altered states of consciousness

For altered states of consciousness, my preference is running up a mountain to go fishing. This is more difficult than drugs or alcohol, let's leave sex out of it shall we ? but the sense of immanence is more durable I find. There might be a bit of Protestant work ethic involved as well. 

Clouds, water and rock. Ideally there should have been a fish as well, unfortunately it was a dour day in a hard place. The trout responded much as the fish in Elfland, 

Cast anything into a deep pool from a land strange to it, where some great fish dreams, and green weeds dream, and heavy colours dream, and light sleeps; the great fish stirs, the colours shift and change, the green weeds tremble, the light wakes, a myriad things know slow movement and change; and soon the whole pool is still again.

Up here are big blue-backed bastards of trout, a very few, dreaming of something other than the trout flies I show them. Back in the early 2000s Ken and I did the 17 mile 3000ft round trip to the lake and caught one apiece, fabulously pretty fish. Then we were in our frisky forties and could reasonably expect to live to regret 17 miles of steep trail in a day. Now I'm not at all sure of surviving such a day. 

Given my limitations the plan was to camp at a slightly less elevated lake a few miles away to spread the trip over a weekend. In the new backcountry order since the plague, there are both entry permit lotteries and backcountry camping lotteries to win in order to get a campsite in the national parks. Mine was only halfway up to the lake, giving a 13.5 mile day instead of 17. Well let's see how the legs hold out. 

Up in a grey morning to follow the stream until it becomes a creek and then a rivulet and so to the source, snow in a cirque. 

The aspens brightened the grey.

I stopped in my assigned campsite to put up the tent and cache the bear barrel. The ranger had told me there was a bear hanging around the higher country, "just clap your hands and he should back off". Hm. At the lower lake the marmots prefer sweaty shirts to food, drag off unattended shirts and chew on them for the salt. Socks also go. A friend discovered the lifetime warranty on his hiking socks did not apply to theft by marmot. 

New tent test, Durston X-Mid 1. This is well under 2 pounds, good for old fat and breathless backpackers who have trouble even carrying their new bellies up the hills. Getting old is like being a teenager again in the sense that every new year brings a or several new things to adapt to. Age sixty added a little pot belly which is now reaching comfortable proportions. I'd tried the tarp camping with a 14oz tarp which was wonderful to carry but wet to sleep under in a thunderstorm. At that point it appeared my shelter did not in fact provide shelter. Then discovered that most tarp campers also carry a bivy for the wet, which gets us up to the same weight as a good one-man tent for less comfort. Admittedly the tarp is nice when you wake up in the dark hours and see moonlight and stars rather than gray nylon. Also when the bear is huffing and scratching around the tarp, you can look out and confirm the large bear sounds are in fact coming from a small squirrel or chipmunk, the mini bears.

Shed the backpack here and downsized to a running pack with rain and fish gear, water and food. The problem with that is losing my excuse for not running with the big pack. Much of this trail is runnable, not too steep or too rocky, or it would be for a frisky forty year old. 

On up the valley, the morning fog had cleared and the day brightened. 

The lower lake had rising fish. Rule 1 is never walk away from rising fish. That I broke, dreaming of the big blue-backed bastards further up, and knowing the day was burning away. 

Around, up and then up some more. 

These high lakes change year over year as they are mostly dependent on stocking from the air. Only a few of the lakes have inlet streams where the fish can spawn. This does rather take away from the image of the resolute hardy self-sufficient mountain man catching dinner, relying as we do on the entire apparatus of modern civilization to get the fish up there. Still we are machines of forgetfulness and I pretend every day to live inside the world, believing in wilderness is hardly even a warmup stretching exercise. 

This lake is perfectly implausible as the home of large healthy trout. Typically the high lakes will have a least a smidgeon of weed, a few midges stirring, some signs of life. This implacably clear water looks like one of those streams killed by heavy metal mining pollution, as clear as sapphire and as lifeless. 

It's hard to keep the faith as an hour of casting wears on into the second hour. So I was woolgathering, wondering when last this had been stocked, how long does a cutthroat trout live anyway, surely not twenty years ? when the fish showed up, a heavy swirl and the fly disappeared. Tightening brought nothing as the fish shook its head and sank back into the dim blue deeps. These headshakes and gaping mouth always suggest to me a little boy spitting out something distasteful, ugh ! ptui !  It was one of the blue-backed bastards, saw him plain. At least it's good to know they are still there. One more Moby Dick moment that afternoon, a white living spot rising from far below, resolving quite suddenly into a trout which stopped to consider the fly and turn down again. This too is not part of normal fishing in the high country, where normally there isn't enough food for them to disdain all my offerings with such stern and continuing decision. 

