Monday, July 28, 2008

Programming Note

If anyone has tried to call me on my mobile phone and I haven’t returned your call, I extend my sincere apologies.  You see; I happened to send my phone through the clothes washer, which I can assure you is not conducive to optimum cell phone performance.  Rest assured (I don’t) the cell phone “insurance” people tell me my new phone should be here tomorrow.  I will then get caught up and return calls.

A Fishing Tale

As all of you know doubt know by now, I like to fly fish.  In fact, to say that I merely like to fly fish may be an understatement.  So, it was with much excitement that I arrived back in Bozeman after an unplanned trip back to Minnesota to fish with my good buddy Dave.  Fishing trips with Dave are always special because, if it weren’t for Dave, I wouldn’t actually fish.  It was nearly ten years ago that Dave casually said to me: “you know Jay, a I am taking a couple of my sons to Alaska this summer on a fishing trip.  You should take a fly fishing lesson and come along.”  Well, I did and my life has never been the same since.  I have chased everything from trout to bass, tarpon to salmon, and many other species in between in far too many places since.  One might even say I am a bit obsessed with this “hobby,” but I wouldn’t listen.

If any of you have other fly fished more than casually, you will know that there are days when things just don’t go right.  These type of days generally start out bad and just keep getting worse.  It generally becomes a “what can go wrong, will go wrong” kind of thing.  Well, suffice it to say, today was definitely one of those days.  If you were I Buddhist, you would hopefully recognize on a day like today that you were paying a heavy karmic debt for past transgressions and accept the situation dispassionately.  If you were smart, you would recognize such a day and call it quits early.  I, on the other hand, tend to fall back on a healthy dose of fuming and cursing.

Despite carrying the knowledge in your head that these kinds of days happen, we fly fishers tend to bury the possibility deep in our subconscious, shoved there by dreams of blue skies, big trout, and dry flies.  Given this denial, we often fail to recognize the signs early enough to abort.

Well, Dave and I departed this morning before 8:00AM with a plan to stop a friends, pick up a drift boat, and head off to the Yellowstone river for a day of float fishing.  About 10 minutes into the journey, I looked over at Dave and said: “it sure would have been good to bring the trailer plug, so that we could plug in the trailer lights.”  Oh boy, here we go.  Did we notice?  Did we listen?  Absolutely not.  We succeeded in rationalizing this one away by reminding ourselves there was a hardware store close that would carry them.  Strike one.  The first hardware store was out. But, they told us their sister store in Bozeman had them, so on we forged.  And as luck would have it (perhaps our only luck of the day), indeed they did.

With taillights ablaze, we forged on to Paradise Valley and the Yellowstone river.  After driving nearly 65 miles, we arrive at the section of river we are planning to float.  We had arranged a shuttle to transport our truck, had all of our gear, and we were ready to go.  But did we?  No.  You see for some reason, that section of river just didn’t look quite right.  While it looked really good, it didn’t feel perfect in that cosmic sort of way.  This was surely a second sign, one we absolutely blew right past on our way back down river.  Then up river.  Then down river.  Then up river.  Then down river.  As it turned out, the put in for the new section of river, the one that would answer all our prayers, was not readily apparent.  We should have seen the third sign when we phoned the shuttle driver for the fourth time in 45 minutes trying to figure out exactly where we were and he said: ‘You the boys from Colorado?  Yup, I was expecting a call from you.”  Strike three, your out.

By this time we were on the water and no doubt committed, so we soldiered ahead with twelve miles of river and 90 plus degree heat awaiting us.  In fact, we were dumb enough to crack a beer, raise a toast and haughtily proclaim that the worst of it all was rapidly fading in the rear view.  Not so.  Within 30 minutes of shoving off I was holding the first bamboo fly rod I had ever made in two pieces after it broke in my hand with a sickening snap.  Fifty plus hours of painstaking work reduced to chop sticks…

The most insidious thing about these bad days is that they tend to throw just enough good at you to keep you coming back.  It is just like golf for your golfers.  You go out and hit the ball between 80 and 100 times (for most of us average to less than average players) and you remember the three good shots, while rapidly forgetting the 85 bad ones over your first après beer.  Today was no different.  About three hours in to the float (with only a few fish to show) I lifted my rod and was tight to a big, big brown trout and all the bad to that point was washed away.  Things were looking up when it came to rest in the net.  Right up until the time I hooked another big fish and Dave stomped on the floor pedal to release the anchor, and then stomped again, and then watched the anchor line go right out the back of the boat, depositing our anchor on the bottom of the river.  Not good.   What followed was several hours of hot, windy, fishless floating as we silently prayed that we would see the take out around the bend.

