Victory and Defeat on the Ravens Fork

      We don’t eat lizards unless they’re roasted and I don’t like roasted lizards. And pumpkins do not eat lizards.

      I saw a doorway that didn’t have a door in a tree before. Maybe the door just fell off. Maybe from the hurricane we had a few weeks ago. I don’t know why I was wearing my pink jacket. It’s not a rain jacket.

                                                                   — My daughter, budding naturalist

I just returned from the mountains. I went up there to clear my head, freeze my arse off in a tent, and hopefully catch at least a fish. A few days before, I drove through the dark after a full day of work and the temperature kept dropping. Good thing I brought a sleeping bag. Unfortunately, it was my summer bag. I arrived at the campground on the Ravens Fork about 9:30 and 40 degrees. 

As I lay in the tent, all the usual feelings and thoughts that happen when you find yourself away from the family for a weekend then happened. Feeling guilty. Wondering what they are doing. Feeling guilty about feeling guilty. Getting mindful by deep breathing. Losing track of being mindful and having a thought spasm. Forgetting what the thought spasm was about. Feeling better when thinking about the river a few feet away. Being disturbed I can’t see the river — just the building white noise of it — sounding like it’s rising. Is it raining up the mountain? Hearing wind in the rhododendron and mountain laurel on the far bank. Shivering. Wondering why there were so many crows around my site. Pondering raven symbolism. Are they really a sign of bad luck? What does this mean for my fishing? For my safety? After 30 minutes exhausting myself in reaction to all the sylvan peace, deciding to go ahead and try to sleep.

As you might expect, the night did not get warmer. The wind blew through the tent. My face got cold to the point that sniffing was useless. I slept. For an hour here and there. Before I knew it, it was time to get up. I was on the river by 6:00 am — not because the fishing is good when it’s still dark and 35 degrees but because I couldn’t bear another painful shiver in the tent.

One of my favorite traditions of fly fishing is getting my fly caught in a tree within the first five casts. It helps balance me out and keeps me from over-romanticizing the sport. After losing my first fly in the tree behind me, my fingers didn’t want to bend enough to tie a knot. Another fly fishing tradition of mine is when I focus on tying a knot with line as thin as a spider web for long enough that my eyes completely focus in and then I think there has to be a predator taking advantage of my inattention so I need to look up. But when I look up it’s all blurry. I know a sasquatch is going to be staring right at me one of these times my eyes refocus. This time, though, there was no skunk ape — only a large pile of elk poop. Steaming. How did I not notice that? Did an elk just now pop a squat in front of me?

I’d like to tell you that the fish started crushing it at this point. But they did not. I walked upriver, casting when I saw a good spot that might hold fish. In fact, I walked the Ravens Fork half a day and the Tuckaseegee the other half and I didn’t catch a fish. But I did take a lunch break to go get a warmer sleeping bag.

I was about to call it at about 5:00 when I decided to use a “junk food” fly, the mop fly. The mop fly is called this because it can be tied with a mop string or a piece of a shag carpet. It’s not your Hollywood, “River Runs Through It,” artfully-tied dry fly. And almost instantly I hooked what looked like the biggest trout I’ve ever caught. After a full day of fishing minuscule larval stage bugs, I hooked one on a fly that could have previously been a bathroom rug. As quickly as I hooked it, I lost it. But I was buzzing at that point. I casted again and actually landed the biggest trout I ever caught. It jumped four times. I snapped a quick picture while it was still in the water and it took off back to the depths.

I walked down river, head high, taking it all in. I found this perch where two boulders jutted out from opposite sides of the stream and made a raging waterfall. I stood on one of the rocks watching the Cherokee water make its way downstream. I looked at the rocks, the lichens, the whitewater going green in the middle of the pool and crystal clear in the shallows. I wondered to myself how do people not think God is in everything? It was a moment. The type of moment where everything is ideal and you imagine yourself from above bathed in golden light.

And then I fell in. I mean I fell in. My head went under. I was safe — I had a wading belt on. I crawled out. Looked around. At least nobody saw it.

Humbled by the river and innervated by the interaction with the 20-inch rainbow trout I was so privileged to hold, I went back to my campsite. As I fell asleep that night, my mind raced a little less. The wind picked up. The Tennessee mom and her daughter at the site next to me kept squirting lighter fluid into the fire and the sides of my tent illuminated. I thought back to my daughter, pontificating on the porch. I don’t know why I brought my pink sleeping bag. It was not a summer bag.

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