Sorry about the typos.

 

Every day, I hear things, see things, get overwhelmed by things.  Stuff that doesn’t hold that much weight, until it gets wrapped in memories, thoughts, bogged down in shit that has nothing to with anything but me.  Me.  My people.

Things fade to the background, but never disappear.  A buzz, quiet, but never really gone.  Hidden back there like a truck idling, wind blowing, a fan next door.   I forget.  Until I don’t.  When I realize I am crying on the street because I hear skate wheels running rhythmically over cracks in the sidewalk.  That noise we all know, some of us consider it life, some pain, death, even.

The noise brings so much back to me, childhood dreams, the thoughts of escape, So much.  It means more to me that anything else I could ever imagine.   That noise is my music-I would have never known Circle Jerks, Black Flag, Slayer,Minor Threat,  NoMeansNo, D.O.A.-I only learned of those bands, and the others that followed, from my brothers and friends that shared wood and wheel, concrete and metal.

That brotherhood became so strong in my youth, that nothing could tear it apart.  Parents learned that we were brothers, we stood for each other, we made the others business our own. It was never a surprise to find one of us on a couch in our parents living room on a Saturday morning.  Some parents were more accepting than others. And most accepted that.

The clack clack is something that will always pull me to the window, to see what is up, what is going on, who is doing what.

Some days I can almost forget my brothers that have been lost.  Almost.  I hear ghosts, see images, smell memories,  they all bring back thoughts and feelings of my youth.

Screaming wheels, barking trucks.

 

I have been trying really hard to limit my intake of televised news lately.  Not because I don’t want to know whats going on, but because what gets shown and beaten into my skull is just so frustrating and upsetting, that I can’t watch it anymore.  Politics are a hot button.  No matter what.  They always are.  One thing I think any person in any party can agree on, however, is that this nation is one of the strongest on the planet.  None of us will argue that.  What makes us strong?  Our military?  Our “freedoms”?  Our right to eat fast food for three meals a day?

For me,  access is one of the best things this nation has to offer its citizens.  I can float or wade a river, and stop, have lunch, camp, as long as I am below the high water line in most states.  Access to protected wild areas that have never been rolled across by a four wheeler, but are saved for those of us that have the physical capability and need to get to those remote places.  Not everywhere should be accessible by car.  Four wheel drive only makes the “wild” less wild.  There are only a few places left in the continental 48 that are remote enough that you can hike in, and not see sign that another human has been there.  On the east coast?  None.  they are gone.  The Appalachians still have scars of early century logging and tannery factories.  The southeast?  Same thing.  you can make out the scars of old railbeds and logging roads if you look in the right place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nature has been the only fence line to human encroachment anywhere in the 48.  Places that are just too tough, not “economically viable” to log, too “rough” to mine…those are the places that all of us should see before we die.  We should all know what this country looked like before the railroad, before the automobile, before the Interstate.  Anywhere that you have to ride a horse into.  Somewhere with no trails.   Presidents before my time did the right thing, protecting those areas, doing something that even today, seems visionary.  So that future generations might know the beauty and wildness that this country once showed.

 

We should all know what it is like to know the possibility that if we get lost, we will die.  And not the quick, get-hit-by-a-car death.  but the slow one.  Eating grass to try to survive.  Frostbite, sanctuary just over the next ridge.

We need places to get lost in.  To remember what it is like to be a hunter/gatherer.  To remember what the red point on a compass means.  To know that predators will actively stalk us.  we are softer than deer, and easier to catch.  If just for a moment, to feel that tingle, that rush, that gut churning feeling you get when you know something is watching you.  When you are the one being hunted.

To remember that we can be a victim of forces that are much, much larger than we are.

 

Our worries are those of a first world nation.  I don’t worry about where my dinner is coming from.  I don’t worry about my clean water.  I don’t have many concerns about my shelter.  I know that, if worse came to worse, I could more than likely manage out in nature.  I grew up in a world where it was necessary.  The guy that I see living in a makeshift tent at  the junction of North Conduit and Atlantic Avenue?  Not so much.  Living here, we got caught up and lost in our “dailies”, where we forget how hard it can be for others.  Where it can be hard  just to get through a day, when you don’t have that quiet security that we get in our homes.  That feeling of calm you get when you lock your door.  instead of going to sleep at night knowing you’ll wake up in the morning, think of going to sleep thinking you might be killed for your shoes.

Our country is, and has been for decades, a slowly decaying society.  We want the best, we want to show off what we can do on the world stage.  But we have people starving, people without roofs over their heads,  people whoi cannot sleep in peace.   Why is the idea of taking care of our own, before we take care of others so difficult to understand?

You don’t heal this place from the inside out, it is going to be a rotten gourd.  Weak on the interior, and only a shell of what it could have been.

There will be more on this later, but I need to share these photos of my last visit to Bigfork, MT with my family.  Even though I am far removed, my love for family knows no distance.  I miss all of you, and long to be back in the embrace of pines, valleys, rivers and canyons.  My heart misses the West.