We even asked several people how close we were to take the take out.  At this point, we were well aware we were suffering through one of those days, but it is nonetheless disappointing when the first person tells you: “about 3-4 miles to go,” only to have the group of three you come across nearly an hour later say: “about 3 miles or so.”  Dear God, please help us.  But at that point, you have to just put your head down and take your lumps. 

Eventually, the take out did come.  The truck was there waiting for us, and we made it home without incident.  After a cocktail, a great dinner, and some good conversation, I found myself on the phone with a good buddy of mine who is very in tune with the local fishing conditions planning tomorrows fishing.  I have a good friend who is a very accomplished climber and mountaineer.  One time he described to me a trip he took to Nepal, where he and some partners attempted a 25,000-foot mountain.  He said that the entire time you are up there, you sit in your tent, suffer in the altitude, and freeze in the cold.  By the time you get down, you swear to yourself that you won’t do it again.  But after a couple of days, or maybe weeks, or maybe months, you are planning your next trip.  Today was a microcosm of that phenomenon.  So, off we go tomorrow to do it all over again.

When I look back on it, I have come to believe that these bad days are part of the cosmic plan.  Part of the middle path of balance that is fly fishing.  When you have these types of day as a dedicated fly fisher, you truly do have to just put down your heard, take your lumps, and persevere, knowing that everything is as it should be and equilibrium will prevail.  I believe that these days are the penance we pay for the great days: the days trout rise willingly to your fly in every run, the days 5 pound bass storm from their weedy hideout to savage your fly, and the hot, sunny, cloudless day on the ocean flats when your first tarpon turns, inhales your fly, and jams your heart from its normal station high into your throat.

At least that is what we need to keep telling ourselves, because if we didn’t, we would probably just give it all up, and then what would we do?

 

 

 

Oops . . . Going the Wrong Way

After several weeks in Montana, we found ourselves back on the road.  However, we were headed east, rather than west.  We decided to make a trip back to Minnesota to see some family again, so across South Dakota we went.

Here is what we saw:

It is one of those inexplainable quirks of rural America that every small town is losing their local drug store to the big chains, but one small town in South Dakota pretty much exists because a family decided to build a drug store and market it all across the west.  Go figure.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Summer in Montana


The Slow Lane crew arrived in Bozeman, MT just as the rivers were coming down from a huge winter of snow and the trout were starting to rise.  When we first planned out our trip, we were shooting to arrive in Montana around the first of July, in order to enjoy the tremendous summer weather southeast Montana has to offer.  It hasn't disappointed.  Highs in the 70s to 80s and lows in the 40s and 50s.

Bozeman is one of the places that we have considered settling down, so our visit has not been all fun and games, although, there has been plenty of fun and games.  We have intermixed fishing, hiking, and hanging out with friends with exploring the real estate market and investigating potential careers.  The town is a great one, a place we have spent many days over the last few summers, and a place that does feel like it could be home.

We were also thrilled to have Nana and Bapa Hake come up to spend a weeks worth of vacation with us.  We went to art festivals, Yellowstone National Park, went swimming, and just toured around and enjoyed Montana.  It was great to see them, and Maggie was so thrilled to get spoiled for a week or so.

Yellowstone is always a highlight and this trip was especially fun because Nana had never been to the Park.  It was great to play tour guide and we had a wonderful time.  One of the things that was very striking about the trip was the lack of crowds, relatively speaking.  While the big areas, Mammoth Hot Springs and Old Faithful for example, were pretty busy, the roads through the Park were almost empty.  Also, several campgrounds were not full, which is unusual.  We wondered to what extent this was fueled by the price of fuel.  Whatever the cause, we were able to see a great deal of the park, without many crowds.

Once Nana and Bapa left, it was back to real estate and job research, until we all of the sudden realized, we weren't having much fun.  We had gotten so wrapped up in trying to decide if we were going to move to Bozeman, what we would do, and where we would live, that we forgot that a big part of this trip was to have fun.

