I believe I got a little rest in the truck, if memory serves. But between the anxious energy, the sore body, and the racing mind, it wasn't quality rest. Sub-par, at best I'd say.
But as the sun came up over the Collegiate Peaks, turning everything pink and shiny, thoughts started coming into focus. And that main focus was, "Dude, you're sitting alongside the Upper Arkansas River on private water. You know this water. You don't have any clients today." So I fished my face off. Brown trout, wrangled hand-over-fist. Some pretty decent ones, too. I even netted a cuttbow over 20 inches on a golden stone. I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but I remember what this goddamn fish ate almost 20 years ago. I fished hard, straight through breakfast and lunch. Just water. My body tends to ignore all outside interference when I'm on the water. I don't need to eat, I don't need to poop or pee, I rarely need water, and bugs and sun and wind and snow don't bother me. Only people. And there were no people, so I kept going. I ended the day somewhat early. The snow on the ground from a couple days before had all but melted. It was fairly warm, clear, and very sunny, and I imagine my Patagonia down jacket was starting to waterlog from the constant stream of perspiration generating from the back of my neck and armpits. After my last cast, I finally took my eyes off the water to notice a gulch I wandered into while blinded by a sheer focus of hitting my seams and refusing to look up. The quickest way was up. So up I went. Slogging up the steep, loose dirt embankment proved to be a demanding feat, but one I conquered, albeit with not much grace. I really should've lost the down jacket before this straight-up hike. A not-so-short walk back to my fancy truck, and I was whooped. I rung out my jacket, de-robed the boots and waders, sat on my tailgate and pondered. It's dinnertime. I'm beat--shitty sleep for a week, sliding around on river rocks that resembled snot-covered baby's heads for six days, drinking whether I wanted to or not each night, and now this questionable decision of climbing up a 30 foot dirt wall on my hands & knees. Fuck it. Let's find a motel. I was a few miles upstream from Buena Vista, which by now, seeing as how I had guided there a handful of times, I knew was pronounced Byoona-Vista. So I was basically a local. 17 years ago, Buena Vista had zero hotels, zero corporate shit aside from a Subway, and was your quintessential quaint mountain town. I haven't been there in a few years, but I hear the yuppies and hipsters have taken over. And that's a damn shame. Because I get kind of jazzed about checking into a mid-century motor lodge with an original neon sign out front that has an arrow and maybe some pine trees on it and is called the "Pinewood Inn" or "Mountain Lodge" or some other shit that people in the 1950s would make up. And that's exactly what I did. The name escapes me, but I checked into a locally owned, rustic-as-fuck, park outside your front door, old school motor lodge. I've got pictures somewhere that I took with my Olympus handheld waterproof digital camera. I'll keep looking for them. They had a vacancy, as advertised by a separate neon sign hanging in the office window. So you know it's the real deal. I unloaded the necessary items for my sleepover and transferred them to my room, including one black, totally fucking soaked from sweat, Patagonia down jacket. That got hung in the closet with a box fan blowing directly onto it. I remember hopping on my bike and heading to a place where we had ordered pizzas for our clients before. Not sure what flavor I ordered, but I do know that I discovered that evening that riding your bike at dusk with a large pizza and a 12-pack of Bud Light ain't easy. I returned to my room which sported two double beds--one for pizza eating, beer, drinking, laying my clothes all over, and studying my atlas on...and one for sleeping. I scarfed, drank, and looked over maps to mark my next move. It ended up being an easy decision--drive over the beautiful Collegiates to fish the Taylor River. I don't remember many things, but I do remember when I get a seriously good night's sleep. This particular night ranked fairly high in that category. .......................................................................................... I don't know why, necessarily, but this is when the trip starts to get foggy. It's gets difficult for me to remember the timeline, but that's why we're doing this in "chapters", so I can somewhat try and regain some recollection of this whole thing. Hopefully I'll find that wad of pics I took and that'll trigger some "oh yeah"s. Once again, stay tuned.
0 Comments
Joe Pass. Quite possibly the best Sunday morning, coffee drinking music ever. It's almost like Joe thought to himself right before recording "Night & Day", "Man, I wonder if Matt would dig this in 60 years on a Sunday morning while sipping coffee?" And then just went for it.
