So yesterday was June 1st

For me June 1^st is not an ordinary day.  Not only is that our dog Maynard’s birthday, it is also my mom’s birthday.  Irene Elizabeth Fritz Conca would have been 90 years old yesterday.  She died nearly 30 years ago--just as I began to really appreciate how wonderful she was (I was at the end of my teen years)—and still, not many days pass that I don’t think of her.  The dog is 13 and while he is deaf, he gets around just fine and is a pleasure to have as a companion.    Yesterday was a noteworthy day by all accounts and I was planning an overnight trip into the Buckhorn Wilderness to celebrate.  Unfortunately, I was overtaken by events at work that sucked up all the gumption I had, which wasn’t very much to begin with, so instead of a night out in the old growth next to the river, I woke up at home on Saturday morning.   The day ended up with me at home alone, plus the dog and two cats.  Between doing chores and getting some rest I had some time on my hands. I also had a kitchen, a few dozen cookbooks, a garden offering a good variety of fresh herbs and greens, and a couple of good excuses to cook an honorary meal.

I decided that a little alchemy would be appropriate; in town I bought two nice, thick pork chops and proceeded to brine them in a salt-sugar solution steeped with fresh herbs and garlic. There is something wonderful and inspiring about brining and curing meat—especially pork—it’s particularly satisfying to me.  Maybe it’s the cosmic, molecular interplay of salt, sugar, water, and herbs with a lovely cut of meat that taps into the notion of the whole being more than the sum of its parts.   Maybe it’s the subtle flavors imparted into the meat by the brine and brought forward through grilling.  Whatever the cause, this kind of cooking always feels a little magical. 

My dad was an accomplished chemist and chef.   He fully understood the brining process from both the analytical/chemical as well as the spiritual/aesthetic angles and he could explain the chemistry side of it in a way that made sense.  I am not a chemist so please don’t ask me to explain any chemical reaction in detail.  I rely on my observations and senses and trust the work of others to guide me on the technical stuff.  It is with great joy that I follow a recipe to the detail regarding proportions of salt, sugar and water to meat.  However, when it comes to flavors and cooking methods I am more than willing to explore my own approaches and take responsibility for the occasional flop.  Today’s concoction is fairly risk free as long as I pay attention close enough not to burn stuff.

The local produce store was advertising end of the season asparagus that I could not resist. They would be lightly boiled and topped with a spicy, mustard vinaigrette and coarsely chopped, fresh tarragon from the herb garden.  I decided on pasta topped with butter, flavored with sage and parmesan cheese, as a nice side dish.  The pork was soaking in brine containing sage, garlic and juniper berries, so I thought the sage in the pasta would be a nice flavor thread to weave through the dishes.

The weather on this not so ordinary day was itself very ordinary in a classic late spring--early summer Olympic Peninsula way:   cloudy, mild, and maybe 6-8 degrees cooler than what you think it should feel like.  I like this kind of weather.  There are lots and lots of birds around the feeders, some young-of-the-year juncos, song sparrows and even a downy woodpecker.  Lots of birds are singing too--warblers, flycatchers, the wonderfully omnipresent robin, and my summer favorite, the Swainson’s thrush trilling from the deep woods. The hummingbirds are going through close to a quart of sugar water every day now.  Pretty soon their young will fledge and it will be an all-out hummer feeding frenzy for a few days before most of them head off to the mountains and the place will settle down again.

 It was cool enough while I was getting ready to grill, that I torched off a small fire in the woodstove so I could have the luxury of having the door open, using the stove’s radiant heat to balance the chilly air .  I love the climate here and I know from memories that my mom loved this climate for the same reasons. It’s easy to maintain a connection with the outdoors in this region because it is so mild much of the year.  The grill and patio are simply an extension of the kitchen and dining room for much of the spring and summer.  So what if you need to wear fleece some of the time, I love merging the inside and outside and so did Irene.  She especially loved to live outdoors in the summer.  Up at the family property in the foothills of the Olympics, we stayed in what was the re-vamped chicken coop.  It was essentially a screened sleeping porch.  My parents constructed a small, three-sided, open kitchen in front of our “chicken coop” sleeping porch complete with Coleman stove and enameled dishpans. During the summer we would have breakfast there—cantaloupe, toast and eggs.  I know my mom loved to be up early on those summer mornings, drinking coffee, and waiting for everybody else to get up.  I also know she loved to be the last one to bed, often spending a few minutes alone, outside, listening to the night.  I get that.  So it was nice tonight to grill out on the porch and I even ate out there too—underneath an umbrella because it was sprinkling when I finally took the lovely brined pork chops off the grill and laid them next to a few bright green asparagus spears and a pile of buttery, cheesy pasta.  The pork was sublime.  It picked up some nice flavor from the sage, garlic and juniper, while the sugar in the brine made for a nice crust on the meat with just a hint of sweetness.  A nice meal, eaten quietly and slowly, with warm thoughts of both my parents but especially of Irene, brought closer by the mutual appreciation for food and the small things in life that are ready for the taking if you are willing to pay attention.

