black melancholy

Has a man ever caught fish on high mountains? And even though what I want and do up here be folly, it is still better than if I became solemn down below..
Bite, my fishing rod, into the belly of all black melancholy! 

- Nietzsche

Built up a new rod, found an old reel to go with it, and went fishing as recommended. 

The insect tracks on old wood always make me think of brook trout backs, and wonder in what language these are written and how to read them. 
Brook trout back for comparison. 

This first day was short, just 3 miles and 1500 feet climbing. I'd reserved a campsite in March for September by waiting at 7:59am with my finger on the mouse button.. and missed the site I wanted. I've bought a gaming mouse with faster response, for next year's campsite competition.  

Meantime there was an unexpected day off from work, took the Friday and this unpopular campsite was still available for the night.

Started up the creek which was a little small but these cutts get in everywhere. There was one in fact, a whole 6", still a good start.

Posed the rod above the creek of its first fish, always an important moment.
The ritual is done to put soul into the tool, called “Nyu-kon” in Japanese. The ritual of "nyu-kon" is written "入魂” in kanji.

Stopped at the cascade, being old and unwilling to clamber up the waterfall.

Took 15 minutes to get down to the river, hoped for a confluence pool, instead it was the same cascade down steep rocks into a tangle of boulders. The river isn't a lot bigger than the creek. Walked down for 30min and maybe half a mile, that's enough fishing time to get me back to camp for tea and contemplation.

This was the best-looking run, did yield up a fish.

Further up was the champion of pools, unlikely as it looks. There was a big trout holding at the bottom, maybe two feet down, all 11 inches of him. He was moving in the current so I believed him to be feeding and persuadable. Probably a nymph would have been better. He looked up at the #16 Royal Coachman while two other smaller fish took it. Switched to an ant, another two smaller fish. The greenback cutt population is absolutely thriving in here, lots of fish of all size classes up to the big ones at 11 to 12".

The cutthroat look so bright in the hand, then look at them in the water, perfectly adapted to the colors. 

The new rod is perfect, cast accurately with not much more than the leader out, and easily reached 30ft on the longer runs. The line is a 3wt Hardy from the 80s, used it only a little back then before switching to a 5wt. It has some dirty little cracks in the finish which don't seem to affect the impeccable handling and shooting.

About half the cost of this build went into an agate-style stripping guide. It was worth it, enjoy seeing it on the rod every time.

Back in camp tired, cup of tea blended seamlessly into dinner while listening to the music of the wind and creek. Stumble into the woods to hide the bear barrel, then the deep dreamless sleep of extreme fatigue.

Morning in camp, packed up ready for a quick 4 miles up to the next camp on a lake. 

There it turned out I should have gotten up before the sun, as the best campsite was being settled into already. The other choices were #3 campsite with a fine view of the privy, #2 a long way up just below treeline. It was also the worst designated campsite I've seen in a lifetime of camps. I've had worse campsites on hunting trips when you just drop from exhaustion onto the nearest penitential bed of roots stones and/or tussocks, never seen an official campsite quite like this. My one-man tent is tiny, about the size of a luxury coffin, and it barely fit into the site. 

Never mind, going fishing now. Up to the end of the trail we go. 

Last year I came up here and failed to catch a fish, though a couple did come to look and spurned my flies. Fished several hours with my usual Royal Wulff, ant, etc with no response to anything. I watched a grasshopper blow along the lake, in fact I was walking along the shore shadowing it as surely something would rise to a live struggling hopper ? no. The plan was to cast my artificial hopper immediately upwind of any seen rise, no go. 

That decided me to fall back to the spinning outfit, brought as insurance. The line was an expensive Japanese-market 4lb monofilament, brought for maximum casting distance. Testing my knots revealed the line had degenerated to about a 2.5lb line, a bit light for even small trout. No other options so fished it anyway. The telescopic rod has a broken tip which is my own fool fault. Somewhere along the way I'd picked up the backpack with rod in side pocket and the telescopic tip had slipped out, snapped it.  Still no better option.. 

At the first point after a miserable rock scramble over large jagged scree, the minnow got walloped by a fat 17". It took some time to play on the light drag. Very happy. 

