9 Months of Winter

Its December, that is a fact, winter officially starts this month, the sun starts coming back this month, and I’m going fishing this month. I used to think February was the worst month of the year because it goes by so slow, but I’m rethinking that, it might be December. “But its Christmas time!” you say. Well yea, Christmas is great, I’ll be happy to go home see my friends and family, freeze my ass off in a boat while the river freezes around me and celebrate the holiday’s or whatever. Yea I’ll ski, yea I’ll have a big bonfire on the winter solstice, and yea I’ll probably drink some good beer, eat some great food and hang out with some awesome folks. It doesn’t change the longing I have for something more, something special. Right now it seems I can’t have a special person in my life or even as the dude puts it a “fucking lady friend” so whats left, well there’s steelhead…

I’ve decided that the internet is the root of all evil in my life, without the internet I’d be a much better person, my human contact would consist of phone calls and talking instead of typing to a little avatar on a screen. More importantly I wouldn’t sit around and look at pictures of steelhead all day, and steelhead water, and steelhead flies, and everything else that comes with the internet. Tonight I am trying to figure out how to spend a bunch of money I don’t have, to chase fish that almost definitely aren’t in rivers that I’ve never seen let alone fished, let alone look like any water I’ve ever fished for steel in my life. Quite frankly it might be better if I was addicted to crack because at least then I could probably find it in Juneau, and I’d probably be less addicted. I’m addicted to steelheading and I’ve never caught a steelhead in a big river on the swing, I’ve never done it the right way. I’m always sight fishing in little coastal streams, looking for a player, fishing to a lot of fish. Its not my fault really, I’ve spent one day in steelhead country USA and I was alone and it was 110° out, not exactly weather conducive to catching fish, let alone hiking miles in a desert to find water to yourself (I went bass fishing that day). I’ve never used a two hander for steel, never caught one with a sink tip, I fish them like I fish trout mostly. Figure out what they are eating a present it as natural as I can.

Maybe I’m fooling myself, maybe I’m a trout fisherman and nothing more, but then again when I’m trout fishing I fish them like steelhead, swinging skaters and leaches on a two-hander, throwing big upstream mends and shit. Maybe everything is just backwards in this state, maybe I’m just rationalizing nymphing for steelhead. I don’t know, I like catching fish even if it means looking (and feeling) like an idiot. Shit I’ve even fished plastic for steel, but that was after a month strait of depleting the crap out of my fly box in the bush and all that was left were golf ball beads and pink san jaun worms (size 6 bubble gum = $$$$).

I am not some kind of steelhead genius, I am not a fish whisperer, hell I’ll say it, I pretty much suck at fishing, I’ve got a stream or two pretty dialed in but mostly I catch nothing and enjoy the hell out of it. I fish hard, I fish with dry flies when I can get away with it, and I don’t give a damn what anyone has to say about me because I have a great time doing it. I can catch the crap out of sockeye salmon, I have that system down pretty good, even without a gillnet, I’d probably rather just use a gillnet though, sockeye are boring.

So here I am a crappy fisherman, lonely as shit because the only girl I ever didn’t scare off broke my heart, the sun goes down at 3 in the afternoon, dreaming about going somewhere that will probably suck just as bad when I get there. I can’t help but wonder how bad its gonna be in February, hell I’m going fishing a week from tuesday, yup its gonna be cold, but its sure gonna be fun. I spent a long time away from my ex we were always working in different places over the summer, it turns out though that I lived for the summer, and I was just with her to pass the time until the steelhead return.

Let me tell you the story of the great boxer bear hunt of ‘09. I was working on the bank of a very pretty river full of big mouse crazy trout. My work consisted of sitting in a tower and watching sockeye salmon swim by and counting them swimming by for eight hours a day. There were three people on my crew so we could count the salmon twenty four hours a day, seven days a week until they stopped running. Besides myself my crew consisted of a young lady we’ll call her Jane and an old guy I’ll call Joe. I had the night shift from 8 P.M. to 4 A.M. then Jane went from 4 until noon and Joe “worked” from noon until I came on at eight. As you can imagine weird shifts like that make for very weird sleep schedules and some very cranky people around camp.