Welcome to the Club

I grew up in a family of anglers.  My mother, the oldest of three daughters, was “chosen” by my grandfather to be his fishing partner, since there were no sons.  She accepted and even cherished this role, though by the time I was old enough to fish she had moved on to politics, an equally sketchy endeavor, and left the fishing to me and my dad.  The key role models for my fishing career were my dad and my grandfather, especially my grandfather.  I strove to meet or exceed the expectations he set and to be worthy of his praise to the family and especially my east coast cousins who were all older than me. To hear him brag about how many fish I caught and how big they were was awesome and fed what was to become something of an obsession.

By the time I was ten I tied my own flies, fixed and maintained all my gear and most importantly was able to catch, kill, clean and fill the smokehouse with a mess of nice trout.  At that time the daily limit was 12 trout per day as long as they were at least 6 inches long.  I learned quickly that it was sometimes possible to sneak an extra fish or two into the bottom of my creel, an act that was frowned upon by my dad, but which would bring a wide smile from my grandfather.  I picked up on these and other lessons quickly and by the age of 14 I was considered by some to be a complete fishing fanatic.  But there was something missing, a prize I had not yet won, membership to an exclusive club that I could not yet claim.  I had never caught a steelhead.

Although trout fishing was the main attraction for my dad, steelhead fishing was held in the highest regard by my grandfather.  Steelhead are simply rainbow trout that migrate to the ocean for a period of 1-4 years and grow exceptionally large on the rich marine diet.  They return to the freshwater to spawn and that is when fishermen target them, during their upstream journey.  There are essentially two distinct groups of steelhead on the Olympic Peninsula.  These are commonly referred to as “runs” and are usually defined by what season the fish leave the ocean--winter versus summer.  Catching any steelhead was a worthy deed, but winter steelhead were prized because they are typically larger, some weigh as much as 20 pounds, and they are generally considered to be more difficult to catch.  Winter water temperatures are low which can make the fish less active and thus less likely to strike a fly, lure or bait.  Rivers in the winter are typically swollen with rain making them more challenging to fish from a purely logistical perspective.  Steelhead stop eating for nourishment when they leave the ocean using fat reserves to fuel their journeys. Insects, small fish and even birds are sometimes found in their stomachs, but they do not feed in freshwater on a regular basis.  This fact does not make it any easier to catch them and has led some to refer to winter steelhead fishing as “feeding the inedible to the disinterested.”

So by the time I was 16 I had still not caught my first steelhead, a situation that was beginning to weigh heavily on me.  It just so happened that that winter my family decided to have a group Christmas celebration at the family homestead property outside of Sequim.  This meant the east coast cousins would be there along with my grandfather, the patriarch of the family, as the ringleader.  Someone also decided we would draw names for a gift exchange with the one rule being you had to make the gift you gave.  I couldn’t believe it when I drew my grandfather’s name.  After mulling over several options like tying him a bunch of nice trout flies, or splitting him a cord of firewood, I decided that I would catch him a steelhead and present it to him on Christmas morning, smoked and laid-out on a freshly split cedar shake.  Of course there were a couple of not too small issues with my plan.  I had never caught a steelhead and I was in high school, which meant I wasn’t going to have a lot of time to fish and while December is definitely within winter steelhead season it isn’t always the best part of the season. 

I think it was about the second week of December when my parents started to ask about my gift ideas for my grandfather.  They were observant and had noticed a distinct lack of effort on my part to initiate any kind of gift construction.  When I told them about my plan they were less than enthusiastic and not particularly supportive.  So you can imagine what they were thinking and saying by the 22^nd of December when I had not yet caught a steelhead and still had no clear alternate plan.  We were going to leave the house early on the 24^th to drive from our home in Shelton up to the family property in Sequim.  That basically meant I had the 23^rd left to fish and it was a school day.