These are the fabulous legendary blue-backed bastards that we had caught 24 years ago. I took a lot of pictures as this might well be my last trip for them. My friend Ken who was with me all those years ago, now has a variety of health issues and he'll never fish here again. That's also why I brought the spin gear. 

Day made, went on fishing to see what happened. At a second point just a little further on, another 18". I was amazed. The point had yielded nothing but a skunk to all my flies, also the live hopper had drifted by only 10 yards or so nearer shore than where the fish took. 

Went on to furthest end, shade starting to come over, a few rises happening far out. Went back to fly fishing with a sinking line but it was a terrible line and could not cast it reliably.  No response to a different variety of flies.

Went back to the spinning outfit, ten minutes and and two more fish, 16" and then a normal-colored 18". 

Clearly they are finding something to eat that agrees with them, keeping them plump and sleek. Scuds ? What else is in an alpine lake at 11 500ft, with a permanent little glacier at the north face ? the lake keeps its mystery. 

My sense of balance has deteriorated significantly since age 60. Scrambling back over the scree was terrifying in prospect. Part of that is the sense up here of being very far away from anything human. It was a lot easier with both rods stowed in the backpack, leaving two hands free for hanging desperately onto the crags. Next time should there be one I'll bring climbing gloves.  Slowly and painfully down the hill back to my luxury coffin-size tent, shadows descending with me. 

The trick to this lake is depth and distance I think. All the fish were hooked far away, 30-40 yards, and after a 10 or 20 count to let the lure go deep. The Ryuki is a tiny dense lure that sinks extremely fast. My sinking shooting head was an attempt to replicate this with fly but. The deep fishing is unique in my experience of alpine lakes, typically the fish will cruise the shorelines and dropoffs, alert for any terrestrial that might blow in from the anabatic winds. 

In camp the rangers had recommended not cooking at the tent site due to wandering bears looking for calories. All of us were lined up along the lower lakeshore, Jetboil stoves going. I looked around and thought well this is ridiculous, took my plastic flask of Johnny Walker Black along to each neighbor in turn to offer them a drink. Neighbor #1 had a huge bear barrel, he said he was just starting into backpacking and didn't realize quite how much trouble the big barrel would be. It made a nice stove stand though. He was not yet born when I first visited this lake. Neighbor #2 was a couple from Washington state newly moved to CO. She had planned to do the trip solo. After listening to the elk bugle she was spooked and asked her husband to come with her for protection.. 

Next morning relaxed with the low stress fishing here on the lower lake, teeming with willing greenback cutthroats, readily rising to a Royal Coachman. Also lots of people, with three in camps and more day hikers showing up by 11 or so. 

Eventually had caught too many to think about, went back to camp and packed up. Looked around and decided on a nap. That was the best half hour of the last couple of years, lying in the sun listening to wind in the pines and chickadees talking among themselves. 

I'd say bury me here, except it don't matter where you bury me. 

lost a country

I Was In A Hurry

By Dunya Mikhail

Translated By Elizabeth Winslow

Yesterday I lost a country.

I was in a hurry,

and didn't notice when it fell from me

like a broken branch from a forgetful tree.

Please, if anyone passes by

and stumbles across it,

perhaps in a suitcase

open to the sky,

or engraved on a rock

like a gaping wound,

or wrapped

in the blankets of emigrants,

or canceled

like a losing lottery ticket,

or helplessly forgotten

in Purgatory,

or rushing forward without a goal

like the questions of children,

or rising with the smoke of war,

or rolling in a helmet on the sand,

or stolen in Ali Baba's jar,

or disguised in the uniform of a policeman

who stirred up the prisoners

and fled,

or squatting in the mind of a woman

who tries to smile,

or scattered

like the dreams

of new immigrants in America.

If anyone stumbles across it,

return it to me, please.

Please return it, sir.

Please return it, madam.

It is my country. . .

I was in a hurry

when I lost it yesterday.

Copyright Credit: Dunya Mikhail, "I Was In A Hurry" from The War Works Hard.  Copyright © 2005 by Dunya Mikhail.

via a review of The Third Reich of Dreams. 

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.