Camp consisted of two tents on platforms, one with food and our office and one that we slept in. A little ways upriver from the tents we had a tower and our boats, across the river there was another tower, being on a productive salmon stream in southwest Alaska camp is bisected by many game trails, of course up here, game does not mean deer or elk, it means bears. The bears have been wondering on this river longer than anything else and in places where the bank is stable they leave their mark in the form of smooth packed dirt trails eons old. I am no stranger to bears, this is my fifth year living in bear country for the summer, three of those seasons I lived in a tent. Bears are like any other critter, you leave them alone and they leave you alone for the most part. We are not food for them, we are fairly protected in our tents and there is always someone up to watch the food tent. They wonder through camp traveling from here to there, but they have never once bothered us, well at least bothered me.

This season I would usually sleep from 4 in the morning until the tent was too hot to sleep in anymore around one or two, so here it is, just past noon, I’m sleeping, Jane is passed out after a long morning shift and Joe is up in the tower reading or whatever he did when he was suppose to be working. All of a sudden I am awakened to shouts from across the river, which I typically ignore because I’m trying to teach Joe (who’s 40 with a PhD) how to do stuff for himself instead of calling for me to bail him out every time the motor is in gear and he can’t start it. Today is different though, his shouts were urgent “BEAR BEAR BEAR” I hear him yell. I probably cuss a bit and grudgingly slip into my shoes with bleary eyes. Jane wakes up and looks at me and probably says something then tries to go back to sleep.

I grab the shotgun and load it with firecrackers and a few slugs just to be safe. I like bears don’t get me wrong but when you live in a tent in the middle of bear country you must defend your territory as much as you can so you aren’t afraid of getting mauled walking to the tower in the middle of the night. The way we do that is firecrackers that are shot out of a shotgun. I rub the gunk from my eyes as I exit the tent, alert, prepared and naked, except my rubber boots and my boxers, gun is drawn safety is off. I look, no bear, I go around the other tent, no bear, look on the trail, no bear. Now when I can’t see a bear that I know is around it unnerves me. I yell across the river, “wheres the bear Joe.”

He yells back, “Across the river.” Great I think to myself, I probably would have run across the river and shot the firecracker at Joe if it had been on his side.

I ask again, “where is the bear,” but most likely with more expletives.

“He was on the trail by the tin shack walking your way.” I cuss under my breath, I just got woken up for a bear walking towards camp that was over a quarter mile away. Well I’m up I might as well chase the stupid thing and assert my dominance to show him our camp is not a safe place to be. “Where is he now,” I yell, Joe describes how the bear went into the woods so it could avoid our camp (why’d you wake me up again Joe?) and I head off in that direction.

Now I’d like to say I rolled in the mud got myself good and dirty and stalked the bear and shot it with the firecracker while yelling some sort of war cry. Nothing of the sort happened, I did wonder around in the woods for a while, I wanted to stalk that bear, prove myself to be a hunter or something but I never did see it. I just got eaten by mosquitoes and made Jane laugh because I was wondering around in my boxers with a shotgun getting eaten by bugs. And that is the Great Boxer Bear Hunt of ‘09.

Tomorrow I’m going skiing for the second time this year, the first time alpine skiing. I love skiing, next to fishing it is one of the things I like to do best. The feeling that you have at the bottom of a run full of fresh deep perfect snow is pretty much unmatched. I think its the pursuit of perfection that keeps me going, the pursuit of the perfect moment. Just like fishing I am looking for perfection.

Tomorrow marks a beginning of sorts, it is the first time I going downhill skiing since my big breakup, I didn’t ski to much when I was with her, I don’t know what it was that made me stop. Perhaps its because I was unhappy with leaving her behind, perhaps it was that a warm bed with a beautiful woman in it is much more appealing Saturday morning than a cold car and punishing wind. At any rate I just about quit, I quit doing one of the things I loved to do most, and as it turns out not having skiing in my life made me unhappy. So I’m going tomorrow, I’m ignoring everything else and getting some turns in under hopefully clear blue skies.

Fresh out of the kiln
Salmon Bowl

Coachman Cup

Life Cycle Bowl

Steelhead Bowl

So this is late, I have a good excuse though, I was at my Grandma’s house where there is no unprotected internet floating around. Anyway here are some thanks:

Thanks to AP for almost four great years, enumerable lessons, inspiring me to skate, and insisting I leave

Thanks to MJK for the birthday beer

Thanks to SS for inspiring me to love nature again, and going fishing with me

Thanks to CS for reminding me that even though life can suck, it gets better

Thanks to JS for the love, support, strength, and mental slaps when I needed them

Thanks to JM for the shoulder to cry on and the lessons that comes from experience

Thanks to Mom and Dad for springing me from Juneau once in a while

Thanks to LH for yelling at me when I smelled bad and putting up with my out of tune guitar and crappy singing