To be honest I’m not sure what was going through my head.  I remember walking home from school that day and crossing the creek that flowed through town.  It supported a small to moderate run of winter steelhead and was my home water because I didn’t have a car and it was walking distance from the house.  As I crossed the creek on the logging railroad trestle with a couple of friends some kind of reality set in that I basically had one more chance.  So I ditched my buddies and jogged the rest of the way home, jumped into my hip-waders, grabbed my rod and jogged back down the mile or so to the creek. It was December after all and it gets dark early so really I didn’t have much time.

I started fishing at a pool we called Big Rock.  The creek came down through a small rapid by the big rock and then widened out into the main part of the pool to form a large eddy.  I started casting into this eddy thinking about what other pools I should fish.  After only a few casts the line tightened up and I instinctively pulled back on my fishing rod.  Much to my surprise there was a strong pull and I felt the head shaking of a large fish.  At first I thought I must have hooked one of the many chum salmon that were still in the creek.  Chums enter the creek in late November and by December are mostly spawned out and getting ready to die.  All pacific salmon, unlike steelhead, die soon after spawning.  Over the years I had caught many chums.  They tend toward the grotesque at this point in their lives.  The males develop large and prominent canine teeth that deserve a lot of respect.  The females after the rigors of spawning are often missing fins.  Chums are not sought after as they are not at all edible at this point and often hooking one means losing gear as they can still be very strong and can and will fight hard and break off your hook and lure.  However, when this fish surfaced I could see immediately the silvery sides of a steelhead.  There it was my first steelhead, and not a moment too soon.  The fish made a couple of strong runs pulling line from my reel.  After the second of these runs I was feeling pretty confident the fish was tiring and I began planning on where I was going to land it.  I picked a nice section of slightly sloping, sandy beach where I could slide the fish on shore.  I worked the fish into position and then began easing it toward the beach.   I don’t know if the fish could sense what was going on or whether it got spooked when I worked it into the shallow water, but it panicked and made a strong run back toward the center of the pool.  As it did this I heard a sickening “POP” as my line broke and the fish swam free.

I just stood there slack-jawed and while I don’t remember all the details I’m fairly certain I let loose a string a choice words and probably a big moan as well.  It was also about this time I remembered that I had noticed on a previous trip that my line was weak, probably a bad batch and that its advertised  ten pound breakings strength was really only about six pounds. Not strong enough to hold the 8-10 pound fish I just hooked.  I had meant to change this out, but hadn’t.  This just made matters worse.  Not only had I just lost my first steelhead I lost it because of an error that I made.  This is the type of mistake that did not go over well with my grandfather.  You always kept your gear in tip-top shape.  No excuses.  Now I all I could do was stand there and cuss.

After a few minutes I re-tied my gear, checking the line carefully to see that at least my knot was in a good piece of line ( I had to re-tie a couple of times to achieve this).  The light was starting to fade and so were my hopes.  It was definitely a low point in my fishing career and I almost bagged it right then and there and headed back up the hill to lick my wounds and figure out what in the heck I was going to make my grandfather in less than 24 hours. 

For no other reason than it would postpone having to tell my parents what happened I began casting into the pool again and with every cast all I could see was the steelhead that was so close but now completely out of reach.  And with every cast I beat myself up more for making such a foolish mistake with my line.  I was just about ready to head up what was going to be an even longer and steeper trail than usual when once again the line went tight and again I set up and felt a deep head shaking telegraphed through my fishing rod.  My first thought was salmon and what a cruel joke it would be to hook and land an old beat-up chum at this point.  But to my amazement I again saw the silvery sides of a steelhead when the fish surfaced.  Could it be? With the thought of the weak line in the front of my mind I loosened the drag on my reel and played the fish as carefully as I could.  After a few minutes the fish began to tire and I again worked it up toward the beach.  This time the line held and as soon as that fish hit the beach I was on it.  I grabbed it and immediately got it as far from the water as possible.  I looked around for a nice piece of driftwood.  Finding one, I gave the fish a good rap across the back of the head and it was over. I took the fish down to the water and reverently washed off the dirt and blood from its sides.  Then I laid it down on the beach and admired its beautiful coloration, silver with just the beginnings of the rainbow stripe down its broad flank.  It was the most beautiful fish I had ever seen.

