I sometimes find myself amazed at how Mother Nature can be so fragile and so resilient at the same time. Ecosystems are filled with more wheels and levers than we can imagine and when one of those spins a little wildly the whole thing is thrown off kilter. It’s enough to make me wonder how we can keep from screwing the whole thing up, no matter how hard we try. Then—just when I think it is only a matter of time before we have to pile in the escape pods and head for some far off star—something happens to change my mind about the whole enterprise. A forest reclaims some place long since forgotten, water flows clean where it once flowed toxic, a trout rises somewhere—anywhere—and I realize that Mother Nature will probably outlive us all, one way or another.
All this poetic waxing is really just an overly long way to introduce a post from one of my favorite blogs. Written by Joe Cummings—former NFL player, current must read fly fishing blogger and, oh yeah, guide and outfitter—the Classic Journey Outfitters blog is always enjoyable and rarely short. Joe writes some fascinating posts about everything from guide fistfights to Holy Rapalla Throwers. If you are unfamiliar, I suggest you check it out.
Anyway, Joe posted recently about Mother Nature climbing all the way back from an overload of man’s ineptitude. An ill-conceived dam, copper deposits, arsenic plumes in the aquifer, a necessary but harmful (and poorly executed) removal of said ill-conceived dam, a fish kill, and a bug kill. It all happened, and it was ugly. But Mother Nature found a way.
“The most fragile insects and tertiary hatches died first. On the lower Clark Fork it was our giant summer stones and spring olives were eliminated. This summer was the first season since 2006 that those big tan summer stones were around again. Stoneflies are the canary in the coal mine and seeing them this August was like getting my right arm back. Life does return if you give it its air.
On Tuesday Brooks saw the chunky smoke winged Spring Olives glide through junction pool on the Clark Fork into the slurping noses of adult rainbows again just 9 miles down from what was ground zero dam of death. To our new clients it was just as it should be, to us it was rebirth.”
Give it a read. I know it made me grateful for small miracles. But mostly it made me want to drive up and fish the Clark Fork. Tight lines Joe.
