The experiment continues...

It's been a while. You still here? Lots to catch up on.

“I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news."     -John Muir

This is for the close 10-20 friends who read this anyway.

"The fisherman doesn't know it's not the fish he's after."

I started fly-fishing when I was 10 or 11 and loved everything about it. I started tying my own flies, and searched for undiscovered local water where I grew up outside of Pittsburgh, PA. They were mostly private ponds that rarely got fished, stocked with bass and bluegill, which as a teenager were a blast to catch on the surface with a popper.

I’ve been living in Vermont for 12 years, and don’t get out fishing local spots that much. In the 30-odd years since I’ve started, my relationship to fly-fishing has changed slightly. I still love it, I just think I’m a little more empathetic to the fish. Try to imagine their experience, you think you’re eating a tasty fly, a hook is yanked into the side of your mouth, you fight against an invisible unknowable force, attached to a line, man-handled out of your known and comfortable wet atmosphere, raised up to a place where it’s dry and suffocating, the hook removed, a photo taken and then returned, most likely in shock, a brief alien abduction, to your underwater world. My brother likes to remind me that trout have the brain size of a pea. I’m convinced they're conscious sentient beings who still feel pain. I’ve felt them wince at times when removing the hook, the same way I tense up and flinch when someone else is getting a splinter out of my foot.

All that being said, I still enjoy fly-fishing, and I attempt to be as gentle as possible, esp. when fishing small water for very small fish. When seeing a photo of one of these fish in my hand, a close friend sent me a text, “Good lord, why not just stomp on tadpoles? (laughing face emoji)”

I replied, “There is magic in fishing small water.”

“A trout is a moment of beauty known only to those who seek it.”
—Arnold Gingrich

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”

― John Muir, The Mountains of California

I’ve been wanting to fish this one stream since I moved here to see how high up the mountain I could catch a brook trout. As far as I know the stream has no name. It is a mountain stream, and descends 2000 vertical feet and has been carving its way through the rock for 550 Million years. It’s an ancient place, covered in moss, wet, steep and at the time I hiked up it, experiencing peak leaf change, the light filtered in a way that surpassed any stained glass cathedral I’ve ever visited. The mountain and it’s watershed V-notches are my church. Silence abounds, the light excites the eye, time ceases to exist, and it's as intimate an experience with Nature as you can ever hope to get, scrambling up and exploring an ancient mountain's slippery crevices.

*blushes*

“What are men to rocks and mountains?”

― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

I had a camera wrapped around my shoulder, trying to capture some of the mystery (it never does). There was a moment, cliffed out on the Southern side, I looked downstream, yellow light reflecting in the pools, looking through the viewfinder, cropping, finding the right exposure, lost in the reflection, on the cusp of some unknown cosmic truth, when a bird in flight reflected in the water below giving me just enough time to look up an catch a quick glance at a Pilleated Woodpecker flying overhead and perching on the cliff above me. I’ve had numerous encounters through the 12 years here with this rather shy remarkably gorgeous bird, always in hard to get to places, always on the verge of divining some occult wisdom, as if the Goddess herself was giving me a wink.

There were other moments as well. A chipmunk appeared when I sat on a rock and opened up a bag of peanuts. I left a few peanuts behind for it. There was a near fatal slip when a rock flipped over above a cascading waterfall and immersed my entire right leg up to my hip in the fast flowing water.

It is extremely difficult to catch a trout in this place. You need to sneak up to potential holes, hide behind rocks and trees, be extremely silent and present the fly as if you don’t exist. It’s why I hike and fish barefoot. Most of the time you only get one chance to hook it. I caught this beautiful native brook trout in a place you would never think it could exist. It gets you asking the unanswerable questions. How did it get there? How does it survive the winter? Who am I? What am I doing here? What are you doing here? 

The woodpecker probably knows. Maybe in the next 12 years or so I’ll find a few more chances to ask.

Thanks for sticking around, reading and subscribing to Bucket Work. I'll try to do them more regularly. Comments are always welcome. And if you think a friend might enjoy it, feel free to share the sign up page.

Stay Well,

Erik

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“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.”

-William Butler Yeats, The Land of Heart's Desire

Slaggits Are Back!