While "gearing up" (both physically and mentally) for our annual Rendezvous in September of this year, I was re-reading some of the old posts on the Kern River Fly Fishing Forum. Kind of checking out what may have been told before, and what had been omitted. The nice thing about not lying is that you don't have to remember what you said last time! Anyway I came across this post written by my son (Sasquatch) in remembrance of a board member who had passed: "SoCal Joe." The offering embodies much more than a tale about fly fishing... it encompasses a whole lot about our human condition. I just want to make sure it doesn't get lost in cyberspace.
Empty Beer Can Creek
I didn’t know So Cal, but he and I recently exchanged a few PMs regarding his favorite creek. In our initial communications, we did not see eye to eye, and I am sorry to confess that our misunderstanding was not by any fault of Joe’s.
Sometimes mood and opinions can get the better of us (read: me). We have all been there: Life’s vicissitudes, challenges at work, spouses that don’t share our love of fishing, household chores gone neglected, spouses, that once again, really don’t ‘get’ our obsession with fishing. You get the idea. I was in a funk.
I had taken offense to something Joe had said to me in a PM, and my initial responses to Joe were considerably more vitriolic than they needed to be. After a change in my perspective, due mostly to a weekend well spent with family and friends (non-fishing spouse included) I remembered the exchange I had had with Joe, felt bad about it, and PM’d him with an apology for the tone I had taken. Joe was characteristically (from what I have read about him of late) gracious in accepting my apology, and extended an invitation to fish with him some time.
It was in my reply to Joe’s last PM to me, that I promised to post a story that really happened on his stream. I was sure he would like the story. I am sorry now that I didn’t post it in time for him to have read it. I am, however, glad that I had the opportunity to apologize for my crummy attitude early in our anonymous on-line conversation.
The story goes like this:
Think it was ’04. I was fishing a stream known to some of us as Empty Beer Can Creek. The plan was to park the Jeep and fish upstream as far as I could, allowing time to get back to the vehicle before dark. It was a hot day, and expecting to get real dry, real quick, I had stuffed a full Nalgene bottle and an MSR water filter in the back of my vest.
The stream wasn’t large, but it was full of fish. In many of the deeper, more easily accessed pools, it was also full of empty beer cans, and after several hours of bush whacking, fishing, rock-scrambling, flipping a fly through impossible windows in the foliage, and crawling on my belly between openings in the brush, I had managed a few fish. In the process, I had also managed to pick up, crush, and stuff 4 or 5 dozen beer cans into the back of my vest.
The temp was easily 100, and my water bottle had gone quickly. Intensely focused on fishing, and comforted by the fact that I could just stop and filter water anytime, I continued on, not stopping to take a drink. After more than a few hours, the sun about three fingers above a ridge to the West, I finally succumbed to a thirst that had been dogging me for the better part of the afternoon. I was dehydrated, and easily four miles upstream from where my day had begun. I took off my vest, unzipped the beer can hump that I had been carrying, and discovered that in the process of stopping, grabbing, crushing, unzipping, stuffing, and re-zipping, that I had lost everything but the beer cans. My water bottle and filter were gone, and unless I wanted to risk giardia, my next drink of water was a minimum of an hour and a half away.
Sometimes mood and opinions can get the better of us (read: me). We have all been there: Life’s vicissitudes, challenges at work, spouses that don’t share our love of fishing, household chores gone neglected, spouses, that once again, really don’t ‘get’ our obsession with fishing. You get the idea. I was in a funk.
I had taken offense to something Joe had said to me in a PM, and my initial responses to Joe were considerably more vitriolic than they needed to be. After a change in my perspective, due mostly to a weekend well spent with family and friends (non-fishing spouse included) I remembered the exchange I had had with Joe, felt bad about it, and PM’d him with an apology for the tone I had taken. Joe was characteristically (from what I have read about him of late) gracious in accepting my apology, and extended an invitation to fish with him some time.
It was in my reply to Joe’s last PM to me, that I promised to post a story that really happened on his stream. I was sure he would like the story. I am sorry now that I didn’t post it in time for him to have read it. I am, however, glad that I had the opportunity to apologize for my crummy attitude early in our anonymous on-line conversation.