Eventually the clouds came over and the temperature dropped, a few flakes of snow blew past as my rain pants flapped in the gathering winds. I was wearing everything I'd brought, eaten all the food but an emergency protein bar: it began to feel like fishing on the moon, a place I should not be. 

From the King of Elfland's Daughter again, 

so the traveller walked alone. And soon he was come by unsure paths to the reeds and the thin rushes, to which a wind was telling tales that have no meaning to man, long histories of bleakness and ancient legends of rain;

Scurried back to the lower lake where the clouds cleared and evening sun made it all look almost cosy again. A half dozen parties were camped around the lake so now I felt crowded. 

The rising fish had gone away. It was really time to start on the four miles back to camp. A few last casts.. 

Not the fish I'd hoped, still quite good enough for who they're for.  A woman came down from camp to ask what fly I was using, as her husband was hiking up that evening to camp and fish the next day. The pattern was a Royal Coachman, easy enough for even a non-fisher to remember. In fact her husband and I spoke in the rising dark on the trail further down.

Back in camp. Remember I'd cached that bear vault ? it was a good cache, good enough that neither the bears nor I could find it. My bump of location is normally reliable.  I guess thirteen miles, three thousand feet up and two down, plus some moments of near panic: will mess with your pattern recognition. Or I'm getting old. Eventually tracked down my food and returned to camp in the dark. 

This was the first time in my backpacking life to bring a book. Read a Rex Stout mystery with Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin for company until the twenty minutes of soaking the dehydrated food was up. A swallow of good whisky and so to bed. There was to be a full moon and some conjunction of the planets, missed it as being full asleep long before the light cleared the ridge. 

The morning was for fishing the creek once the sun hit the water.  Waiting for the sun took some time, enough to finish my book and drink all the coffee. These tiny creeks are great fun to fish and the stakes are low, no fooling with near mythical big blue-backed bastards of dream-haunted memory. 

 

If I was further along in my spiritual evolution these drastic trips wouldn't be necessary. From another recent read, Eternal Life by Dara Horn, 

Trivial details flowed through her days. Long ago, when the details were different, she had wondered if those details that filled every minute of every day were actually concealing something, something large and still and sacred. Many days and years and people had passed before she understood that the details themselves were the still and sacred things, that there was nothing else, that the curtain of daily life itself was holy.

But I'm not and they are.  My plans still feature today’s sun, clouds in progress, ongoing roads.

Hard Life with Memory 

Wislawa Szymborska, translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak

I’m a poor audience for my memory.

She wants me to attend her voice nonstop,

but I fidget, fuss,

listen and don’t,

step out, come back, then leave again.

She wants all my time and attention.

She’s got no problem when I sleep.

The day’s a different matter, which upsets her.

She thrusts old letters, snapshots at me eagerly,

stirs up events both important and un-,

turns my eyes to overlooked views,

peoples them with my dead.

In her stories I’m always younger.

Which is nice, but why always the same story.

Every mirror holds different news for me.

She gets angry when I shrug my shoulders.

And takes revenge by hauling out old errors,

weighty, but easily forgotten.

Looks into my eyes, checks my reaction.

Then comforts me, it could be worse.

She wants me to live only for her and with her.

Ideally in a dark, locked room,

but my plans still feature today’s sun,

clouds in progress, ongoing roads.

At times I get fed up with her.

I suggest a separation. From now to eternity.

Then she smiles at me with pity,

since she knows it would be the end of me too.

desperate ice fishing day

This from a couple of weeks back, mid-March or so. 

I've never been any kind of ice fishing enthusiast. This year the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers hosted a guided trip on this high lake, with the agenda of getting more people interested in the self-sustaining brown trout population. Since Covid the spawning browns in the feeder streams have been hit hard, with a number of 20-27" trophies taken out of the breeding stock. We're trying to get new regulations to protect these fish.

The guide said usually the ice is getting thinner by late March, this year it's still getting thicker. Fortunately it's still just under 3 feet so our augers can reach the water. Up on the Grand Mesa there's 5 feet of ice on the lakes..

I wandered around the encampment asking questions as is my wont. Paul kindly invited me to fish with them. Three of us are then lined up sitting on buckets, staring at holes in the ice. Patricia pipes up, "I keep thinking of Grumpy Old Men".  Not sure how Paul and I felt about that..

There wasn't much happening in the encampment, a few small trout. Paul has a nice simple Humminbird ice fishing sonar, could see the jig falling on its circular LED display. The guides had high-fancy sonars which they said work about 50% of the time, took him a year to learn. Both of these sonars agreed there might be fish down there though our sampling did not support that.