The next day was Christmas Eve and the fish was in the smokehouse as soon as I could get the fire lit after we arrived at the family property.  Everyone knew it was my first steelhead a feat only matched by a few people in attendance-- definitely not the east coast cousins. It also didn’t take long for everybody to make the connection between the fish in the smokehouse and the upcoming gift exchange.  It was a much anticipated event and I reveled in the knowledge that I was going to get to present the fish to my grandfather, cedar shake and all, as I had planned.  I don’t remember getting any presents that Christmas, all I remember was carrying that fish into the living room on Christmas morning and placing it on my grandfather’s lap and watching his eyes light up.

I still have the skin of that fish.  The smoking did a good job of curing it and after the holidays my grandfather took it back to his work shop and mounted it on a board.  At the bottom of the board, written on a small piece of leather, is the date and “Welcome to the Club.”

The Crossing

The Queets River near where this story takes place

                The Queets is a big river by anyone’s standard, but to an eight year old it seemed immense.  From its headwaters on Mt Olympus, the highest peak of the Olympic Mountains in Western Washington, the Queets flows westward to the Pacific Ocean through a broad valley hosting groves of giant spruce and moss cloaked maples.  The valley floor, as viewed from the air, appears as a striated mosaic of abandoned channels in various stages of re-growth, giant logjams bleached and tangled and crescent-shaped gravel bars stitched between terraced valley walls, some covered with ragged old growth, others recovering from timber harvests.  Standing on the bank with my backpack and fly rod I watched as the milky water whispered across the broad gravel bar almost daring me to enter.  On the far side was the orange and black target nailed to a tree that marked the beginning of the Queets River Trail.   Crossing the river was going to be scary and I knew it.  Not that crossing rivers was anything new to me, at the age of eight I was in the middle of my third full season as my dad’s fishing partner and I had spent considerable time wading up and down many other rivers on the Olympic Peninsula.  Nonetheless, the Queets was by far the biggest river I had ever fished or crossed.   Add to that the fact that I was carrying a backpack full of supplies that I wasn’t excited about getting wet. The possibility of a wet sleeping bag and clothes, or soggy food, was very unappealing given that I was wearing cotton jeans that would never dry once they got wet from wading.

Before long I was joined on the bank by my parents.  We looked up and down the gravel bar inspecting the river, sizing it up, trying to find the best place to cross.  There was no bridge, for this river is too wild. The National Park Service figures if you want to get into the Queets back-county you can find a way to get across.  This situation remains today.  To see the upper Queets Valley via a maintained trail the first thing you have to do is ford the river.  Late summer river flows in the Queets typically make this possible with volumes measured around 500-1,000 cubic feet per second (cfs).  The catch is that once you are across and head up the trail the river owns you.  If it rains, and remember this is the west side of the Olympic Peninsula where it rains well over 200 inches a year, it can rain hard enough, even in summer, to cause the river’s flow  to increase to volumes that make crossing on foot either dangerous or suicidal depending on your perspective.  This was the least of my worries.  Rain or no rain I was confronted by this large river that looked perfectly capable, even in this low summer flow, of carrying me away into oblivion.

After a minute or two my parents decided this was indeed the best place available and that we would cross.  My dad took the upstream side so he could break the current with his body, my mom was on the downstream side, and I was in the middle holding their hands.  All I had to do was stay upright and not let go. The water was cold, but not as cold as other rivers in the Olympics I had waded, at this point in its course the Queets has flowed across gravel bars for many miles from its glacial headwaters and even in the rainforest it had managed to absorb enough of the sun’s heat, or perhaps the earth’s heat, to take the edge off.  I was used to the icy chill of the Dungeness, a river we fished often.  It flows largely in a canyon and at a very high gradient so it never warms and it will take the feeling out of your feet in seconds.  So at least I had that going for me, my feet weren’t numb, yet.  Being able to feel your way across the river bed is very important because often the water is clouded by glacial flour or roughened by turbulence to the point where you lose the ability to see down to the bottom.  Wading rivers is an acquired skill not unlike reading Braille with one’s feet.  Each step or movement of a foot requires feeling, assessing, “reading” the contours of the bottom.  Is my foot on a wide, flat rock with a slippery surface or a rough angular rock where it can find purchase?  Is the rock I’m about to step on secure or is it going to roll over when I put my weight on it?  These are questions with serious implications, make the wrong choice and you could go for a swim, or worse.

