Standing in the Shadow of Giants

Yesterday I made a long trek from Jackson, WY, to Idaho Falls, ID, to a small town just south of Sun Valley called Picabo.  Why, you ask would anyone choose to visit a 1 gas station town in the relative middle of nowhere of central Idaho?  Fishing would be that answer.  While there has certainly been a theme to these posts over the last couple of weeks, bear with me, once I return to my wife and daughter and pull myself out of my sunburned, dusty, trout glazed trance I have been blissfully residing in, things will get back to normal.  We will travel again and tell you stories that are of broader appeal to those of you who wonder just how many days in a row a guy can stand in a river and try to catch trout.  (The answer to this question, by the way, cannot even be approximated by science at this point).

While Picabo was a destination for fishing, there is a treasure hidden in the farmlands nearby that is worth visiting for anyone.  Just outside of "town" sits a world famous spring creek called Silver Creek.  The cool, crystal clear waters of this gem grow trout at a prodigious rate and the number  of anglers that visit this little slice of heaven give those trout a post doctorate in artificial fly research.  This place is tough, but extremely rewarding fishing.

But beyond the fishing, the wildlife, beauty, and history of Silver Creek is memorable.  Legend has it that Silver Creek entered the nation's angling consciousness due to one Ernest Hemingway.  It seems that the developer of Sun Valley Ski Resort was looking for some way to continue filling hotel rooms after the snow melted, so in 1935 (or so), Hemingway came to the area and was invited to sample to hunting and fishing available on Silver Creek.  This visit apparently led to Hemingway's life long love of Idaho and it's outdoors.

Many years later, Jack Hemingway, Papa's son, learned that the owner of a big portion of Silver Creek was putting the land up for sale.  Jack, along with many others, raised a significant amount of money, bought the property, and donated it to the Nature Conservancy.  At the time, the Preserve was about 400 acres.  As of today, 22 landowners have added to the land of the Preserve and it now numbers more than 10,000 acres.  What began 30 years ago as a vision to protect a natural gem has succeeded in spades.

Silver Creek is an oasis in the desert.  A riparian habitat in the middle of arid land that provides homes from deer, moose, birds of all sorts, and trout.  Big trout.  I arrived here last night to find that I had almost the entire preserve to myself.  As I got to the river, I noticed a thunderstorm heading in, promising relief from what was an intensely hot and sunny day.  I made my way up to the cabin/visitor center at the preserve, sat on the covered porch, and watched bands of rain, heat lightning, and rumbles of thunder roll across the valley.  It truly felt like what that spot must have felt like 70 years ago, when Hemingway and  his contemporaries prowled the grounds.

I watched the valley change color a dozen times in an hour as the storms passed through.  I watched a dozen hummingbirds dance around a feeder.  I had a close encounter with a mother mule dear and her two fawns.  I stepped into a moose wallow and could smell the pungent oder of an animal just recently left.  Oh, and I got a lesson from a few trout.  All in all, a truly memorable evening that continued like a dream right into this morning when the trout were again rising, only this time a bit more willingly to my fly.

The author Thomas McGuane said something to the efffect that a big reason he fishes is that it gets him out into the world and into places he might not see otherwise.  Silver Creek was precisely such an experience for me.  Were it not for the excuse of fishing, I might have never seen Silver Creek and I would have been to poorer for it.