Thanks to Jr. for the music, the art and the bullshit

Thanks to NS for organizing things into little categories like chickadees, eagles and ptarmigan

Thanks to RE for reminding me that I am one of the luckiest people on Earth

Thanks to RW for being strong and inspiring

Thanks to TK for showing me how to be a leader

Thanks to NS for listening to me complain, and making me look at the bright side

Thanks to JM for not playing the same song twice

Thanks to GM for the advice and for being great to my friend

Thanks to AF for not taking me too seriously, and letting me pet the dog

Thanks to LB for having my back

Thanks to LM for bringing the beer with Mr. Plow

Thanks to CS for the sanity, and for showing me everyone is crazy and scared

Thanks to CC for working hard

Thanks to JAHA for hockey

Thanks to the fish, thanks to the mountains, and thanks to nature

Tonight I was reminded of how lucky I am. I have spent 4 of the last five summers waking up next to a river every day. 22 Years on this Earth and I have seen the glory of mountains almost every day. Each time I drive home, they are bathed in a different light, a different set of rules govern them. Each day I wake up next to a river, it is a little different than the day before.

Each time I drive from Anchorage home to Eagle River I crane my head and look up, want to see how my mountains have changed, what they look like today. I’ve done that drive thousands of times and I still never get bored on that stretch of highway. Every river I cross, every lake I pass by, every mountain I see, I look, I look for fish, I look for birds, I look for moose and bears and wolves. I look for life emanating in all of its glory from a place yet untamed. I look for routes to the top, lines to ski, places to explore, places to sit and glass for moose, places to ride a bike. I look just to understand the layout of the land, the way things look, how what I see relates to the map. I see where the water flows, where the streams meet, where it all happens. I see it all, I feel nature around me. When I drive home, I notice my mountains in the distance first. Pioneer Peak, Twin Peaks, Bear Mountain, Baldy, Hiland, Mile High, this is my home, this is where I belong. These mountains catch the snow, which forms the glaciers, which produce the big rivers, to which the creeks flow and the salmon spawn, and the trout grow large, and the terns eat, and the bears roam, and the plants grow, giving the moose browse and the ptarmigan hiding spots. I am lucky because I see all this every day in my life.

I am lucky I spent a summer in a tent by the ocean, living by the tides and the wind. Harvesting the fish from the sea. Living with people who love it, loving the world with others. None of us can ever take these things for granted, none of us should stop fighting for these places. On that beach I could dig down deep and see oil, see the wrath of man. We should never forget, that to be one with the sea, one with the mountain, or one with the lake we must sacrifice, and if we don’t we will never truly live. We will never suck the marrow from life. When I come to die, I will have lived a great life, even if fate should strike me down tomorrow. So go out there and live, do what you love, be with who you love, so that tomorrow if you should die, you will have truly lived.

Thanks for reminding me that I’m alive Rhea.

Click Here to Watch Her Awesome Movie!

I remember the first day I liked girls, its so clear in my head. I was nine and we were making a dam in a sandbox with a hose (I always loved breaching the dam because then the salmon would be free), and there on the swing set was my friend, who happened to be a gross girl with cooties, but suddenly she wasn’t, suddenly I was in love. Puppy love for sure, I mean I was nine, but I remember that feeling.

When I was young I loved fishing, I don’t quite remember catching my first fish, just snap shots of the culvert here in Juneau, near twin lakes, the body of water I typically catch my first fish of the season. I remember seeing porpoises playing out in the middle of the cove at auke rec, where I caught two dollies. I remember I was 4, I only remember that because that was the year I had a lot of different birthday parties. I don’t know what I used or how we did it, I don’t know how my parents even knew how to help me catch fish, but I caught a little salmon or something, and a few dollies, and watched the dolphins play. I wish there was a picture of that fish, or something else I could remember, its all just snapshots of images I don’t even remember the fish, just casting. My mind looks at myself though, I don’t remember what I saw with my eyes, I just see a little blond kid with a zebco standing by a culvert fishing. Maybe I was using a spinner.

My next memory of fishing comes from a stocked lake about an hour and a half south of my childhood home, it was kids fishing day, and I watched the scared rainbows swim in circles wondering if they should eat the bait or not. I eventually did catch one and we brought it home and I had to clean it, and it was gross. I think without fish guts I would not be a catch and release angler today, or even a fly fisherman at all, but we’ll get to that. Anyway fish guts are gross. I remember the cruising lake trout one spring, the time I lost my beloved zebco, I remember the epic pink run, I remember the fire station hole, the cut bank up the creek, the little dam by the bridge, the wet feet and the devils club.