The story goes like this:
Think it was ’04. I was fishing a stream known to some of us as Empty Beer Can Creek. The plan was to park the Jeep and fish upstream as far as I could, allowing time to get back to the vehicle before dark. It was a hot day, and expecting to get real dry, real quick, I had stuffed a full Nalgene bottle and an MSR water filter in the back of my vest.
The stream wasn’t large, but it was full of fish. In many of the deeper, more easily accessed pools, it was also full of empty beer cans, and after several hours of bush whacking, fishing, rock-scrambling, flipping a fly through impossible windows in the foliage, and crawling on my belly between openings in the brush, I had managed a few fish. In the process, I had also managed to pick up, crush, and stuff 4 or 5 dozen beer cans into the back of my vest.
The temp was easily 100, and my water bottle had gone quickly. Intensely focused on fishing, and comforted by the fact that I could just stop and filter water anytime, I continued on, not stopping to take a drink. After more than a few hours, the sun about three fingers above a ridge to the West, I finally succumbed to a thirst that had been dogging me for the better part of the afternoon. I was dehydrated, and easily four miles upstream from where my day had begun. I took off my vest, unzipped the beer can hump that I had been carrying, and discovered that in the process of stopping, grabbing, crushing, unzipping, stuffing, and re-zipping, that I had lost everything but the beer cans. My water bottle and filter were gone, and unless I wanted to risk giardia, my next drink of water was a minimum of an hour and a half away.
For the next 30 minutes or so of my walk downstream, I cursed the people that had caused me to be in this situation. People that would make the effort to get to a place like this, only to desecrate it with their leave behinds. I cursed the heat. I cursed the difficult terrain. I cursed my thirst, and, eventually, my carelessness. But what really kept coming back around, and resonating in my mind, was human nature. I couldn’t help it. The singularly undignified nature of people: Our tendency to take the easy way out. To not do the right thing. To find our way into the middle of nowhere, only to flippantly toss our refuse into a creek for somebody else to worry about. The selfish behavior of others was weighing heavily on me… And then I started to think about myself... Crappy things I had done (and not done), the short cuts, the sins of omission. And it was then that the realization came hard: People basically all suck, myself included.
It was at the height of my misanthropic epiphany that I came to a particularly pretty and more open spot on the creek. It was a spot from which I had taken a couple of fish, and more than a few ‘empties’ maybe an hour or so prior. As I walked the trail that paralleled the creek, I rounded a bend, and came upon a pair of hikers. A guy roughly my age, and his girlfriend. He asked me if I had done well fishing. I told him that I had caught a few. We talked for a few minutes before he divulged that he was also a fly fisher, and that they had driven up to do some recon of the creek. We talked some more, mostly now about fly fishing. It was at this point, feeling a common bond between us, that I explained what had happened to my water bottle and filter, and asked if they had any water they could spare. To this day, I am floored by his response.
The stranger reached in his pocket, pulled out his keys, and handed them to me:
“I’ve got a gallon jug of water in my truck, take as much as you want. It’s parked at the trailhead. Just leave the keys on the rear left tire”.
Although I had his keys in my hand at this point, I couldn’t believe what was happening.
The best I could muster was something like:
“You don’t know me… You can’t just give me your keys.”
He looked at me with a look I’ll never forget. This guy had an uncommon confidence in humanity. A confidence that was the perfect polar opposite to the antipathy I had been ruminating on no more than a minute ago. And he said:
“You’re a fly fisherman -- You’ve got to be alright”.
My memory of what happened next is unclear, but I think I might have hugged him. I may have even hugged her too. I took the keys, emphatically thanked the both of them, and started off again toward a truck, parked at a trailhead, in the middle of nowhere, 25 minutes before sundown, THAT BELONGED TO A TOTAL STRANGER. As I walked, thoughts raced:
‘This guy doesn’t know me.’
‘I mean I’m OK. I’m not going to do anything wrong.’
‘But, how does he know that?’
‘I could really screw these people up.’
‘It’s going to be dark, and cold, in an hour, and this guy just gives me his keys?’
’I could just drive away.’
