** NOTE: This story has an audio podcast companion reading. You can find it at the link below.** PODCAST: Troutbitten | Fish It Anyway The water was stained — almost orange, really. And it had the troublesome look of coal mine drainage that so many streams in western...
** NOTE ** This story was originally published to Hatch Magazine in 2017. It is republished here, and it's one of my favorites It's Monday. It’s 35 degrees. And it's spitting rain. That combination of undesirables should be enough to give you plenty of space on the...
Today's story is a remix from a few years back. You can find it here. Walking Enjoy the day. Domenick Swentosky T R O U T B I T T E N domenick@troutbitten.com
From the broken oak tree I turned south and navigated around the mass of fallen timber. An enormous old-growth trunk had buried a handful of younger trees when it crashed down and crippled a few others. I stopped to admire the explosion of limbs and chunky bark. Dry,...
Thirty minutes following the morning alarm, an hour-and-fifteen on the winding roads, ten under the hatch of the 4-Runner, and twenty more minutes hiking through a dawn drizzle that taps on the hood of your raincoat, the atmosphere feels soft here — and still. It’s cold for a fall morning. As you climb the hill through a stand of oaks, headed for the far valley, puffs of warm air escape your lungs and billow forward. You outpace your own breath. Even as progress slows with the steepening hill ahead, your breath trails behind. And you push forward through the dissipating fog of your own carbon dioxide.
“Keep walking, keep moving up the hill. Make it there before the sun crests,” you whisper to yourself. There’s no point in getting up at 4:30 if you can’t get in an hour of fishing before sunlight changes the game. At the top of the mountain, you pause, seemingly for the first time since the alarm clock — not to catch your breath but as a reminder that all of this is not a race. It’s an adventure. And a good wanderer stops to look around once in a while.
I’m guarded about my fishing partners. I always have been, I suppose, and I think that’s alright. I grew up fishing mostly by myself, and that’s still the way it usually turns out for me. Sure, I love hanging out with fishy friends before and after, but when we hit the stream, I’m usually the guy who takes off and says I’ll see you at lunchtime. But on occasion, all of that changes for a day . . .
. . When I hooked him, I felt a tremendous release of emotion. Satisfaction merged with adrenaline. My yearning for such a moment finally came to a close as the big wild brown trout slid onto the bank. I killed the trout with a sharp rap at the top of its skull, because that’s what I did back then. I knelt by the river to wet my creel, and when I placed the dead trout in the nylon bag, the full length of its tail stuck out from the top.
. . . Then I began to shake. The closing of anticipation washed over me. The fruition of learning and wondering for so many years left me in awe of the moment I’d waited for. I trembled as I sat back on my heels. With two knees in the mud of a favorite trout stream, I watched the water pass before me. I breathed. I thought about nothing and everything all at once. I felt calm inside even as I stared down at my wet, shaking hands.
. . .When a gust of wind pushed through the forest, I stirred. Finally my lengthy revery was passed, and I stood tall with my lungs full of a strong wind. Then I walked back to camp . . .
These changes of light and season happen both suddenly and gradually, depending on your own perspective and movement in time. Sit still for a while and watch the daylight fade into blackness, and it takes hours. But walk among the trees at dusk, across a soft bed of spruce needles, after a long day on the river, and time speeds up. The pace of the trees, the perspective of the forest takes hold within you, and a good long look into the future looks a lot like the past, with the days and nights rolling into each other, turning in concentric circles, day to night, season to season, through a window of time both small and wide all at once — and all of it happening both here and somewhere else concurrently, though you can’t be sure . . .
I guess I was about ten years old when I started pushing past the boundaries of my parents’ twelve acres of hills and trees. I easily remember the day that I walked into the damp valley and past the tiny runoff stream which I always imagined may hold a few trout — or at least a few minnows. Instead of staying on the near side of the watery divide, I crossed it. I looked back once. Then I started up the hill toward the unknown. In my boyish, drifting thoughts, anything was possible . . . and I’ve been wandering ever since . . .
It started with a walk. When the short gravel-to-dirt trail melted into weeds and underbrush, I followed the narrowing path into the woods. And when that too ended beside the small river, I cut to the right and forged my own trail beside the water’s edge . . .