I was standing in the middle of the river and it felt cold. It was the last weekend of the trout season. Leaves were falling around me. The wind was chilly and the clouds had the ominous look of winter. I started thinking about Bruce Chatwin, Yvon Chouinard, William Leitch and others who had visited the Land of the Big Feet. I thought about large trout swimming in rios, lagos and bocas. I was thinking about Patagonia and the southern hemisphere. I wanted to go straight from Fall into Spring and fool nature itself by skipping Winter. I wanted to transport myself to where the rivers were beginning to warm and come to life; where trout weren't hunkering down in dark deep pools but instead awakening and looking to the surface and the sun.
By chance I read a magazine article on several fly fishing lodges in Patagonia. The images of the terrain and rivers were mesmerizing. I decided to take action and after a little research faxed my resume to the bottom of the world. It was the first angling resume I had ever written. It was my message in a bottle. A couple days later I received a reply. I couldn't believe it. I thought, "Things like that don't happen to me!". A lodge owner named Jim said he'd be chasing the King of Fish ( Atlantic Salmon) on a famous maritime river in New Brunswick in a couple of weeks. I lived in Montreal then. He knew his geography and asked if we could meet. I said I'd make the road trip east to the lodge near the town of Blackville where he would be staying. I made the full day drive dodging moose and logging trucks along the last stretch of rural route 108, and arrived just before dark. We talked over a beans and wieners dinner in a classic wood lodge overlooking the Miramichi river. It reminded me of the old Adirondack camps in a region just south of Montreal where where I learned to fly fish as a child. It all felt familiar. Jim seemed larger than life. He had fished just about everywhere for trout and salmon. He said with a playful smile that "after God created trout he created him". I didn't know what to think of him. I don't think it really mattered. The next morning I watched him and others take turns fishing a tannin colored salmon pool on the Cains river. He wore a Filson tin cloth hat and a Barbour coat, and fished a full flex fly rod. He oozed tradition. I liked that. He spoke about his love of dry fly fishing and his home river in Chile. I also liked that. Before I drove home I had committed to spending five months in rural Patagonia, from late December until May. He offered a guiding gig and I couldn't say no. I took the hook. I had a full time job, a mortgage, a one year old golden retriever and like most people numerous other responsibilities. There were many unanswered questions: Could I get several months off from work? Could I afford to take the time off? Was it possible to transport my young dog such a distance? Did I need a work visa? Where the hell is Valle Des Escales, Chile (my destination)? It was already the middle of October and I had a lot of scrambling to do. I wondered if I could pull it off. I doubted I could pull it off. Then one night while listening to talk radio I heard the author Ray Bradbury being interviewed and I found confidence. He spoke with boundless enthusiasm about everything he loved. He said that his approached to life was to "jump off a cliff and then learn to make wings on the way down". Mr Bradbury was the best storyteller I had ever heard. He made everything seem possible. I said to myself," build wings".
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