The river runs through us

WALDEN, Colo. – I mentioned that this town has two restaurants.  The previous night for dinner it was the Antler Inn.  For breakfast, though, Zach and I preferred the Moose Creek Café.

There’s a theme here, clearly.  Brand your eatery to the big outdoors.

The good news is that neither establishment was serving prairie-dog pot-stickers.

I could spend a whole post describing the café.  The food was great.  The wait staff consisted of two young, enthusiastic German women (I think German) – perhaps sisters – who were polite to a fault and quick to deliver our order of basic eggs, sausage or bacon and toast.  In their downtime, they’d huddle in a booth and happily chatter back and forth in their native tongue.  

Neither of us knew what they were saying, but it was clear they were darn content living, and serving food, in Walden.

But I digress.

On come the chest waders.

Day 2 had arrived. 

We met Mike after breakfast at the fly shop. Yesterday we learned the basics of fly fishing under Mike’s tutelage at a couple of high-elevation lakes.  They were perfect classrooms, and Mike the teacher was tolerant.

The only risk to Zach and me was snaring each other with a wayward hook.  Or stepping in bear poop.

We avoided both, though the opportunities were endless.

Today, though, we would step into the fast-moving waters of the Norris River, a mountain stream that tumbles into the valley of the Headwaters Ranch southwest of Walden.

That required some new equipment.

We moved to the back of the shop, and Mike pointed us to a rack of chest waders.

“What’s your size?” he asked.

Zach ready to go.

Chest waders are in the hip-boot family, but they remind me of what Ed Grimley, Martin Short’s character, would wear on Saturday Night Live.  You know … pants pulled way above the belt line.

You see, chest waders are like Rubbermaid gloves that reach your armpits. But in this case, because they’re for the legs, they run vertical, reaching from your toes to, well, your chest.  There are shoulder straps, too, much like the two straps found with bib overalls.

There’s also a belt that you cinch in the middle, around your waist.  Mike did that; Zach and I, for some reason, did not.  That decision made us look a bit chubby. Or at least me.

Mike's boots ... made for walkin'

Oh, and there also are heavy boots.  The boots, like hiking boots, slip over your rubber-clad feet. They can wander the water’s depths while your feet remain dry.

We hopped in Mike’s truck and found the Norris.  We quickly donned our gear. 

Rubber-clad now, I felt like a human-size Gumby ... though my abbreviated walk was more that of Neil Armstrong on the moon than the super-slide of Pokey's buddy.

Mike got our fly rods ready; I slipped my camera bag on my back and we wandered along – and eventually into – the stream.

Here our tactics changed from the prior day.  This water moved fast, so you used the current to carry your fly downstream; the stream featured deep pockets, and shallow spots, too.  And eddies, where the water seemed to stop.

The water was so shallow in spots that I couldn’t fathom that fish lurked below.  But Mike said otherwise.  And so we let our lines go.

Looking for the sweet spot.

Now, I confess I was a bit impatient.  It reminded me of Christmas morning as a youngster … I’d see one present, but then I’d spy a slightly bigger one, and I’d abandon the first for the second.  And then leave the second for the third.  And never open a single one until reason returned.

So it was along the Norris.  I’d spy a decent, deep spot.  But then I’d peer up stream and see a second spot, even deeper.  “There must be fish there!” So I’d give the first spot only a few turns, then move on to the next.  And the next.  But I’d get no bites. Not even a nibble.

My restlessness meant I’d left Zach and Mike a good distance down river.

Mike eventually came 'round the bend and spotted me.

“Zach got one,” he said, matter of factly.

“Really!” I thought. “So there are fish here.”

Zach lands one!

I was chastened.  Because then I learned the hard lesson of the soft art of fly fishing.  Oh, patience is required, of course.  But that’s expected of any fisherman, whether using flies, worms or spin-cast lures.

No, the bigger lesson was the moment – to savor being there, to hear the water, to see the sun’s rays shatter on the river’s surface and move atop the ripples like a thousand fireflies. The fish are bit players in that experience.

Accomplish that state of mind, and the fish will come.  Or not.  Who cares?

“You don’t need to catch any stinking fish,” a wise friend posted to me on Facebook during our drive west. “Just enjoy the journey.”

There were three lessons I learned:

-       Face the flow: When crossing the current in chest waders, face the current and shuffle your feet from side to side.  Don’t walk perpendicular to it like you would crossing a street, because this invites the current to push your down-river leg wide. The risk is that you do the splits, and your chest waders fill like a water balloon. And who knows where you’d float to, assuming you'd float at all. Remember: Like problems, face the river head-on.

-       Beware of what’s unseen: Here I thought the primary danger was the rapid water. But I ambled ashore to get around one bend, and I stepped into an abyss … a swampy mix of black water and vegetation that swallowed my left leg up to my waist.  My right leg remained high and dry, but now I looked like a pretzel.  Somehow I pulled my leg out of the ooze, accompanied by a big “thuuuuuck!” sound, before the boys caught up to me.  Good thing, too. I saved Mike the trouble of hitching one end of a rope to my middle and the other to his truck and popping me out like a cork.

-       Leave the phone behind:  About half way up the river, I got a text message.  Typically, that’s not a big deal.  But when you’re so dumb that you leave your smart phone in pants during a fishing trip, it becomes a big deal.  Thinking it might have been an emergency, I first tried to force my arm inside the waders. But the waders were now  a sausage casing. No wiggle room.  So I unstrapped the waders, peeled them down to my knees, grabbed the phone and … saw that my credit card company, Capital One, was concerned that charges were now mysteriously showing up in Colorado.  “Duh, you dull-witted Vikings … it’s because I’m in Colorado!”  I wanted to toss my card and the phone into the Norris.  But that would’ve been dumb and dumber.  At least the phone part.

But interestingly the biggest lesson was that, as with much in life, I succeeded when I didn’t try so hard. Sure, in the end, Zach caught more fish than I.   But the fish did come after I relaxed a bit; I caught my share, though by that time I didn’t care so much.  The journey, you know ….

And being with Zach in such a setting?  Incredible.

From left, Zach, Curt and Mike ... oh, and Bear.

That night we returned to the Antler Inn and shared dinner with Mike and Zach’s other friend, Curt.  We finished with a picture in front of a stuffed bear. And the next morning, Zach and I ate our last breakfast at the Moose Creek Café – eggs over easy with German konversation in the background.

And then Zach and I headed east to Denver, following closely the swift-moving Poudre River along Colorado's Highway 14.

We saw six moose on the way, an antlered clan gathered in a valley.

We started the day at Moose Creek Café.  Then less than an hour later we saw six moose by a creek. What’s Zen in German?  I think “Zen.” 

Doesn’t matter.  Life’s like that.

For more photos of this leg of the journey, click here.