I wish I could go back and see all these things again. I remember so many situations that now seem like they could lead to epic days on the water. I never have seen those cruising lake trout again, the pink run never got as far as it did upstream as that one summer, and the fire station hole is only a few inches deep anymore. I often wonder if the creeks changed or if I changed, I know I grew bigger, I know that what once seemed huge now seems teeny, but the trout as my metric, an eight inch char out of a 3 foot wide stream is a good fish anywhere in the world, and I seemed to know that back then.

Honestly I don’t remember why I fished at all, maybe its just what we did, I mean my parents didn’t really ever fish, I’m not sure either of them has had a fishing license in ten years. My best friend though, his dad loves fishing, and he loved us kids, and took us all over the place. We would sit on the dock and dunk worms, then he built a great big canoe and we’d go around in the canoe trolling, the fish weren’t big or particularly handsome, or really any of the qualities I look for in a fish now, but being on that lake with the mountains and the geese and the sunset without a care in the world was as good as it ever will get. I’m sure he felt the same way; I bet we made him feel young again. I hope so.

I find myself awake tonight pondering life, going over the choices I have made, and the choices that were made for me. I wonder about my future, I wonder if love is worth it. I wonder if I can afford to throw my heart out there, even though its bound to get broken. I wonder if I can be happy to be alone. I scheme, I make plans, I make excuses for why I shouldn’t try, I try to figure out why I should. I worry about life, I worry about school, I worry about my next meal.

I want to feel that feeling again though, no cares no worries, just me and the mountains and the sky, and maybe someone who is young at heart to show me that I need to be happy catching the small fish. To show me that when I was nine I knew all I really needed to know about life. I have much more knowledge now of how the world works, why fish bite, where the big ones live, but I have no more knowledge of what makes me happy and what I want. I want to hold hands with that girl on the swing set, and I want to tear down the dams so the salmon can be free.

It snowed last night, I went to bed at 2am after a long night of carving fish onto mugs after spending 4 hours at the bar when I meant to stop in and pickup some food and leave. I got home on the slippery roads pulled past her new guys truck in the driveway, in the bed was a nice salmon net, one with knots, the mark of a bait fisherman around here. I couldn’t sleep, I sat there thinking about the new guy in the bed that was once half mine, I’m out of options, I can’t ignore it I can’t run, all I can do is live. Last night living was hard, this morning living was easier, and tomorrow it might be even easier. I’m moving out on the 18th of December and never going back to that place. I’m never gonna have to see the baitfisher/sledneck mobile out front again, I’m never gonna have to run into them on their way out as I’m pulling in. I won’t have to think about my faults, about my weaknesses, and her weaknesses and her faults. I’ll be able to remember her for what she was and not what she is now.

Yea I’m running from my problems but what else can I do? I’m stuck here, I have 2 classes left and some research to do to finish my degree then I can leave this town and I never have to come back unless I want to. Until then I’m stuck. Five weeks left, I can’t believe I made it this far quite frankly. I can’t believe how hard this is, I can’t believe everyone has to go through this and comes out alive. Thank god for TV on the internet, youtube and depressing music, without it I would never sleep. At least she waited till I was out of field camp, otherwise I might have gone off the rocker, packed some food and some bugnets and disappeared to the lake for months. I still might go off the rocker, every day I don’t go apeshit and start hurting things is a new win, a small victory.

God I wish there were fish to catch, I wish the light was returning, I wish the snow was melting instead of falling. Only five months till steelhead, they can’t show up soon enough.

Winter is coming, I can feel it, I know it because the sun is down at 3:40, and I mean down, it just gets dark. The air is cold, getting colder, it feels cold too because of the water, every drop of moisture in the air squeezes the warmth out of you when you walk places. I feel like curling up in a blanket by a wood stove, reading a good book, drinking some hot chocolate and schnapps and petting the dog. I of course don’t have a dog, a good blanket, a book that I have time to read that isn’t about chemistry, geology or biology, let alone a wood stove. So I’ll have to settle for sitting in my florescent light lit dorm room, drinking cheap beer, tying flies I probably won’t use, and basking in the glow of the computer. I want a cozy cabin, with a good dog, a good woman, a good stove a good pile of wood to burn, a trap line to run, water to haul, flies to tie, and dreams to dream.