‘Is this guy nuts?’…
I made it to the stranger’s truck, let myself in, drank my fill of water that was right where he had said it would be, and then I locked back up, taking care to lay the keys up under the wheel well as promised.
There was still some ground to cover to make my own vehicle, and I resumed my walk downstream. I clipped my headlight to my ballcap, and the new light illuminating my way seemed an appropriate metaphor for my changed state of mind. My mood was different. My attitude had taken a 180 degree u-turn. My musings on the baseness of humankind had been extinguished. Extinguished because I had just met one human being that had done a really good thing for someone they had never met, and would not likely ever meet again.
When Joe and I last communicated, he shared a photo with me. It was of a pile of empty beer cans that he had collected while fishing his favorite stretch of water. I hadn’t thought about that day on Empty Beer Can Creek for a few years, but when I saw that photo, and read his PM about his creek, I felt a common bond between us, and realized that Joe too was pretty alright.
My thoughts and prayers go out to Joe’s family and friends.
And as for Joe, I have no doubt that the waters he fishes now run clean and clear, are full of big beautiful trout, and there is not a single beer can to be found.
Sasquatch
It was at the height of my misanthropic epiphany that I came to a particularly pretty and more open spot on the creek. It was a spot from which I had taken a couple of fish, and more than a few ‘empties’ maybe an hour or so prior. As I walked the trail that paralleled the creek, I rounded a bend, and came upon a pair of hikers. A guy roughly my age, and his girlfriend. He asked me if I had done well fishing. I told him that I had caught a few. We talked for a few minutes before he divulged that he was also a fly fisher, and that they had driven up to do some recon of the creek. We talked some more, mostly now about fly fishing. It was at this point, feeling a common bond between us, that I explained what had happened to my water bottle and filter, and asked if they had any water they could spare. To this day, I am floored by his response.
The stranger reached in his pocket, pulled out his keys, and handed them to me:
“I’ve got a gallon jug of water in my truck, take as much as you want. It’s parked at the trailhead. Just leave the keys on the rear left tire”.
Although I had his keys in my hand at this point, I couldn’t believe what was happening.
The best I could muster was something like:
“You don’t know me… You can’t just give me your keys.”
He looked at me with a look I’ll never forget. This guy had an uncommon confidence in humanity. A confidence that was the perfect polar opposite to the antipathy I had been ruminating on no more than a minute ago. And he said:
“You’re a fly fisherman -- You’ve got to be alright”.
My memory of what happened next is unclear, but I think I might have hugged him. I may have even hugged her too. I took the keys, emphatically thanked the both of them, and started off again toward a truck, parked at a trailhead, in the middle of nowhere, 25 minutes before sundown, THAT BELONGED TO A TOTAL STRANGER. As I walked, thoughts raced:
‘This guy doesn’t know me.’
‘I mean I’m OK. I’m not going to do anything wrong.’
‘But, how does he know that?’
‘I could really screw these people up.’
‘It’s going to be dark, and cold, in an hour, and this guy just gives me his keys?’
’I could just drive away.’
‘Is this guy nuts?’…
I made it to the stranger’s truck, let myself in, drank my fill of water that was right where he had said it would be, and then I locked back up, taking care to lay the keys up under the wheel well as promised.
There was still some ground to cover to make my own vehicle, and I resumed my walk downstream. I clipped my headlight to my ballcap, and the new light illuminating my way seemed an appropriate metaphor for my changed state of mind. My mood was different. My attitude had taken a 180 degree u-turn. My musings on the baseness of humankind had been extinguished. Extinguished because I had just met one human being that had done a really good thing for someone they had never met, and would not likely ever meet again.
When Joe and I last communicated, he shared a photo with me. It was of a pile of empty beer cans that he had collected while fishing his favorite stretch of water. I hadn’t thought about that day on Empty Beer Can Creek for a few years, but when I saw that photo, and read his PM about his creek, I felt a common bond between us, and realized that Joe too was pretty alright.
My thoughts and prayers go out to Joe’s family and friends.
And as for Joe, I have no doubt that the waters he fishes now run clean and clear, are full of big beautiful trout, and there is not a single beer can to be found.
Sasquatch
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