The Truest Places

There is a chance of thunderstorms, twenty-percent. In the highcountry it used to be almost a guarantee; like a lifetime, but you know how that goes with lost receipts and all. You would leave ungodly early in order to be back down the mountain by around two o’clock, when storms would move in. Daily mood swings that kept the mountains in balance.

But those storms have seldom come this year. Like regular customers who just disappear – a move, or maybe a new job in a different part of town; yet still, you miss them. You notice. And now I miss the clouds, the storms -- and especially, the rain. We have sun and sun. And ever more sun. When there's a cloud, I notice -- and hope it will bring rain. Those outpourings, those downpours -- sometimes they're the only things keeping us sane. Keeping us safe.
 
Keeping the mountains safe, too -- now pressured, like a secret held in too long. And someday, it’s going to come out, and you’re going to let it. Someday you’re going to talk. And when you do, it’ll be a firestorm.

And so Banjo and I set out later than we normally do. Although picking a shorter hike, a lower high lake...just in case I was putting too much trust in a placid beast. Growing too accustomed to a horse that was preparing to kick me while convincingly keeping its ears forward. Even domestics still have some spirit left in them deep down, making appearances from time to time. Generally, when you least expect it, too -- but even the good dog will bite, and the beautiful mountains will kill you.

We start on the trail just as the sun makes its way over the ridge, heating up the valley with the piquant moldering of pine needles and beetle kill wood -- along a stream eventually leading to its headwaters. Most of these high lakes have streams trailing down from them, sometimes only trickles at first; spreading out like old bony hands over sub-alpine tundra that having once carved out their spot, grapple to stay hold of their land. It's not easy up there. Glaciers and snowpacks feed the lakes, the lakes feed the streams, and the streams run out to the plains...where they water cattle, horses, and corn, instead of moose, elk, and wildflowers.  

I’ve hiked to the headwaters of most all the streams I regularly fish -- mainly because I like knowing where and how they’re all connected with my own eyes. I suppose it’s the difference of an anatomy textbook and dissection. Thin blue arteries on a map tell you a little, but wading through them calf deep for miles -- that, tells you more. “The whole scoop” as my mother would say. And you can’t truly know a stream by fishing only a stretch -- by taking it out of context. Water is like words -- which in this case, runs its course as a sentence; a run on, punctuated here and there, but otherwise nonsensical. While yet always maintaining her beauty.

Gorgeous women are often the crazy ones, keep in mind.

I know how the high pebbled pools holding brookies barely the length of my hand, are connected to the large bouldered narrows and steep canyon sides down low – down where a surprisingly large cutbow lives who I’d like to visit again someday. And I know how high lakes can be finicky – on again off again, indicative of a relationship that probably should end, but you just won’t let it. You can’t, because you’re addicted; or committed -- to making things work, because you've come this far and it must. But miles put in doesn't equate to quality, come to find out, and sometimes their purpose is just to get your feet used to walking.

Yet even so, those high lakes are damned beautiful places to get skunked – making up for it, in a way.

A small way.. .

Until mid-afternoon when I remember the stream mirroring the trail on the way up. One of those little feeders so often overlook on the way to the big stuff – to the large trout. Passed by for what we think we want or need. What we think we should do, or say, or catch. Only to find out later what we’ve missed by sticking to plans, by writing with an outline – by keeping to the red-hacked trail on the map. For as Melville wrote, the truest places never are there. Rather, they are those we stumble upon – with a confused but willing grin on our face, and willow branches stuck in our hair.