We started across.  It didn’t take more than a few steps before the Queets had me up to my waist.   I was kind of a scrawny kid, not only a lot shorter than my dad; I also didn’t weigh very much, even with a backpack.  Flowing water has a deceptive strength.  Even knee deep water if it’s flowing fast enough can easily knock down a strong adult.  There I was a wiry eight year old, waist deep in the Queets and although my dad was taking the brunt of the current I could still feel its strong pull.  It wasn’t hard to imagine that this river could take me away.  Looking downriver from my perspective wasn’t reassuring either.  All I could see were waves and spray kicked up from submerged boulders disappearing against the backdrop of a not too distant horizon.   The rushing of the water ever closer to my ears provided the soundtrack, filling my head until it overflowed with its hungry growl.

It was at about this point that I started to lose solid purchase on the river bottom because I was in so deep.  I couldn’t see the bottom to figure out where to put my feet and I didn’t have a firm base from which to read the bottom by feeling it out with my boots before each step.   I was in trouble.  Gripping ever tighter to my parents hands I began to express my concern that I wasn’t in control, in fact that I had no control and was sure I would be swept away.  I could see my dad struggling with the current and my mom, no novice to river crossing herself, was having difficulty as well.  It occurred to me that all my parents had to do was let go of me and then they could make it to shore and have a great fishing trip.  Rationality vanished from my thoughts and I could only see them tossing me off to be swallowed by the ever deeper and stronger current of the river, which by this time was well above my waist.  In fact, I was floating, barely able to touch the tops of the larger cobbles on the bottom.  I don’t remember if I was crying, yelling or begging them to hold on to me.  I remember a strong sense that I was about to be plucked from my parents grasp and that somehow they weren’t as worried about this as I was. 

The irrationality of a child is an amazing thing.  I was certain the end was near and my parents we’re wondering what the fuss was about, like they were going to let go. I’m not sure why I felt so insecure at that moment.  My parents were deeply caring people.  I think it was because, as the youngest in the family, I always tried and was expected to keep up with my older brother and cousins, whether it involved hiking, fishing, or working and in many cases I succeeded.  This led me and others to believe that I was more grown-up than was the case.  Situations like this would come up and the little kid would re-appear with real fears and apprehensions.  My parents would remember back to other things I had done and think that this was no different.  But in this case it was different.  The scale of the Queets Valley with its huge old growth spruce, expansive gravel bars and its wide channel was very different than the smaller more, well defined rivers that we usually fished.  I felt exposed and small in such a setting which must have been partly responsible for my reaction that day.   We continued across, my parents confident and unconcerned, me near panic and visualizing certain death.  But then I felt my foot plant solidly on a stable gravel surface. I felt the river’s pull diminish.  The water, which only seconds earlier was about rip me from my parent’s hands, was now slower, gentler, the hungry growl subsided behind me.  Looking around I realized we had crossed safely and now a new fishing opportunity waited upriver.  I was quickly aware of the anticipation of catching lots and lots of nice trout in a new river but also of a tiny nagging voice in the back of my head saying “you know you have to get a back across right?” Followed shortly by “what was it my dad said about it rain?”

And so it was that we made it safely across and continued on to our destination upriver.  There are other stories from this trip that involved fear and intrigue, and also the vagaries of cooking freeze-dried food in a rainstorm over an open fire.  Those will wait for another time.  As it is, almost forty years have passed since that day and I have been lucky enough to return to the Queets regularly for the last two decades or so, usually in February or March, to cast big wet flies for wild winter steelhead.  I often cross the river in nearly the same spot to reach one of my favorite steelhead runs and though the channel has changed somewhat, it still has every bit of the wildness it had back then. One chilly morning not too long ago, as I started across the river with the rain quickly changing to snow, the wind gusting and cold, my thoughts drifted back to that summer day.   