I'm guessing It has to do with the time of year, the sunshine bouncing off of the fresh snow, the newly unboxed and abundance of Christmas decorations surrounding me--testing my claustrophobia...all of it coming together this Sunday morning, urging me to be thankful. And for whatever reason, I am reminiscing about my move out to Colorado nearly 17 years ago. I went from sleeping in the back of my pickup in the middle of the Rocky Mountains to yes, sipping coffee (and listening to Joe Pass) in my sunroom a short lifetime later. I'm thankful I made the leap. I'm thankful for the adventure. And I'm thankful for where I've ended up. All modest, but mine. I've got a horrendous memory. I've done a lot of living, I am not young, and my brain chooses independently what it feels it needs to retain and what it can dispose of. So I guess I find it an entertaining challenge to piece sections of my life together. I didn't have a smart phone to document everything with photos and video. Just did it. And the rest is up to the ol' brain to hold on, if it chooses. This is what I'm remembering now--and I'd better type quickly before I forget it... My last guide trip on the Arkansas River. I was the guide, not the guided. I had done this gig a few times prior, so I knew the cabin, the water, the spots, the whole rundown. I knew my fellow guides, too. All midwesterners, like myself, making the pilgrimage from flyover states to damn near smack dab in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. I traveled from Kansas City, where I lived at the time with my girlfriend. I ran a gear shop that offered adventure trips to customers. One of those "adventures" was a guided fly fishing trip to said location in Colorado. I remember elbowing my way into guiding this trip. Unfortunately, my gear shop, unlike several others peppered throughout the Midwest, did not offer fly fishing equipment. So it was a little frowned upon for me to guide, seeing as how I didn't have any gear to pimp to potential adventure-goers from the KC area. I ended up selling a trip or two despite our lack of fishing gear to extend, and I was an advid fly fisherperson, so I suppose the higher-ups felt mercy. Prior to this trip, my girlfriend and I had decided that we were going to move to Colorado. Big decision, but she had recently landed a job out of Denver so that assisted with our big decision. Me? Well, let's just say I was the proverbial dog riding in a car with his head out the window. Tongue out, letting everything hit him square in the face and loving it. I had a blue S-10 with a camper shell on it. One of those fancy S-10s, the ZR-2 off road one with big tires & shit. Because I'm a fancy guy. I packed that bastard with Rubbermaid bins of gear & clothes that slid neatly under my sleeping platform in the bed of the truck. I had my fancy mountain bike securely mounted to my Yakima trailer hitch bike rack. And of course, I had my Colorado Atlas in the passenger seat. I kissed my girlfriend goodbye and fucking split. As poor as my memory is, I remember feeling the thrill of absolute blind adventure. Sure, I had been to this fishing cabin before and I had a week's worth of guide work to concentrate on, but I couldn't escape the anxiousness and excitement of what would come next. Because I really had no idea. I didn't know any different at the time, but these guide trips weren't your typical day trips that most outfitters offer. No, these trips were a week or so long with guides and clients both sleeping in a rundown old fishing cabin in the middle of the woods. As guides, we'd not only take the clients fishing as much as they wanted to, but we would also cook every meal, provide whatever libations they enjoyed, and would serve as newly-appointed drinking buddies for them. We would all become pretty close during that week on the river, as we really didn't have much of a choice. As far as the trip went, I remember it being a pretty good one. Dry fly fishing was good, I got hit on by one of the female guests, the food turned out tasty, and the weather was perfect. On the last day of the trip, before sunrise, all of the guides got everything tidied up and the vans packed and ready for the trip back to Topeka or Oklahoma or wherever they came from. Not me though--I had other plans. Which were zero plans. Before our clients loaded up for the drive back, they pooled together a huge wad of hundreds for our tip. We graciously thanked them, split the cash up accordingly, all hugged, and then hit the road. I drove about 50 yards to a pull-off along the river and took a nap. Long week, man. And finally it was time to concentrate on the month ahead, because that was my only plan: to travel and fish for the entire month of October in a state that I was not all that familiar with, but would be living in shortly. Fly rods, gear, sleeping bag, bike, fancy truck, and a wad of tips. Before I nodded off to the sounds of the river next to me, I reclined my seat, locked my doors, and said to myself, "Fuckin' A, man. Here we are." But as tired and sore as I was from an entire week of being a fishing-butler/drinking buddy, I couldn't sleep. As I rested my body at daybreak in the middle of the woods, my mind took off. It all starts now. ...................................................................................... Well, that's a lot of remembering for me. I'm going to get my shower now and work on some shit around the house. I'll work on remembering that month of October, as it has it's ups & downs, ins & outs, and led me to where I'm at now...in my newly constructed sunroom built from insurance money, sipping coffee, and listening to Joe Pass. Stay tuned. |
AuthorI am Earl. Archives
May 2024
|