Thanksgiving. Family. I didn't pick them. The thought of watching my sisters argue over who's kid is doing better at school, who's more dysfunctional etc etc takes something away from these kinds of get-togethers. They become unbearable. The aunts bicker, the uncles dutifully watch. It's preordained, roles and rituals and the men would probably be lost in the kitchen anyways.
Spouses, brothers and sisters. It's only when the other is gone and it's too late that they realize what they had. Me? I know I have to get out of there. I want something better for them but I don't know how. I don't know what to do. Instead I go fishing.
Los Angeles sucks in the worst way. It's a strange mix of plastic and ghetto held together by greed. I grew up there in a funky little beach town. Funky--now bought and sold many times over. Now it's a landscape of implants, hair weaves and liposuction. The women too. Lot's of shiny big and new. Feels like you are forever on campus, an expensive private school. Caters to the go fast crowd. Coke and Ecstasy in your Ferrari if you're making bank, otherwise it's crank, a motorhome and a dirtbike if you're a working stiff. Skies the color of old lead weigh heavy on the soul.
Couldn't get out of there fast enough. I come across Hwy 14. Strange tract homes, commuters banished to the outlands giving way to the hardscrabble and poverty of desert rats. Looks like trailer trash but out here in the middle of nowhere there is a certain dignity to that kind of poverty. It's called self reliance. Looks a little like independence. Meanwhile I'm being followed by a parade of really white people in their go fast toys. I don't know them but I'm quick to pass judgement. Crank, cheap beer and it's okay to settle things with your fists. A little domestic violence at home and looking forward to paving over a little more of paradise.
Salvation comes in the shape of canyon walls growing right up to the road, brilliant red rock poured wet in soft mounds. Memories come flooding back--a flashflood of youthful misadventures relived. Places like Vasquez Rocks with my first girlfriend, Red Rock and Jawbone or Manzanar with my uncle. Manzanar. Did we allow that to happen? Did we single out an entire group because of their ethnicity? Of course and in the soft desert winter it's memories are especially ironic.
The go fasts have found their gathering spot. This is too wierd, the juxtaposition of plastic and new, instant gratification and a poetic desert landscape millions of years in the making. Motorhomes jut out from the landscape, obscene in their newness. Their owners find comfort in each other and they end up parked one on top of the other. The first thing that comes to mind is a pack of dogs each one trying to sniff the others ass. Maybe there's something to this--this group think.
The landscape becomes more dramatic, more tortured while the Alabama Hills only serve to hide the drama unfolding behind them. Here the Sierra rises up from the valley floor defiant. Defying gravity and challenging you mere mortal, speck on it's flank to discover it's hidden treasures. Azure lakes, jewel-like and filled with trout that take on the colors of the rainbow and gemstones. Meanwhile the valley floor is coming to life. Borax stained flats and oxide rich cinder cone give way to vast stands of cottonwood. The faded colors of winter, muted earthtones and pale gray greens invite me in but I am on a mission. I'll be back.
I am on my way to the Owens River. An equally insidious history, lakes drained, people bought and sold to slake the thirst of a growing metropolis. The aquaduct snakes acroos the sides of the hills leaving an almost imperceptible scar. Now I know and the what if's flood across my consciousness, visions of paddlewheeled boats on the now dry Owens Lake.
It's like making love and in the midst of consumating the act, coming to the shocking realization that the breast that had given you so much pleasure is a silicon bag, a product of science and technology, a fake. A small almost imperceptible scar your first clue that not all is as it seems. I do real. Skinny lovers. Voluptuous. All shapes and sizes. Well...almost. It doesn't matter as long as it is real though. Food that hasn't come out of a freezer, cubed, shaped artificial flavors added. No hatchery fish either, which is why I have chosen the Owens. That and it is open year round.
The Chalks Bluffs snake across the horizon letting me know that my destination is near and I am suddenly apprehensive. The line of cars on the road? Have all the other family disenfranchised dysfunctional holiday challenged fled Los Angeles as well? Pray as if it meant something pray that they are the newly affluent and are now headed for Mammouth, another of their new found leisure activities. Pray that flyfishing is just a passing fad and that today you will be sharing the river with only the most passionate of souls, the most dedicated.
Wish granted. There are a few people fishing the Chalk Bluff and mercifully they are well spread out and hidden in the scrub. Still the river remembers an earlier onsluaght. Trails are beaten down through the tules and brush and the fish are cagey. The only fish I manage to hook are in the slots that have been overlooked. Somehow this is as it should be. I find peace in the meadow framed, enveloped by towering peaks. The mountains have only a sugar coating of early snow this far south and everything green is now the color of straw. Gold, yellow and ochre against the vivid brown and blue green of the river. Dry grasses crunch under foot and the soil is bone dry powder like chalk run through the finest of coffee mills.
I am an amazingly lucky man and an hour or two into my ramble fish began to rise to an unseen bug. I suppose I should not have been surprised. It was shirt sleeve weather and the sun's warmth is bringing things to life. Nature awakens and shrugs off the biting cold of the night before. I am fascinated. It has been in the 20's and low teens. The Bridgeport area is forecast to drop to 11 degrees that evening. I am convinced the river should be a block of ice. Perhaps later in the season. For now the reservoir upstream is keeping it alive, warmer waters released from the base of the dam.
The insects hover over the waters surface--a pot pourri of small caddis, midges, and Baetis. Something is emerging in the faster water but the fish gulp them long before I can get a definitive look. I end up fishing caddis patterns and my Baetis "trilogy" and contrary to conventional wisdom these fish prefer dry flies to a nymph. I hook perhaps a half dozen fish on one of my best Baetis nymphs and even more on a small LaFontaine deep emerger but the fish are all over Paranymphs, a Pop Top emerger and a LaFontaine floating emerger. I would have hooked obscene numbers of fish but the small flies are hard to see in the glare and chop. Instead I end up guessing where my fly is and try to set the hook on any rise that is close. It works--kind of.
The best fish of the day is only 14 inches. The Owens can do better but I am satisfied. Sitting in a tongue of current the brown trout inhales one of my Flashback Paranymphs. Strange little slot that I thought should have held rainbows. It's time to head home. One last look at the river though. Frog water. Spots that should hold big fish, meat eaters have come to life. These fish don't rise--they wallow. Submarines surfacing. I watch for a few minutes. I'll be back.