To my sisters, my nephews, Nana, Papa, Mom, Aunt, and the Brits,  Love you guys.

an “if only” or “what if”, “if things were different”, or “if only I had…” We all have them, we all see a rosy picture of the way things could have ended up if we had made that one choice.  If only I had gone to college, maybe I could have been making six figures on Wall St.,  but then I would have ended up jobless, with no skills to fall back on.  One of the great things that people like me have, is a “fall back” skill.  We may not make a shit-ton of money, we may never be a big name, but we usually make do, and have skills that we can take anywhere, and use pretty much anytime.

No matter what I do for work, I know that I can always fall back on carpentry, and at least keep the wolves from the door for a while.  Need some furniture made?  Need some flooring done?  Need something rebuilt?  Glued?  Fastened?  Custom made?  I can do that.

With my upcoming birthday, I think of quite a few things that I would have like to have done in my life already.

Travel to Europe, actually be a trout bum for awhile, take a trip where I sleep on peoples couches.  That kind of thing.    Where I am in life now, these ideas have gotten buried in the morass of day to day living.

How do I travel to Montana to rebuild the deck on my grandparents house, while still paying my bills in NYC?  How can I spend months in Bigfork, re-doing bathrooms and a kitchen, while paying for my 2 bedroom/2 bath apartment in the City?   Maybe I just suck it up and stay.  Don’t take the trip.  Let someone else figure it out.   But when will I get the chance to have a free place to stay, not too far from some great trout rivers, while I do some work that I really love, and will help increase the worth of a rental property in a bad market?  Not a possibility that will show up again soon….

“If only” I had done better in school, I could afford to do this with no repercussions..

Maybe.

“What if” I had focused more on a career, instead of a job?

‘If things were different”, then I could travel and do as I please, without having to worry about anyone but myself!

“If only I had” not gotten married……then I would have never left Southern Oregon, never gotten out of the cycle of Medford-Portland-Medford-Eugene-Portland, etc., etc.

I hate the idea of taking off from NYC for a couple of months, but I don’t see this opportunity coming up again anytime soon…

What about the dog?  What about my job here?  What about…..all the other stuff?

I mean, I care about my dog, and would love to take her with me, as she would be a fantastic bear dog.  Just the way she goes after Great Danes and St. Bernards, I know she would scare the hell out of a black bear.  My job?  Would love to keep it, if for nothing more than insurance.  Aside from that, it isn’t a shining light in my daily existence.    All the other stuff?

 

Well, there is a lot of other stuff……

 

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity…”
― John Muir

For most of us, “soul” is a term we can say is hard to define, grasp, or even visualize.  It is something that, like god, is vapor, unlasting, not concrete, ethereal.  Something we find in our environment, surroundings, what we find about us.  Something that we can almost prove is there in all of us.  Almost…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soul.

People that I grew up with  and others that I know currently,  ask me why I go to the trouble of fishing for 14-16 inch fish when it is 18 degrees out.  And, why do you throw them back?  After all that trouble of getting dressed up, and going and standing in the river?  ”Guys here keep 15, 20 lb. steelies, and hell, the salmon are twice as big!”

 

Yeah, I know.

Soul.

 

The rivers in the PacWest have never, ever had to deal with the level of pollution, rape, and mishandling that east coast rivers have.  They had their troubles, but nothing even close to the level of destruction that these rivers have seen.   I never understood why anyone would “stock” rivers.  Until I moved here.   The rivers here had their souls ripped out by timber, tannery, and chemical companies.  Destruction was not a consequence, it was a result of business.

The destruction and loss of “the jewel of the east”

was devastating to the watersheds.

 

 

 

Soul has a lot more to do with how you live, than where you live.  I am stuck in one of the most populated places on the planet, yet, when I go fishing on a wild trout stream that I can find 1 hour from my door, I pick up trash others have left, I keep any scraps of mono filament or leader in my pockets, and I pack other peoples trash out into the cans at the parking lot.  Why?

Soul.

Realize what you have, close to home.  Please.

Where you feel at peace.  At ease.  I know that I am better in the woods, rocks and gravel under my feet, the river singing off to my left, and the trees threatening to fall on me from the hillside on my right, than I am buried in alleys of concrete, blacktop, and vehicles.

 

Church?  I know where mine is, and I always have.  Mine has always been a steeple of Lodgepoles, Madrones, granite dust, lava rock, water, gravel.  the flow that you can’t see on the surface, the undercut bank.  The gravel shoal on the inside corner of that river, right across from the deep water, where the floods carved out a channel.  Look close enough, and you too, will see your god. Right under that downed tree.

 

I can find my soul there anytime.

 

 

It is an easy word to say, conjuring up happy and comforting images in your  mind.  Something safe, protected, known.  Known.  Not strange, not foreign, not weird.  My image of home is surrounded by mountains, wrapped in a fog that gets burned clear by a mid morning sun.  My home is the smell of pine and madrone, granite and stone.  The burners in fruit orchards in the fall, smoke hanging in the valley like the wind doesn’t exist, a smell that will paralyze me on a New York City street corner when I encounter it.  My friends that have come from other countries have their images of home, too.  Most not as nice, not as safe. But something that will cause a pause, a thought, a slight smile. a memory.  But still, comforting.

