1981 (4) – The Queen Trout

As we all had gone to bed early from exhaustion, we were up early the next chilly morning.  With my legs numb from the cold and the previous day’s overuse, I found it hard to stagger out of my sleeping bag and pee, so I waddled 20 yards inside the bag like a penguin in a gunny sack, and did my business carefully, while draped in relative warmth.  Greg and Nate were already up and preparing to go fishing, and I cast a baleful glance in Greg’s direction.  He had an odd way of snoring that was most disruptive to the sleep patterns of anyone within 100 yards.  He would often exhale in a great roar, and then stop.  Nothing.  No more breathing.  One could count the seconds going by (and that was the awful distraction) …15 …30 …45 until one felt compelled to heroically leap out of one’s sleeping bag and begin mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.  Then, with a great shudder, he would rake in a gasping breath, and continue on with his raucous snoring.  He, of course, was oblivious to this nightly cliffhanging cycle, and denied it so casually that it made my skin crawl with indignant insistence, but to no avail.  He was completely unruffled and unrepentant about his nightly dance with death, yet the very trees around the campsite seemed haggard and drained by sleep deprivation.

Greg was a fascinating character despite his very young age.  His natural magnetism drew people unwittingly to his glow of confident happiness, as bugs dance blindly around a porch light.  It would take many years of close friendship to discover that this was a false glow, hiding a deep insecurity and depression.  I loved being around Greg when he was at his best, so I followed him and Nate as they went dawn fishing.  And Greg was at his very finest when he was fishing; completely locked in and totally in tune with the elements.  He patiently stalked his prey the way a Bushman hunts a wily antelope, but the quarry was hidden by water, not grass.  In the early dawn just coming into focus, the lake’s glassy surface was kissed by the lips of dozens of eager trout feeders, at times making the surface appear to be sprinkled with raindrops.  Greg moved like a ghost among the lakeshore boulders, taking heed not to frame his profile in the dim light, or to cast his meager shadow on the water.  In this way, he would become one with an area where the trout were wholly immersed in feeding. And then he would sweetly cast his fly ever so lightly to graze the surface in an enticing whisk of invitation.  Bam!  It seemed as though each time he cast, he hooked a trout – sometimes an annoying juvenile, and often a virile and feisty adolescent.  On this particular morning, he was graced with a visit from the Queen Trout herself.

This time his fishing line, which normally spun and twisted like a spider web in the breeze when a small trout took the bait, plunged deep and taut with the power of an anchor chain.  The placid early morning water was unprepared for the battle that would ensue, and it chopped into abstract fractal patterns instead of the usual splashing and reeling of a hooked fish.  Greg’s spindly fly rod bent 180 degrees down like a candy cane, and I caught his bold eye briefly as he looked at me for confirmation and support, as “Holy shit!” was all he could utter, over and over again.  His line was strong but the spindly rod was useless, so he tucked the flailing fiberglass wand under his arm, and attempted to pull in this behemoth hand over hand.  Time and again the useless rod got in his way, until he gave up completely on using the reel and played the unseen force this way and that across the cove in the intense method of a conductor of an orchestra, as the wiry green line piled up around his feet like applause.

Eventually, the dream broke the surface.  Not airborne and majestic like the phony postcard prints of a curved fish leaping in agony to dislodge the deadly lure, but sort of flopping angrily in a more realistic display of annoyance to this disruption of her normal feeding schedule.  Greg pulled and pulled on the green line, and the trout resisted and swayed, until it seemed like a choreographed display of interspecies tango.  When she faded a bit, and showed her gleaming, silver side to us, it seemed as though Greg was pulling the hull of a capsized submarine broadside.  Finally, with both humans and trout exhausted (and I as the spectator was perhaps most affected by the exhilaration), she swam up meekly into the small cove of rocks where Greg had made his stand, and offered up her side in a final act of submission.

This was easily the biggest alpine lake trout either of us had ever seen.  Greg let out an instinctive, yodeling roar like a pubescent Tarzan, and I pounded him on the back in congratulation.  Behind us, the bushes swayed and snapped as Nat, attracted by the ebullience, tripped and skidded over the rocks to see the source of all the commotion.  Three jaws dropped on gravel as we all gazed in awe at the Queen Trout.  Easily 18 inches in length, and perhaps 6 inches thick, she looked more like a manatee than a fish.  She was a magnificent specimen of brown trout, and her beautiful yellow patterns were muted by age and survival.  Her great, viscous eye lolled crazily in the shallows, taking in the ghastly scene of what she expected to be her final demise.  And then Greg did something for which I will respect him always.  He gently dislodged the hook from where it had ensnared her jawbone, stroked her sides in the water and moved her about to get fresh water in her gills, and let her go.  “That was the Queen Trout,” was all he said, softly and reverently, his eyes tearing up with unspeakable respect.

Later at camp, going over every detail of the epic battle, Greg intimated how he could tell she was pregnant.  He anticipated by releasing her today, she would spawn countless generations of new trout to ensure he always had chances to pursue his sport at Little Bear Lake.  He expanded his goofy narrative to explain how she was the spirit of all “troutness,” (as he put it), and the creative force behind the birth and death of endless cycles of alpine life.  The mystical logic and maturity of his foresight and imagination bowled me completely over, coming as it did from a normally wise-ass 15-year-old kid brother.  Nate stammered his enthusiastic support of Greg’s decision, and even Chris grunted his approval, and we basked in the self-righteous glow that shines on the vainglorious.

The fishing escapades took up half of a superb day, and we were soon facing our last afternoon before leaving our newfound comfort zone and returning to civilization, where jobs, school, and parents waited for us to resume our servitude.  This trip for me had reinforced a lot of what was missing in my life: a sense of family, a loving relationship with a girlfriend, and an intuitive sense of honor.  I realized these things were absent, but somehow, in the completeness of the wilderness where not one pebble was out of place or a single pine needle without a purpose, I felt uniquely fulfilled.  If I could vicariously experience brotherly love by observing Deion and Nate, I could learn how to bond with and take care of those closest to me.  By admiring the natural intimacy of Chris and Jodi, I understood how the potential of universal love that surrounds us all the time is manifested in the act of one who loves.  And in sharing the sincere sense of honor for all living things displayed by Greg, I found the courage to take on my deepest personal challenges.  This backpacking trip had brought mastery, camaraderie, and a sense of purpose into my life, which was more than worth the price of admission (one tank of gas, a shredded pair of sneakers, and a lost water bottle).

Our careful planning again paid off when we packed to leave in the morning.  Everything had its place, and nothing was wasted.  Feeling in tune with the efficiency of nature, we divided up the gear and found almost no food left to add weight to our sagging packs.  Together, we walked out to the flat rock that served as a pier on the lake, and each of us said our goodbye to the elements that appealed most.  I communed with the tree spirits, and realized that a seed had been planted in me when I first visited this area with my family, and it had changed the trajectory of my life.  I reflected on Deion’s comment about the seeds in each pine cone making an eternity of forests, and wondered what my life could be, now that I had learned the secret?  The ultimate truth: that we are not the people we pretend to be in society, amongst the stressful demands, polluted environment, and challenging relationships.  Our real Self springs forth, as if from the ground itself, when we are in the wilderness.

 “Every year until I die,” I reminded myself, and even as my lips whispered the vow, I knew it to be impossible.  And yet, as each year passed, I really did revisit the lakes repeatedly.  Sometimes in sweet dreams, often in fond remembrance, and a few blessed times in reality, I came back on purpose.