Throughout this journey, we have ridden waves of emotion from the thrill of being on the road with no encumbrances, to loneliness, to fear, to contentment.  Whenever things get challenging, our first instinct is often that it is time to cut the trip short, look for a house, settle down, and rejoin our "regular scheduled lives," which are already in progress.

However, once we start focusing on those issues, we quickly realize that stability isn't the automatic cure all either.  No, the grass isn't greener on either side of the fence.  This is why I changed the quote at the top of the page today.  Because life isn't solely about where you are, or what you do, although those are pieces.  Life is much more about how you live it.  Finding the balance, beauty, and joy in each day and moment, regardless of how settled, predictable, or chaotic it is.

Learning to find this balance has been one of the central points of the trip and one we are still pursuing.  I only hope that once this trip winds down and we re-enter everyday life, that goal and these experiences stay with us.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Itasca State Park and the Legacy of the CCC


As our time in Minnesota wound to a close, we decided to take a drive north to Itasca State Park, the birthplace of the mighty Mississippi.  There, in the sandy pine forests of northern  Minnesota, the Mississippi begins its nearly 1,500 mile journey down to the Big Easy and out into the Gulf of Mexico.  Scientists tell us that a drop of water beginning its journey in Itasca takes around 90 days to reach the ocean.  Ironically enough, this was about how long it took us to get from Louisiana to the Source, so apparently we are just contrarian drops of water, flowing upstream.

Itasca, like many of the state parks that we have seen on our way, is a wild, special place, that evokes thoughts of the past.  Dotted amongst the undeveloped lakes (there are more than 100 in the Park), towering pines, wildflowers and glassy streams are unique log and stone buildings that have been standing since the 1930s.  The architecture of these buildings has become synonymous with state and national parks.  Low slung, stout stone foundations with huge post and beam log construction.  Grand stone archways.  Majestic buildings created from the local land.  These are elegant buildings that make you question, if only momentarily, whether you really should be traipsing across those floors in shorts and dirty hiking boots.  Close your eyes slightly and you can still see the shadows of gentlemen in pants and ties and ladies in dresses, walking, picnicking, and canoeing through the parks of yesterday.

As much as I enjoy the natural beauty of these parks, I also enjoy their old buildings and the human history.  Not coincidentally, many of these parks share a relatively recent common history.  A history born out of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and a nation seeking to rise from the tatters massive unemployment and economic despair.  In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt introduced and Congress approved a bill creating the Civilian Conservation Corps (the CCC).  The purpose of the CCC was to provide jobs for the rapidly growing number of unemployed Americans, by providing them work building public infrastructure and performing conservation projects around the country.  While the CCC only operated for 9 years, at the time of it’s disbanding in 1942, more than 3 million (yes, MILLION) Americans participated.  They built parks, buildings, bridges, and reservoirs in nearly every state in the union.  They planted 5 BILLION trees across the country.  They fought wildfires and built telephone lines, power lines, and roads.  The CCC workers contributed indelibly to the country and in return received work, pay, and food at a time when many were wanting for all three.  (For more information about the CCC, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps).

A visit to nearly any state or national park today likely shows you hints of the CCC’s impact.  A visit to many, many parks and public spaces, over three months, shows you that the CCC changed the landscape of America for the better in dramatic ways. The CCC was also a stroke of political genius from an inspired leader.  When Roosevelt proposed the creation of the CCC, there was significant opposition.  When polled about the CCC’s value towards the end of it’s life-span, 86% of Americans were in favor of it.  Say what you will about Roosevelt, he was a great leader.  Not a man focusing on polls, approval ratings, or appearances.  Not a man focused on ideas of fear and scarcity, and stumbled by rhetoric. A President crippled with polio, who ably led this country through some very, very dark times.  Did he reach too far at times?  Yes, probably.  Did he change the direction of America for the better when it was direly needed?  Most definitely.

While our country certainly isn’t in the same poor shape it was in 1932, things today are, by most people’s estimation, not as good as they could be.  So, the next time you find yourself walking around a national park, a state park, a national forest planted by the CCC, or enjoying some other CCC created infrastructure, consider:  Will our country ever see another leader who could create so much with little more than the hands and wills of people?  Further, ask yourself if the people of this country would set aside their divisiveness and cynicism to follow.  For me the answers to these questions are: “I hope so,” and “I hope so.”