Quiet is the sound of a rainbow trout in a bankside lie slurping mayflies from the film; it’s the bay of a lone beagle on 6 million acres of wild America and the whoosh of a merganser’s rise from the fog; it’s the ache in your body, the falling in your gut, and the rise again; and on the last day, it’s the ease in your chest recalling the journey.
The 9-weight lays in five pieces on the plank floor where yesterday it staged strong and supple against a log post in four.
My arms and back are taut with lactic acid. My hands ache and the creases in my fingers are sliced red and moist from the burn of too many fish fights to recall. But that’s not why I can’t sleep. When my eyes close I hear riffles shushing ravens. I see sockeye and coho stacked in redds and kings cruising. I hear rainbows popping. And I plot. I start low on the grassy bank and slip out, testing the top of my waders. I lay that big, bead-headed, blue and white Dolly Llama above the sandy pits and it drifts like tufts of dandelion, promising to rise, falling slowly until BOOM! The rod doubles. The reel sings. My fingers slip. The reel handle raps my knuckles. And I awaken sitting straight up, staring at the busted rod and out through the window at the Tatsatua River.
It’s 3:30 a.m. and I can’t take it anymore. I get dressed. I tie a foam-and-deer-hair-mouse onto my 6-weight. In a couple hours, a glow will rise on the mountain with the sun. Guide Greg Williams will have coffee on, but I’ll forgo that for an hour or so for as many one-last-casts as I can manage before we load the floatplane.
The week has been a war of attrition with me and the salmon, both of us giving as good as we got. So, my gear is thin, but I lay out what’s left: A spool of sinking line and one of floating; half dozen leaders and a little tippet; a clear box of beads, yellow, pink, orange, and red; a few deadly Dolly Llamas; irresistible egg-sucking leaches; acrobatics-inspiring grasshoppers; and a handful of wooly buggers—the Beetlespin of fly fishing. It’s all staying as a small appreciation for my guide Greg and renowned conservationist Shane Mahoney, my fishing partner for a few days.
First light pulls my feet down a trail they’ve worn this week. Dew hangs as pregnant as the morning. At 6:00 am I am waist deep, studying the film in my favorite stretch of river, warming in the light, and listening to ravens caw through spruce tops. On the near bank, water laps at the first spawned-out salmon, signaling that grizzlies will do the same within the week. At the far bank, trout rise. I lay the mouse in nice and snug and it drifts along the grass. Pop — it’s gone. Tight line. Bent rod. The rainbow jumps and bucks. And, the world is in slow motion. One fish. I cup my hand and drink from the river. Two fish. A pair of eagles fly overhead. Just one more fish, I think. Three fish. Tuffy—that one beagle in the valley—barks. Okay, well maybe just one more cast. 7:00 am breakfast is on. Okay, one more.
The scents of wood smoke, strong coffee, eggs and baking bread fill the log-walled kitchen. Shane, Greg, and I soak in the warm and fill our bellies. We laugh and trade stories of filled waders and unexpected swims, smoke thick mosquitos, close calls with bears, battle scars. We relive the ones that got away and revel in those that didn’t. Broken hook, busted rods, busted knuckles, busted flat in Baton Rouge, bust a gut laughing at the tales like the one about the guy in the outhouse with the bats.
Greg rips down on the propeller. The motor kicks. He hops into the two-seater floatplane. The throttle sends the engine pitch rising with the nose of the Piper Supercub. We are up and climbing from blue water to bluer sky. Just off the starboard wing, the glacier glows and moment by moment it grows. Below, two hunters stand at opposite ends of the drop zone. A third sits by a fire, two ram heads at his side. We circle, slow, and drop. Greg pops open the cockpit and rolls us so that I am looking down the wing at the glacier. The wind beats me in the face. The black plastic garbage bag around the duffel in my lap pops.
“Now.”
“No.”
“Now.”
“No.”
“Now.”
“Yes, now.”
I throw the bag out and watch it hit and skid along the glacier. The hunters wave. Greg closes the cockpit, wags the wings, laughing like a kid, and turns us toward Telegraph Creek.
Near Tahltan Lake we drop for a better look at a sow grizzly and her cub who run, stop, and then rear up for a better look at us. A while later, Greg points out a herd of mountain goats crossing a high mesa and then a ram standing sentinel over a steep face, somewhere near the Telegraph Creek. The engine hums deep and soothing now. Greg turns and looks and nods. And I nod and can’t help but smile with my whole self. As I can tell, he does the same. Telegraph Creek, Juneau, and home lay ahead, but not yet. I still have some time here. So, I close my eyes and breathe in the quiet, and bank it for my last, last day.
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