“…Tomorrow I’m leaving for Alaska. I’m going to find an ice-cold creek near the Arctic where that strange beautiful moss grows and spend a week with the grayling. My address will be, Trout Fishing in America, c/o General Delivery, Fairbanks, Alaska.”
— Richard Brautigan … “Trout Fishing in America”
Photo credit: ADN
Some rare film footage taken in 1927 of Aldo Leopold, father of American Conservation and the author of “A Sand County Almanac”, was recently found. Leopold, was on a trout fly-fishing trip to the Lily River in Wisconsin, with his brother Carl, friend Thomas Coleman, and sons Starker and Luna.
“The Lily chooses her birds well. In the cool dawn a hundred whitethroats lament in minor chorus that as yet undiscovered tragedy that broke the heart of “Ah – – poor Canada.” An occasional winter wren breaks in upon them with so jovial a whistle that one is led to think perhaps Canada after all has outgrown her secret sorrow. During the days fishing anxious mother grouse cluck to their hidden broods and redwings extol the lush greenness of the little marshes along the Lily’s banks. Not until the last evening light is upon the aspens do the thrushes begin. This also is the hour when fishermen go to sleep. Clear at first the singing cadences, then dimmer with the waning sunset, until at last the windings and unwindings of thrushes song merge with the windings and unwinding of the Lily and the long lines that fall unerringly upon her trouty pools in fishermen’s dreams.”
—from Aldo Leopold’s journal
Excerpt of Leopold’s journal entry comes courtesy of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, which was transcribed by Stephen Laubach. Mr Laubach also made the video available on his youtube channel.
I was at a fish fry tonight. Fresh caught halibut and salmon. One of the wonderful perks of an Alaskan summer. I was suppose to go on the trip out of Seward, but the recent rains had my schedule so out of whack, that I had to cancel.
At one point tonight, the conversation took a particularly nasty turn, and someone admitted that they were looking to sell their pickup truck to get a “more practical vehicle”. I shook my head at the absurdity of such a thought, and at the exact time when a friend of mine said, “Well, don’t look to him for advice on ‘practical'”, while pointing at me.
I would have been hurt, if it wasn’t so accurate.
Another friend said, “I don’t know… he has that old Land Rover and he drove it all across the country and down to Mexico and back. Seems pretty practical to me.”
I thanked him for the support, and admitted that a Series Rover and Practical go “almost hand in hand”.
The friend who knows me better then came up and quietly asked, “Has he ever been for a ride in that old Rover of yours?”
“No. He doesn’t have a clue.”
“It has always been my private conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming.”
—John Steinbeck
“A mountain is a fact – a trout is a moment of beauty known only to men who seek them.”
— Al McClane
This is my current jobsite along the Chena River. For seven to eight hours a day, I get to hammer boards together, while I think about fishing for salmon to the sounds of river boats flying up and down the river.