Fed by several days of cold rain, the river on this particular day was flowing around 3,000 cfs, a typical winter flow but much larger than it was on that scary day when an eight year old confronted fear and learned about trusting his  parents.  I pulled the hood of my wading jacket over my head to keep the wind off my face and the rain from running down the back of my neck.   The water was dirty with clay and silt washed in from the rain and my feet disappeared before I was in to my knees.  About half way across, the river began piling up against my waist and the water was strong enough that it was washing the gravel out from underneath my feet. I had to lean heavily into the current and use a lot of leg strength to maintain my position.  I hesitated for a moment, thinking back to that distant day when a much tamer Queets scared me to death.  I wondered if I should continue--knowing full well what the potential consequences were--but the lure of wild steelhead is strong.  A raven’s throaty croak echoed through the ancient spruce in the distance. Was she talking to me? Yes. I smiled, planted my wading staff firmly on the bottom and pushed on with the bittersweet memory of parents no longer with me but suddenly much closer than they had been for years, my tears adding imperceptively to the river’s flow.

May 11, 2012

May 11, 2012

I have been thinking hard about my father today.  It’s May 11, 2012 and if he was still alive he would have turned 86 years old.  It’s gorgeous and sunny here in Blyn and although it is warm out, it is by no means hot.  The last couple of weeks have been particularly cold and wet so today feels even more special.  It reminds me of a similar day in May 15 years ago, the day my father died.  It was the seventh of May and like this spring, the weather up on Lost Mountain was particularly rainy and nasty.  It was as if my father’s illness had locked the northeastern Olympic Peninsula in a sorrowful grip of mist, fog, and rain. 

Through the last several weeks of his life, my family and I, assisted by a circle of close friends, watched over my father at his house and winery located in the foothills of the Olympics.  Toward the beginning of his final decline we had raucous dinner gatherings with lots of good food and too much wine.  We cooked hard and pulled special bottles of wine—one of a kind bottles--from dusty boxes and crates.  It was a good time in an unexplainable way—we came together and celebrated a tremendous man and his life.  We ate and drank and told stories, sometimes Romeo would sit with us and sometimes he would need to rest where he could hear the celebration and still feel like he was near us.

Later, when he was too weak to leave his bed, the celebration became muted.  I remember it as a quiet, contemplative time filled with a building sadness, an awkward anxiety about the unknowns, and a deepening sense of love and compassion.  It was a time when I struggled to find a way to let go.  A time when I tried to comprehend what was going on, to imagine the future without him, and to squeeze everything I could from what I knew were precious moments.  When it was over and there were no more words to be said, but plenty of tears to be cried, the sun came out and we opened up the doors and windows and let the spring air and sunshine wash over us and dampen the massive wave of sadness that had just crashed upon us.  It’s hard to believe fifteen years have passed since that sudden sunny day in May when everything but the weather was clouded by sadness.  Happy Birthday Romeo.

Notes from a Camp Day February 2010 (for Leslie)

The drumming of the rain on my tent kept time with the rush of the river a few meters away.  I awoke periodically through the night, familiar with this song, staying awake only long enough to note it was raining and that the river seemed louder.  It was still dark when I got up; driven by the need to pee and thinking about how good a hot cup of coffee was going to taste.  After getting the water going and loading the filter with freshly ground (yesterday) French roast I walked over to the river to confirm what I already knew.

            Shining my headlamp down the bank I could see the river was up about a foot from where it had been last night when it got dark.  The water was thick with silt and in the beam of the flashlight it looked like wet cement.  It was going to be a “camp day” not a fishing day—which is really a polite way of saying “the river is too goddamned big and dirty to fish today.”  Camp days aren’t all bad and today I actually found myself satisfied with the prospect of a whole day that carries no expectation other than to drink coffee, eat and try to stay relatively dry.

            It’s been a long couple of weeks and the stress of work and life were wearing me down.  Steelhead fishing is my favorite antidote for this and I had a five day stretch lined up to spend out here on the West End as these parts of the Olympic Peninsula are known.  Although I came to fish, wanted to fish, and planned to fish, having a day to relax and read, write, walk and poke around was fine too.  Besides, there was nothing I could do about the weather or river conditions except to pack up and try to find somewhere else or go home—neither option appealed to me. So I stayed.

            At home there are chores or projects that I feel like I should do and then there is the distraction of the internet and public radio so it’s easy to get caught up in all that routine and not focus on contemplation, reading or perhaps writing.  At work there are too many projects to keep track of and the daily chore of trying to stay out in front of the stuff that can reach out and bite you seems relentless lately.

