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.
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AuthorI am Earl. Archives
May 2024
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