Each morning I wake up and wonder what the hell I’m doing, living here in Juneau, where I am stuck, where I can’t just run away from my problems. I keep telling myself I’m working for my future, I know I am, I’m so close to being done with school, to being free to do whatever I want. I’m so close to not having responsibilities and obligations to anyone, not even myself. It feels good to get close, I remember the feeling in high school, I remember enjoying each day, because I knew this was as good as it got, no responsibilities, being surrounded by good friends every day. I wish I could enjoy this last year like that. My good friends are now spread across the country like they are salmon in the ocean, maybe they will make it home some day, maybe. If we are all salmon wandering through life on the great gyre in the pacific, avoiding nets, avoiding predators, do we meet again in the end? I think we will, I think I’ll die and rot with my brothers and sisters around me, and if I’m lucky and cunning when I’m dead and gone I’ll have passed the torch of nourishment to a new generation to fulfill the needs of others. The streams, the forests, the bears, the gulls and the people will get fulfilled by the bodies of salmon, who give up their lives to nourish their offspring. One day I’ll do the same, until then I want to live in the woods and sit by a fire.

Wow a fishing report, I bet you thought this would be all some dude whining about how lonely he is and how there are no fish for like 9 months. Well guess what you are wrong, I went fishing today, with a woman. Yea I’m a loser, yea I might think there are times that fishing is better than sex, and yea I want to find a woman who feels the same way. I haven’t talked to this one about it yet, if I had to venture a guess I’d say she would feel the differently, but then again she’s never caught a 15 pound steelhead or had a 25 inch rainbow take a dry fly. Here’s to hoping today might have helped change that. She’s stoked on the romance of fishing, like the process, she talks about some guide in Mona Lake that her family did a trip with who talked for a day without letting anyone touch the rods, that’s probably the best way to break in new folks, teach them some stuff. Of course I’ve guided folks who have gone to classes (by Orvis) and wow, they had a hard time believing that you could get away with 3x with a size 14 fly and a size 8 fly. But anyway, we had a good day, saw an eagle catch a salmon (I’ve never seen that before!) saw a bunch of really old cohos, I even saw one epically large cutty. I’m going back tomorrow with the tube. The fishing consisted of practice casting with my trout rod, of course I didn’t expect to see a bunch of salmon so I didn’t bring anything for them, its November for gods sake. She did ok for her 4th day out, fishing in the wind on lakes without backcast space is really hard. We mostly just hung out and talked or I watched her cast, she apologized for not letting me fish (her rod, line and reel were probably older than me, and that made casting tough)

but really I’ve caught enough fish, I’d rather just watch someone learning and remember what it was like when I was learning. The days in the t shirt in the little rubber raft, looking for risers, casting anything that had red on it (it had to have red), the day I realized how to double haul (nobody told me I just figured it out like a bird learning to fly), biking to the little culvert and finding wild rainbows that would eat anything. I loved those days, the thing I like about this woman is I see that in her, I see the joy that comes with trying to learn this amazing skill that becomes an art, and becomes a way of life. I can go anywhere in the world with a fly rod and have something to do. I’m not sure if she saw the fire in my eyes, the passion for the rivers and the fish, I’m not sure if I have that passion anymore, maybe I’ve lost it, but going fishing with her today helped me want to be like that, like a child again. Next time I see her, I’ll have to thank her for the fire, I hope she brings out the best in me, someone like that is worth a lot. No matter what happens, today was a good day and I’ll hopefully never forget it.

Today I ordered a new fly rod blank, a beulah 5/6 switch rod to be exact for all you gear freaks. Its gonna look pretty, and if its anything like the other beulahs I’ve casted its gonna be sweet. It’ll be nice to have a project, a new distraction, winter is coming very soon I can feel it, so I need a distraction. I also have a fiberglass Fenwick to restore, I was left my Grandfather’s Fenwick and I still love it, I’m just not about to bring it out where it can get beat to crap, yea I know grandpa is probably looking down and yelling at me to fish the shit out of it but I’ve got plenty of other rods, and this one I picked up at a gear swap for $20 is the same model and I won’t worry about breaking it on a king or something. The funny thing about fly rods is that you get attached to them, I don’t know why, they are just graphite or fiberglass, they can be bragging points, or tools, or treats, or connections to the past, or hope for the future, or reminders of a friend or a way to forget. Fly rods are special for sure, and when I’m done wrapping this one I’ll be happy because I’ll have a new friend and new reminder that life is a good idea because there is always something to look forward too.