish with Dad, so we fished. He
tied on a flesh fly and I used an enormous black-and-orange beast that
does double-duty as a shad fly. I was hoping for a steelhead that
could hold its nose while it swam upstream. I swung my streamer
without success until it got stuck under a branch, and I started to
reach for it until I remembered that I was probably snagged on a chum
corpse, so I cut my leader and switched to a nymph in hopes of a jack
steelie or resident trout.
The stream was very clear for being so full of meat, and when you
looked at the pebbly bottoms it seemed hazy. Closer inspection
revealed that small strips of salmon flesh clung to the pebbles and
waved in the current, giving the river bottom an appearance of
constant motion.
After two hours or so of nothing, we decided to try the estuary in
case the rising tide pushed some chrome into the stream. We waded into
the semi-salt of the inlet and bucked the wind. It was cold, and the
smell of salt and bright sun felt good and I was fishing with Dad. All
that sentimentality got me into trouble. I stepped a little too far
from the march grass and found the edge of the channel. One foot
slipped in, the second slipped and I went backwards but I managed to
post myself on my left arm and regain my feet.
In the 28-degree air and wind, we were sure that a dunking meant the
end of the trip. I had my jacket tucked into my waders and my wading
belt was tight, so only a little leaked down the front and back. My
cuffs weren't tight enough, so water flowed soaked my glove and flowed
up my sleeve. After the initial cold shock and I wrung out my wool
glove, the polypro and wool did the trick. I was warm and we kept
fishing for a half hour or so.
Dad wanted a little lunch and another river along. At the car, I took
off my gear to survey the damage. I was using a fanny pack and a pouch
on a lanyard to minimize the gear I carted across the country. The
lanyard pouch was dry, but I hadn't closed the zipper all the way on
my fanny pack. There was about three inches of water in the bottom of
it, and everything was soaked. The little paper packets that leaders
come in were falling apart and every one of my fly boxes were full of
water. My cigars were almost completely ruined - I managed to salvage
two. It wasn't a disaster: nothing had vanished, I still had two
cigars and I was fishing with Dad.
We drove along the Hood Canal, talking. We come from a long line of
men who hardly talk to their fathers. Dad didn't talk to his father
until he was virtually on his deathbed, but we're trying to rectify
the situation. We talked about being a kid in Washington, what kind of
a kid I was, about when I was going to have kids, our relationships
with our wives, the nature of happiness in life. We talked comfortably
and it felt great.
We pulled into a little diner in Hoodsport, where the proprietress was
the waitress and one of the perkiest ladies I'd ever met. Her oyster
stew was excellent, hot and strong and full of fat oysters, completely
without grit. I highly recommend the place; I think it was called the
Hoodsport Inn. It didn't look like much but it certainly warmed us.
At the Duckabush, we tried to head upstream, but there was snow on the
roads and the old Towncar really wasn't up for it. I didn't want to
push that big ******* out of the mountains. We stopped for a bit on a
turnout over the Duckabush and looked down at the fast cold waters.
The hill behind us, with its raw cut for the road, slipped and slid
now and again, just to remind us that it was still ****ed about the
road going through. There was a lot of posted water on the Duckabush,
especially where access was easy. Up the road, in a National Forest,
there was a parking lot, but that was where we reached the limits of
the Lincoln. That parking lot had two men suiting up for fishing, and
they were the only two other fishermen we saw.
At the Dosewallips State Park, we stopped to fish again. I was
slightly chilly until I put my wading gear back on, and then I suppose
the excitement of fishing somewhere new made me warm.
If the other stream might have been a transplant from Pennsylvania,
this river could have been from Alaska. The river ran down braided
channels through pale gray stones and dark gray sand, with walls of
firs on either side making a square canyon. The river bent in the
distance and above it a hill of the Olympics stood with its blindingly
bright snowcap. The river ran clear, with the depths turning turquoise
and the cloudless chill sky had a serious winter blue. At that point,
I was in the most beautiful place on earth. When we first emerged from
the underbrush, onto the river, I stood there, slack-jawed, and stared
at the strength and power of the vista. It was by no means pristine,
because there was some sort of construction yard and some houses
across the river from the park, but I think that added a dimension, it
gave the whole scene realism and showed that this wasn't just a post
card from a story-book place.
We fished there beneath the mountain and marveled at three bald eagles
doing their dance right overhead. There were dead fish here, too, but
the scavengers had done their jobs and all that remained were a few
spines and skulls with dagger teeth. We saw lots of elk sign; tracks
crossed the sand everywhere and droppings were abundant on the frozen
sand. I was taken by the little crusts of snow that held on in the
shadows of the ripples of sand, making certain bits of riverbank look
scaled, like a carp. I sat on a log with one of my last cigars and
contemplated the wonder of it, to be there fishing with Dad. I offered
the smoke to the near bank, the far bank, to the water yet to meet me
and to the water already passed. It felt good.
I could see my orange and white streamer deep in holes, and I struck
at even the most subtle of cues, but again, we were in the right place
at the wrong time. In the cold riffles there, I saw my only fish of
the day. It was a chum, upright and swimming. I could see the orange
patches of mold and fungus on it as it feebly swam with the current.
The fish was dead, it just didn't know yet. I thought, for a brief
moment, of throwing my fly at that exhausted and ravaged fish, but I
really wanted it to die in dignity, unmolested now in the end.
As the sun died, the chill got stronger and eventually Dad waved me
over. He hates the cold and I was surprised that he stayed out as long
as he did. As I was putting my waders in the trunk and shivering in my
slightly wet pants, I asked Dad if he thought the people in the houses
across the river knew how good they had it. He was sure that if the
guy didn't know, his friends surely did come chum season.
It was a long ride home with the heater full-on against the cold, and
the play of the water and the sunset and the hills made a million
beautiful colors, from the midnight green of firs to the luminescent
lavender on the water. We sipped our coffee and rode, just looking at
the land.
At home, we ran loads of laundry and heard about the shopping in
Seattle from the ladies. The weather was supposed to be more of the
same for Tuesday so we made plans for more fishing in new places. One
of Dad's friends called to say that there were a lot of fishermen on
the Puyallup, and so something must be running. That night, visions of
steelies and bent rods and humming lines danced in my head, but it
turned out to be a fever's delirium. I woke up with nausea, cramps and
a high fever. After I recovered from that, Western Washington got what
was the first of a series of serious snows, confining us to the house
and then there was the New Year's entertaining to do. Fishing was
over.
Steve