We all have sensory triggers that get us.  Smell is just one of them.  For me, one of the strongest.  Chimney smoke, chainsaw smoke, sawdust from a freshly cut snag or some dead fall.  A cooking ham still reminds me of my sisters birthday in Chemult, or Bear Springs, or one of many other small Forest Service outposts of the time, in between Portland and the Idaho/Washington borders, I don’t remember which one,  when we had a black bear climb up on the chest freezer in the carport, and try to claw the door open. The smells and visuals run together, photo albums and reality, memories and silver halide, combining to make me what I am.

When I lost my dad a few years ago, and more recently one of my best friends, I wanted nothing more than to go “Home”.  The problem is, “Home” only really exists in my mind.  I have a home, one that I have made with my family, and trying to recapture the one I left is not a reality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Home”.

 

My anchors for memories all come from out west. The first fish I caught.  The first fish I caught on a fly. Forest fires.  Smoke.  Blood red sun.  Learning to read stars to roughly navigate. The 40 degree temperature swing between day and night. What a bear smells like up close.  What a Grizzly smells like up close.  Knowing which way to run from a wildfire. Not to mention, play dead for grizzlies, get big for black bears and mountain lions, and if you get stung by a timber scorpion, it’ll hurt like hell for a while, but you probably aren’t going to die.

The hard times of all those memories seem to fall by the wayside, for better or worse.  I have nothing but fond memories, aside from all the joking and ribbing that I got from my grandfather, of our times in Montana.  Because of the trips up there, and my grandparents career choices, and just built in sensibilities, I know what a house built of cedar smells like, and that it doesn’t change, even after 20, 30, 40 years.(Right mom?) Your elbows do not belong on the table, always hold a door, and if the lady stays standing, pull out the chair for her!(thanks Nana)   A bear is still a bear, whether it is in a 4 ft. culvert cage on a trailer awaiting relocation, or 20 ft. away from you on the bank of the Swan river, waiting for you to catch one or wade back to shore.(Thanks Papa)

 

So, where is home now?  I don’t know, but I know it isn’t here.  The constant din in the background of daily life is no longer o.k.   But I can’t go nomad and get full on country, either.  I gotta have a city of some sort close, but not right on top of me.    Portland isn’t the answer anymore, either.  The level of alterna-culture there drives me nuts.  I’m not a rude prick, but I don’t need my grocer telling me that I am acting inappropriately, if you know what I mean.  Fernie?  A bit too off the map.  Yaak?  Way too off the map, and too shitty in the winter.  Idaho isn’t going to happen, what with the Hayden Lake history and all that shite.

Fer fucks sake, I gotta land somewhere.   Preferably somewhere with a trout stream in one of the yards, and a metropolis in the other.  Maybe some steelhead, eh?

 

Finally, after chasing the USPS employee for three days, I was able to get my hands on the new Allen Myth series 10′ 3 wt, that I ordered last week.

I was hoping to get it on Saturday, and go chase some panfish in Prospect Park, but now it looks like it will get its initial run on a river next weekend.

Build quality looks great, nice green blank with gold alignment dots, single foot guides, dual foot stripper guide,  and a great looking “carbon” reel seat and dual ring locking mechanism.  Oh, did I mention this thing is LIGHT!

Can’t wait to get out and give it a swing!  More to come after I actually get to use it!

So, after working for 12 days in a row, I find myself in a major conundrum.  Ya see, I really, really want to fish this weekend.  I need the break from the city, the rush, the endless run of people.  I don’t care where, I don’t care if it is nymphing, dries, wets, swinging spey flies, whatever.

Hell, I am ALMOST am willing to go throw bait….almost. (Maybe in the Salt…)

The problem is, it is my 16th wedding anniversary.  Now, I know-I should stay home, chill with the wife, watch movies, whatever.  But, it is the 16th….what do you do for that?  Paper?  Wood?  Steel?  Graphite?  Cork?  Feathers?  Dubbing?  Monofilament?  Flouro?

Shit.  I know what I am doing this weekend.

Luckily, I already have the wife’s blessing.  One day for me, one for her.  I’m good with that.

 

It happens, every year at some point in time, I get The Need.  For me, it is just a need to get away.  Sometimes, I can hold back the urge with weekend trips out of the city.  This year, trips out have been fewer and further between.  I can feel the need to get away growing stronger.  Like bugs under my skin.  Like an itch that you can’t quite reach.  Like a junkie.  Yes, like a junkie.  I need the trees, the dirt, the water.  I need the noises of nature, not man.  I need to sit and contemplate, if just for a minute, how small I am as a human compared to the planet that I live on.  I Need it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And no, this has nothing to do with the fact that they are filming outside of my apartment all night.

Again.