We walked 10min toward shore for another spot. There were holes pre-drilled there and some blood in the snow which we took for a hopeful sign. Action was faster here though still just the smaller stocked cuttbows. Apparently CPW stocks the lake through the ice - drives the truck out, uses a giant truck-mounted auger to drill a hole, and dumps the unfortunate trouts into the icy wastes. I'm startled the fish survive. There's a decent population of mysis shrimp here which I guess is what they are eating.

51 years of fishing to get my first fish through the ice..

We were hoping for an Artic char, Colorado state record 4.7lb caught in this lake, or some kokanee salmon, or one of those legendary browns. None of that happened. The odd thing about ice fishing is you can't really think about it - there's no hatch to match, no fly presentation to think about, no difficult casts to holding spots - just drowning some mealworms on jig hooks, or hopefully jigging small spoons for the predators. Even the tackle is boring, short little bits of graphite rods and cheap spinning reels. Still with 3 feet of ice, it's the only game in town..

I used inappropriate tackle, a refurbished Abu Ambassadeur 4600C on an ultralight fiberglass stream rod which is really too long for ice fishing. 

There's a fox making a living off what the ice fishermen leave behind. He came trotting across the ice to check if we'd left him a nice pile of fish guts. Sadly no.

He wandered off to think about things. 

The fox and I, contemplating on the ice..

He did leave a tuft of fur behind which I salvaged to tie flies with. 

Also an earworm from an 80s glam-rock band, 

Albuquerque

Hot dog, jumping frog, Albuquerque ! 

Last weekend I went there on a whim to look at a canoe. Denver to Abq may be the easiest drive in the West, still it's six hours of freeway each way. Upon getting onto I-25 in Denver Miz Google said in her dulcet tones, "stay on I-25 for 439 miles". Luckily I always travel with a copy of From Langley Park to Memphis in some form and had the right soundtrack. 

I remembered that the first time in Abq we'd driven across from NC on I-40 for several days. The elderly Ford Econoline that was to be our home for the next year had started buzzing in the gearbox. We'd saved $15 000 for a year of not working. Rolling into Abq with visions of that becoming $12 000 and a couple months less after a new transmission, was a little sad. I went to AAA, this was before cell phones or internet, to ask about a reliable transmission shop. They had one look at the Econoline and our fresh faces then sent us across to the cheap side of town. The nice young man made us coffee and said he'd have a look. We sat and researched campsites from the papers in our New Mexico folder. He came out after an hour or so and said, that was really weird. Someone put automatic transmission fluid into the manual gearbox. It's astonishing it had not blown up crossing the Appalachians. After a change to the appropriate 80w-90 gear oil the buzzing quieted and everything worked - for another 100 000 miles as it happened. So I have fond memories of Abq. 

I-40 was the road to everywhere from the tobacco fields of central NC, to the mountains and the sea. In Denver it's 25 or 70. Crossing 40 on the 25 in Abq was a kind of sentimental journey.  Off to the hotel, picked at random from the cheaper options online. It is right next to the Marriot, how bad could it be ?  Turns out this is where they send the homeless with vouchers for short term stays. The check-in required a $200 deposit and signing a form that said I understood I wasn't getting a lease. Outside the oilfield roughnecks sat in their giant trucks generating clouds of weed smoke. Hm. Helen knew about this chain as she'd sent people to the one in Denver as part of church work. That's the last time I book a hotel without consulting my wife. Whole Foods provided a evening snack, bottle of nice Pinot Grigio and some excellent cheese and crackers, turn down the lights and pretend everything is fine. 

In the morning a quick trail run to clear the head and get the legs working again after being a truck-driving blob for six hours yesterday. The Embudito trailhead was easy to find, the trail not so much.

Lost the trail at some point in a creek bed, ended up crawling up the side of the canyon through the cactus to a recognizable trail. Emerged bleeding slightly, to the alarm of the old folks hiking on the trail. Nearly made it up to snowline, after the bushwhacking there wasn't enough time to climb all the way. Another day perhaps of the few left. 

The previous owner of the canoe is a nice old retired guy whose shoulders are blown out so he can't paddle. They had recently fled Florida just ahead of the new Americans flooding in to join DeSantis and Trump in their dream of a white police state. Oddly that's just what we'd fled from in South Africa all those years ago. His dream was to take it up to the Minnesota Boundary Waters. My retirement fantasy is to do just that, I promised to send him a trip report should we live so long. 

Canoe strapped down for the 40mph winds ahead and back home again. Ain't she a beauty ? 

Stopped briefly in Lathrop State Park, to get out of the car, finish the cheese and wine, and try the boat out. It handles beautifully in a howling gale. 

Upon leaving I'd observed it was a bit unreal for me to be doing this, a most uncharacteristic riding off madly in all directions. Helen said on the contrary, that is exactly what I'm like. All these years of marriage and I still don't know what my wife thinks of me: or perhaps still don't know myself.