Lookin' Up

A short story, fly fishing based.

I can still hear the putter of my Grandpa’s old Buick as it snaked up the hills and through the tall grass, through the pastures and foothills, leaving the tracks that formed my life and instilling me with an adventurous and wanderous spirit.

“Let’s go boy, get your bedroll and let’s hit the road before your mother wakes up and tries to feed us.  That woman pushes food like no other, it’s a wonder you’re not fat like that nasty hog out back.” Grandpas breath hung like smoke in the thin air of our front door. He nearly always leaned in and spoke just  a few words at a crack, believing that if he actually stepped inside the house he may not be able to leave again. He was a man that was better suited to the outdoors, his wiry frame and tanned skin an affirmation of this. His head was adorned with an old felt hat and there was a pipe firmly clenched in his teeth at all times.

“They’re looking up Grandpa” I said as I slid onto the Buicks gigantic bench seat.

“You’re damn right kid!” Grandpa said with a grin. "Dry flies."

The old Buick bucked and kicked as we drove off the paved road and onto the gravel road that wound past the Thompsons farm where the cows were quietly standing in the dark pasture. Grandpa  pulled the car to a stop and produced a pack of wooden kitchen matches from his coat pocket. Lighting one and holding it to his pipe he puffed it to life, once he had the pipe fired up he pitched the match out the open window, pulled the collar on his coat up to ward off the morning chill and gently placed the Buick in drive and continued up the road.

“Be about an hour before we get to camp boy, reach behind you and pull one of them old blankets up here and catch some sleep if you want.” He said we pushed through some tight switchbacks. I contorted myself and peeked into the cavernous backseat of the Buick. There was an old applecrate with a few ratty old blankets folded neatly inside resting on top of a stained and foul looking feather pillow. I slid back down into the front seat and pulled the blanket up over me I leaned in and rested up against the old man’s shoulder as he reached over and turned the radio off. He was a man that appreciated silence. He rested his arm on mine and my eyes closed.

I opened my eyes just in time to see the shadow of a covered bridge engulf the Buicks interior. The old car puttered through the black coming out on the other side into the full sunlight like a rebirth. I leaned up and rubbed my eyes to ward off the sleepiness that was still lingering. Grandpa pulled the car onto a grown over logging road and headed downstream. As we drove on I could see that we were high above the river on a ridge line, now and then I could see glimpses of the river through the aspens. It looked to be about a hundred feet wide or so and studded with large boulders. There were pockets of calm water here and there punctuated by torrents of thrashing whitewater.

Grandpa finally slid the car into park at an overgrown clearing about a quarter mile from the river. “Gather up some sticks and we’ll have us some coffee before hit the river. Sure is a beautiful day, they ought to be looking up allright.”

We drank steaming coffee from tin mugs while we leaned up against the old Buick. Grandpa told me how logs were skidded off the hillsides and stacked or ‘decked’ in this spot for the logging truck. I had nightmarish visions of meeting a logging truck on the switchbacks we had driven up the mountain on.

We dressed for the river without talking. I lifted my flyrod and threw my canvas purse over my shoulder and started to descend the moss covered rocks. “Now you wait for your old grandpa boy, there was a time when I could scramble over those rocks like a cat. But that time has passed and I need to take my time, so hold up there.” I reluctantly stayed just in front of my grandpa as we approached the river.

Two people standing in a gorge of rushing whitewater can barely hear each other under the best of circumstances, we used rough hand signals and screamed into each others ears to designate a meeting time and quickly split up. I headed downriver to where there was a hard hook to the right and the whitewater calmed down a bit. Once out of sight of my grandpa I reached into my bag and pulled out a tin fly box with a few scruffy flies lining the inside. I tied on an adams and soon found myself perched on a rock about twenty-five feet offshore staring at a patch of pocket water deeper and blacker than most of the rivers I had fished in my thirteen years.  I saw a flash behind a boulder roughly the size of the Buick we had driven up the mountain. I began to dissect this massive river and fish it as if it were a smaller river, this was a trick my grandpa had taught me the first time we had fished high up in the mountains.

 I had stood shivering in the damp pre-dawn staring at the river. “Kid, that is a hell of a big river. I’ll give you that, but you got to fish it like it aint. What I mean is that you need to fish it one piece at a time. You can’t fish the whole thing at once, so don’t get all excited about it. Cutters Brook back home is what, forty feet wide at the most? So take this river and divide it into forty foot chunks.” He told me that he always did this so that he wouldn’t be overwhelmed by all that water. I found that this worked for me anytime I fished, reminding me to focus on what was directly in front of me and not what was around the next bend.