            I love my job with the National Park Service and my wife and stepdaughter are my two biggest assets.  However, I still feel the need to be on my own a lot. The West End rivers have been pulling me back weekend after weekend this winter and I have given into the pull as much as possible.   Spending hours wandering in and around my favorite rivers casting big flies to near mythical fish that aren’t hungry and this year, for me anyway, barely seem to exist.    Right now there is also the added weight of losing a dear family friend who died of cancer a few days ago in a Boston hospital.  Letty’s death was not unexpected but as with any death there is the blow from the news and then the deep, creeping sadness that follows.  I understand that Letty’s daughter Leslie was near and that it was a peaceful death, which is about as much as can be asked for under the circumstances.  Now in my late forties, I recognize the unpleasant truth that I have been witness, from both near and far, to my share of deaths--parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends mostly from cancer but also from age and a couple of tragic suicides.  With this most recent death still fresh and painful I was looking forward to a few days on the river where there is time and context to put things into perspective.

            After a second cup of strong coffee I made myself a hearty breakfast of pancakes and bacon, remembering that Leslie believes there is no problem that bacon can’t solve.  I made extra in her honor and ate it with a smile.  The rain didn’t magically stop nor did the river suddenly clear, so I concluded these weren’t problems that needed to be solved right now.  After cleaning up I decided to take a walk down-river towards the seasonal ranger station to see what I could see and hear what I could hear.

            What I saw was a large river, gray and silt laden, carrying tons of sediment dropped by huge, valley glaciers that snaked down this valley thousands of years ago.  What I saw, and scrambled over, were large wind felled spruce and hemlock that will become the next generation of nurse logs providing through their demise a perfect habitat for their offspring.  What I heard was the constant and melodic drip, drip of the rain making its way down through the multi-layered forest canopy and into the underbrush, while in the distance a squirrel chattered about some intrusion of which I was unaware and the river continued its low rushing hiss, the world’s best background music.   I also saw the first, but very clear, signs of spring.  Oxalis leaves just starting to unfold along the forest floor and on rotted stumps and tree throws.  The salmonberry branch tips swelling with bright green buds.   The new shoots are tasty eaten fresh, a trick I learned from a Makah Indian friend.  There weren’t any shoots yet, still too early for that. 

But there is real and perceptible change happening.  The green of spring is beginning to push back the gray of winter.  It is just starting here, it’s significantly further along at my home near Sequim in the rainshadow of the Olympic Mountains.  Here it’s little more than a hint of green in the woods and bottomlands.  Like a river in reverse the greening flows up valley, first along the lower valley floor then creeping up the valley walls deeper and deeper into the interior of the mountains.  Soon the spring green-up will envelope the whole watershed and begin pushing  through the dense montane forest to the subalpine parklands and meadows finally reaching the tundra of the high subalpine and true alpine where it continues right to the edge of the persistent snowline, glacial ice and exposed rock and scree.  Here among the ridges, basins and peaks are places that never fully release winter.  Places where even in mid-summer a hard frost is not unexpected and you look forward to the first rays of sun that hit your camp in the morning.

            Right now, walking through this drenched forest, I am content with these first signs of the new season.  The death of Letty and the sorrow and loss that Leslie is feeling tempers the joy that typically comes with these first teases of spring.  A gray mantle of sadness clings to me now, much like the mist that clings to the tops of the giant old growth spruce in the distance.  The gray sky and leafless alders set against the dull gray of wet gravel bars along the river feel comforting now--an embrace that wraps around me like a well worn cloak holding in the sorrow and grief of yet another loved one’s passing.  And  I know that just as spring will push winter ever farther up into the mountains, time will soothe the pain of this loss, pushing it deeper into my soul—and like the winter that never quite relinquishes its grip on the high country—this death, along with all the others, will never completely leave me.  I wouldn’t want it any other way.  I accept and even welcome these recurring pangs of grief.  They keep me connected to my past.  They keep me grounded and aware that the people in my life that are gone are still important to me in meaningful ways.  Still close enough to hurt when I think about them.

A River, a Ranger, and a Muddler: A Brief Story of Differential Enlightenment

It’s the first week of April, the beginning of spring by all accounts, and the end of another winter steelhead season.  There are still bright fish coming into the rivers, however many steelhead are starting to spawn so it’s time to be careful where you wade and fish.  I was on the Queets this weekend—just Friday night and Saturday—for a final outing.  I was celebrating the last fishing of the winter season and the fact that my old Ford Ranger hit 300,000 miles on the way to work Friday.

