Going Home
At a certain, rather featureless, point along Route 44, I roll down the window of my pickup truck, take a deep breath of clean mountain air, and think, I'm home. In twenty-six years of visiting Potter County, the air still smells the same. The same taverns, stores, and camps cling to the roadside. Deer still bounce across the highway at twilight, round black bears still waddle from one trash can to the next, and trout still rise in miles and miles of pristine mountain streams. Cell phones don't work here. Only two FM stations, both fractured by static, come in on my car radio. No TV, and the only news is the tackle-shop gossip about who's catching what, and on what flies. It's forty-five blissful minutes from fast food joints, supermarkets, chain stores, and traffic lights. There's a sort of timelessness about the place.
At least, time as we normally know it doesn't occur there. It's nature's time, bound by the cycles of sun and season. The drought? Just one of nature's quirks that happen now and then. Like blizzard and landslide, fire and flood, the strong survive it, and grow wiser and stronger for the experience. The stocked trout, domestic strangers ill-equipped to survive, didn't last. Wily native brook trout took it in their stride, and by fall were colorfully eager to replace the losses as nature has since time began. And canny old brown trout, born in America of European stock, just as most of us were, still lurked in the pools and spring holes.
In a place ruled by seasons, passing in ordered succession, traditions form quickly and become precious to us equally fast. The fall outing is one. The individual faces change, but the camaraderie doesn't. Somehow, each group follows the same traditions, whoever they are. There's the rivalry between the chefs-du-jour to outdo one another with gourmet meals. The wine: Bottles, magnums, cases, with additions of other potables harder or otherwise; Imbibed from the traditional ill-assorted coffee cups. Desserts, which everyone brings, everyone denies wanting, and everyone eats anyway. Strong morning coffee, with the delightful addition of flavored cream. The encounters with the cabin's year-round residents, the mice; And other wildlife, during our days astream. A continuous fly-tying session at one end of the long table, anytime anyone is at the cabin and awake. The twice-daily strategy sessions, and the subsequent offering, swapping, and borrowing of rides, space in coolers and lunch items, flies, clothing, and equipment. Rides to favorite spots over familiar, narrow, tree-lined roads. And during those rides, as well as at the table or on the porch at the cabin, getting to know new friends, and getting to know old ones better.
Tradition, changeless but always adapting as people change or come and go. So it is with the fishing there, a gradual adaptation, each moment different but always the same. A new deadfall creates new cover; There are lower water levels, but the deep holes and spring seeps and cover rocks are still there, and still hold trout. Perhaps the trout that proved too wary for my presentation this year were the same ones that snubbed me last year. The ones I caught, many from spots I'd fished successfully before, may have been old acquaintances from trips past. Who can tell? This year's fad fly did its work, but so did reliable old caddis, terrestrials, and nymphs.
More than any other outing, the Potter County trip reminds me that the slow cycles of nature form a pattern, accepting disasters like this year's drought and making them part of the whole. It reminds me that our actions, our traditions, are very much a part of this pattern, and that it is a thing of great and enduring beauty. This is a subtle lesson I can use the other fifty-one weeks a year, before returning to reinforce it again.
Rabbit Jensen
