The Season Turns

 A beautiful fall day.  The sky was clear, the sun angled as it does in fall, warming whatever side of the body it radiates upon.  We decided to drop all else and go float the Salt River, recognizing the clock is ticking fast for this fall season.   

A phone is impossible on a boat.  Using one's phone is a very good way to loose one's phone.  Mine stayed zippered in a pocket where it dinged every time a text or email arrived.  I must remember to turn the thing off next time. 

So there are no photos.  Only words this time. 

We made the usual shuttle to the usual take out/put in spots, the parking lots empty.  Backing into the river, I worry that the brakes won't hold on the big red dually Dodge, but they do and we unload the taught blue rubber raft.  I piece together my old fly fishing rod and pick a miniscule fly with white sticking up on its back.  I have no idea of its name.  Remarkedly, I send the end of  tippit line right through the tiny hook hole and wrap up a knot.  

Mike is learning to row this river.  There is a swift current and a brisk southern breeze sending us speeding downstream.  I whip my line around, expecting and receiving the usual "you are not a very good fly fisherman" comment from The Boatman.  It is true.  I am not good at all.  But I do get lucky and catch a fish every now and then!  

We float down the river, bedazzled by the sun, diamonds on the surface.  When not watching my fly float along, waiting for the gulp of the cutthroat trout fooled by a tuft of hair on a hook, I pause and look up to the hillsides.  The maples are backlit by the afternoon rays, reds and yellows glowing against the shadowed gully.  The river is inky and blue and silver, all at once.    

It is quiet until there are rapids and the sound of water staggering over river rock fills the air.  On calmer water, the noise of the highway we parallel is just audible enough to recall the highway is nearby.  A fish darts up to my fly and I squeal in delight.  I have caught my first fish. 

The fish, of course, is relieved of its annoying piercing hook and set free to swim off to the pool from whence it came.  

The moment of catching a fish is, for me, one of the closest touchings of nature I have felt.  That suddent jolt on the line with the electric wiggling and pulling makes me feel so connected to this natural wild thing.  I should peer at the scenery more often, but I am intent on my floating fly, waiting for that next connection.  I am, shall we say, hooked. 

By the time the river turns and we see the Honda in the parking lot above the bank, I have snagged three fish and an underwater tree limb which takes my fly and I am finished.  Mike sets the raft to the bank and I am left to secure the raft and our belongings while he fetches the Dodge.  

It is quiet.  A couple of fish rise to the surface, gulping tiny insects.  The grasses shiver in the afternoon breeze, curing brown after a week of frosty mornings.  A rose bush on the bank is mostly devoid of it leaves but so packed with vibrant red rose hips, it looks like an early tribute to Christmas trees to come.  

My feet are wet from jumping out and pulling the boat to land.  My face feels sunburnt even though I slathered on 70 sunscreen.  I should have had something to drink along the way but I was too busy fishing.  

Thank you fall.  Thank you for your beauty grasped and held onto today, despite your brevity.  Soon fall will be behind us, like the bridges we float under and winter will trap us inside to sit and remember the day we stopped everything and floated down the river.