I set up camp and fished a couple runs on Friday afternoon/evening, made a quick dinner, and was sound asleep by 9:00 pm.  Except for the 45 minutes when the only other camper in the campground decided to idle his diesel truck, it was quiet.  I reminded myself that I wasn’t in the backcountry and rolled over and drifted off to sleep.  I awoke around 6:00 am to the sound of varied thrushes, winter wrens, and a drumming ruffed grouse.  It was cold.  It seemed to take forever for the coffee water to boil and even longer for the water to move through the grounds.  After a cup of hot coffee and a large bowl of hotter oatmeal, I stowed all the gear in the back of the truck where 40 minutes earlier I had been sleeping.  I noticed as I was poking around camp, checking the river level, and generally surveying my domain, that my favorite run was basking in early morning sunlight—not a common occurrence on this river.

Feeling like I needed to be part of that scene, I pulled on my waders and headed to the river.  For the next 3 hours I worked a long piece of water, slowly swinging my muddler minnow fly as deeply as I could through the milky blue current.  Toward the bottom of the run where the flow quickens and shoals over a bed of smoothed boulders, I decided that it felt enough like summer to take the sinking line off and skate a muddler like I do for summer steelhead--full floating line, un-weighted fly, fishing on the surface of the river.  The fish would have to see the fly and want it badly enough to rise up through the flow to grab it.  This is something you can count on happening in summer with at least some regularity (regularity defined by steelhead anglers may differ from others’ perception of the term).  Few anglers do this in the winter and fewer still hook fish.  I didn’t take a water temperature, but I’d bet it was in the low 40s or upper 30s.  After a couple hours of standing in the river wearing waders with multiple layers of wool and polypro, my toes were numb and my legs were chilled to the bone. Conventional wisdom says steelhead won’t rise for a fly in these conditions.  Today conventional wisdom was correct.  I fished through this run then moved down river about 5 miles and fished through second run before losing confidence and switching back to a sink-tip.  I finished the afternoon swinging my muddler through a broad, deep run where I could make long casts and feed line to make an even longer swing.  It felt graceful and was wonderfully fun.

I quit fishing about 2:30 pm and took a few photos of the old Ranger pick-up resting quietly out on the gravel bar.  After a snack I packed up the fly rod, wet waders, and cleated boots.  I hopped in the truck for the drive home to Blyn three hours away.  It was a great day for a drive, the coast along the Kalaloch section of Hwy 101 was outstanding.   It was as I headed across Dead Dog Flats that the first hint of trouble appeared.  I was noticing the peaks of the Valhalla’s shining in my rear view mirror, plastered with snow and as white as they could ever be, when I heard and felt the strange vibrations coming from the front end of the truck.  At first I thought it was a bad chunk of road—beaten up by the heavy log and chip truck traffic.  But it was clear after a few more seconds that this was more than road noise.  So I limped slowly into Forks wondering what my next best move might be.  As I drove through town at 25 mph with the window rolled down, I noticed that the noise sounded similar to the noise the truck made in 4wd…except louder and with an accompanying vibration that was just not at all right.  On a hunch, knowing I could easily pull off in town and get some assistance, I popped it into 4wd high.  I’ll be damned if the noise didn’t immediately stop—well it got a lot quieter.  With new found confidence, a huge dose of denial, and undaunted faith, I headed out of town figuring I would either make it home or have a good story to tell.  Except for a few moments of nervousness in the upper Sol Duc Valley when the noise re-appeared, the truck made it--a quick flip out of, and back into, 4wd solved the problem. 

It was somewhere around Lake Crescent that I remembered my mechanic telling me he thought the front differential was probably going to go fairly soon---which I guess meant at just over 300, 000 miles.  I made it home slowly but uneventfully with a little under 1/8 tank of gas, 300,295 miles on the odometer, and one grateful and relieved driver.  I have owned this truck since 1999 when I bought it with just over 25,000 miles on it.  The ranger has been extraordinarily reliable serving as kid transporter; hauler of all manner of yard, garden and other materials; camper; fishing rig; kayak carrier; and commuter vehicle.  It never left me stranded anywhere and once forged through a rain swollen stream, pushing water over the hood, to deliver me to safety and protect me from untold embarrassment on a dark, wet January morning in the Hoh.  Thank you Ford Ranger your work is done.