Women.
They have caused more men to resort to violence, irrational behavior and fits of lunacy throughout history than any other force of nature. More wars have been fought, alcohol been drunk, and fishing trips taken over women than anything else. Since time immemorial women have been causing trouble and breaking hearts; driving men to anguish, great distraction, and long fishing trips.
So it was with me yesterday.
A conversation with a certain young lady left me feeling the need to get up in the mountains to fish the high lakes I was talking about yesterday. It was one of those conversations where your heart starts in your chest and somehow winds up in your feet. And the bad news just kept biting me in the ass.
The trail to this particular lake I was after wasn’t marked too well. The signs sent me in about a three mile loop, right back to the parking lot. Brilliant me left my trail map at home, so I was just following the signs. By the time I saw my car again and hurled the necessary profanities at whatever idiot put those signs up, I was ready to just cast a line.
The reservoir was just up the road, and it only took a couple of minutes to get rigged up. There’s a small creek that runs into the lake near the trailhead, and I managed to get a good strike on a leech pattern before two tourist baitheads pushed me out. Bastards.
So I walked along the shore line, aimlessly tossing my fly, stewing in self pity. A couple hundred yards down was a big rock that I sat my unhappy ass on and stared out into the choppy water. Rain showers had been around all morning, but now one was moving in to hit hard.
Not really thinking about it, I picked up a rock and chucked it into the water. Then another. And another. Funny thing happened too. With each rock, I felt a little bit better. There is just something about watching the rock sailing over, then the water flying everywhere, and the bubbles rising from the deep afterwards.
As a kid, I used to throw rocks with abandon. Every float trip, we would have to stop on an island and let me throw rocks. I could stand there for hours and hours on end. But as I grew up and progressed as a fisherman, I didn’t do it as much. Then hardly at all.
Yesterday marked the first time I had just sat there chucking rocks for a good 20 minutes in probably ten years. And it felt damn good too.
By the time the rain really moved in, I felt much better. I didn’t get the girl. I didn’t get to the lake I wanted. And I didn’t catch a fish. But somehow the world didn’t seem like such a bad place. Norman Maclean wrote about the healing power of mountains in his short story The Ranger, The Cook and the Hole in the Sky. If you’ve ever been troubled and hung out in the mountains a bit, you’ll know what he was talking about.
It’s nice knowing some things never change. The mountains will always be there, the fish will always be hard to catch, and the “Sploosh!” of a chucked rock will always manage to salve the soul.
But I swear to God, the next person that tells me “Oh, you’ll find a great girl” or “You’ll meet someone as soon as you stop looking” is going to get their fucking teeth knocked out.