My first cast landed slightly past the pocket of water behind that Buick rock, I considered the cast, declared it botched and began to strip the fly back to me. The second that fly started to skate across the water there was an explosion and I instantly set the hook into a solid twelve inch rainbow. The fish fought hard in the fast water and after a few minutes I slid her into my creel and laid my rod down to grab a few handfuls of the grass that was sprouting up between the rocks on the edge of the river. I looked up river and could just see the old man, he was just sitting on the rock as if I’d never left him. His rod was propped upright on an alder and it too was in the same place as when I’d left. He looked like he was just listening to the river, I had seen him do this more and more as he got older, content to just soak up the sun and listen to the river.

I skated the adams behind boulders for most of the morning, never really leaving the bend of the river that I started on. I put two more fat rainbows in my creel and each time I did so I looked upriver to see the old man sitting on that rock with his rod propped up on the alder.

When the sun hit the peak of the bluff I headed back up river and met up with the old man, who was sitting on that rock as if I’d only been gone for a few minutes. “What you been up to?” I said sheepishly, trying to hide the grin on my face. “Oh, I been sitting here for most of the morning. Just enjoyin’ the atmosphere I guess. You got any fish in that bag, or is it just grass?” He said as he gestured to my creel.

I gently laid each rainbow out on the rocks and looked up at him with a smile. “They were lookin’ up”.

Grandpa smiled around his old pipe stem, his gray moustache arched up towards the canyon walls. He reached around behind him and produced his creel which I was surprised to see had grass coming out of the top. “You got anything in there…” He silenced me with a wave of his hand and reached into the creel and lifted out a heavy eighteen inch brown. The spots on its side were as red as the gills. “They were looking up” he said as he dipped his hand into the water to wash off the slime. “How could you have caught that fish Grandpa, you never left this rock!” I said as I tapped the large boulder with the butt of my five weight. “You think so? Huh?” He shrugged turning out to the river again.

I took the hint and sat beside him on the rock. I stared out at the river and let my eyes drift over the water. I looked at every seam, I looked at every pocket behind every boulder. After about ten minutes grandpa nudged me and reached over to the alder and grabbed his rod. One or two false casts later and his royal wulff settled in on the edge of a seam. A small nose appeared out of the foam and sipped the fly, grandpa leaned back and set the hook into a feisty fourteen inch rainbow.

“You didn’t see that fish, did you son?” Grandpa said as he slid the fish back into the water. “Nope, I never saw a thing.” I replied. “Now, imagine if I was tying on a fly or watching the buzzards up there?” he gestured at the birds circling up the canyon on the afternoon thermals. “I’d never’ve seen that fish or the one in my creel or the other few that I messed up on. You gotta relax and watch the river, sometimes it takes a while but these bigger fish don’t get that way by being easy to catch. I just sat here on this rock watching this river all morning waiting for the perfect opportunity.”

“Your turn.” He said as he lit his pipe. I would guess about twenty minutes passed before I spotted the next riser, sliding out of the slack water to sip on the occasional passing bug. I reached for my rod but was stopped before I could cast.

“You think you could get a fly out that far?” Grandpa asked. “I could try, it’s a little far for me but if I take a few steps toward the river then…” I realized another lesson was impending and stopped myself before I said anything else.

“The other reason for sitting still as a damn church mouse is to avoid spooking the fish!”

He sat back down pulled his hat down over his eyes and leaned back. Ten minutes later I spotted a medium sized rainbow sipping stoneflies about thirty-five feet in front of me. I gently leaned over and grabbed my pole, threaded a quick back cast through the alders laid the bug down just a foot or two in front of the rising fish. He hit my chewed up adams with a vengeance and a few minutes later I was wrapping my left hand around a fourteen inch rainbow, a twin of the one my grandpa had caught earlier.

“Nice job son, patience is a virtue.” He said as he grabbed his creel and sidled up the rocks toward the buick. Later as he fried trout in bacon grease over a pitchy fire my grandpa told me it had taken him most of his life to realize that you need to slow down, enjoy the day and that the fish are a bonus. He told of days he walked for miles, peppering rivers with hundreds of casts looking for validation. He told me that I did well, that I was becoming a fine woodsman and was learning much faster that he had.

“I have a good teacher” I said as I leaned back beside the fire with my hat over my eyes. “And it helps if they’re looking up.”