A Well Spent Day Off

I needed a break from the issues dominating the headlines lately. So Barb and I took a weekend day away from our usual home maintenance duties and took one of our nieces and her roommate on an antelope sighting and fly fishing trip. I won't say which niece but she hadn't ever seen an antelope in her 36 years so she is obviously not from around here.

To accomplish both missions it seemed necessary to head toward Wyoming. It was difficult to keep our niece and her roommate focused on anything other than their cell phones and giggly chit chat but I think we managed to show them 30 or so antelope between Westminster and Laramie. A wildlife highlight if ever there was one.  Especially if you are from somewhere where prairie dogs don't even exist. They wanted pictures but in my experience, antelope tend to show you how fast they can run if you get out of the car to take a selfie.  So I told them it was against the law and we kept moving.

Stopping for licenses in Laramie provided their first photo opportunity next to the big painted "We Specialize in Fly Fishing" sign on the sign of the building. If you see the picture on Facebook, it's not true. The ladies do not specialize in fly fishing although they did show some promising signs of their own.

When we finally got streamside I rigged a couple of rods which took longer than the girls wished but to their credit they did not start throwing rocks in the water to pass the time.  They could have been donning their rented gear but wanted to wait and do that just before we started fishing, perhaps in case another photo opp presented itself.  At waters edge I suggested they put their waders on while I scouted the stream a bit.  I looked up to check on them a few times--enough to know they were busily snapping pictures of each other in various stages of putting on waders.

Perhaps I should have paid closer attention.  Sensing we were ready to get started I went back to get them and heard our niece's roommate Jen ask if I thought it made any difference that she had put her waders on inside out.

If there were any doubt, I knew at that moment that I did the right thing when I declined to pursue a career as a fly fishing guide. It also dawned on me the day might not mimic any of my favorite scenes from "A River Runs Through It." So we redid the waders and took a new round of pictures and got to work. Oh my.

I quickly figured out that if I just let them take pictures when they wanted to instead of yelling at them to "Fish, damnit!" the day was going to go a lot smoother.  To their credit they got the hang of things fairly quickly, sort of, and soon the line was going in the general direction of where I thought there might be fish.  Only one willow was hooked all day which I think is darned remarkable for anyone's first day streamside, although I do credit their instructor with not letting them play out enough line to catch many willows on what were (in only the loosest technical sense) their backcasts.

After one fly change they began to miss several strikes on dry flies which excited them and held their interest. For awhile. The fish were quite eager and I cannot say the ladies missed many more strikes than anybody their first time out. A few more.  Not many more. But lunch beckoned and fishing could wait.

I caught 5 fish showing them how to cast and while they took a lunch break. It was the only fishing lunch break I have ever been associated with that involved chicken cobb salads made at some organic deli in Boulder. Barb reported later they were quite good.  My niece mercifully brought me a fishing appropriate sub sandwich which, while on focaccia bread, was delicious.

I had forgotten how exhausting one's first day of fishing could be and hadn't anticipated the apparently necessary naps after lunch although I have to say a streamside nap is one of life's underrated luxuries and I probably should have taken one myself.  Instead, being the dedicated uncle I am, I used naptime to scout another few hundred yards of the stream trying to find some can't miss spots for my two charges. That is my way of saying I didn't catch anymore fish although I did miss a few strikes myself.

After naps however, the action did taper off greatly and the ladies had photographed everything within sight and were ready to go after an hour or two. My suggestion that the evening hatch would be worth sticking around for was met with stares that I wouldn't describe as blank but they may have harbored evil intent.

So we left. I am afraid of evil intent.

We had a great pizza and beer feast at the world famous Bear Tree Restaurant in Centennial, WY, compliments of my two very generous students and the laughter and stories about the day made me wonder how I could ever take anything so simple and trivial and beautiful so seriously. The ladies seemed genuinely appreciative of the experience and it seemed they had a great time, measuring success in number of photos not number of fish.

And Barb and I, while never able to forget our son is a cop in these troubled times of open season on law enforcement professionals, left the drone of MSNBC v. FOX behind us for a day and laughed and splashed in the water and remembered that life still can be good.