The Driftboat at Hendricks

I’m scared of fish; terrified, in fact. I know that this is a source of skeptical amusement for lots of people, and also that dating a fishing guide requires me to confront this issue to some extent.  Karl is a passionate defender  of the wild trout species native to the McKenzie river, and though the prospect of handing a live critter of the Piscean breed sends me over in shudders, I know him to be a conscientious and intelligent person. His opinions make sense to me in pretty much every other situation, so it seemed reasonable that maybe I could gain some perspective on this issue by virtue of his well-informed and considered view.  I saw it as an opportunity; maybe if I was exposed to fishes, I could gain some kind of appreciation for them, learn to conquer my irrational fears, and failing that, he was probably  well-equipped to protect me should one of the buggers prove all my worst suspicions true and move in for the kill.

We went out on Karl’s drift boat on the Lower McKenzie. We put in at Hendricks Landing at about 1pm on a day of high overcast and temperatures that wavered somewhere between “brisk” and “it’s MAY, goddammit.” Karl chose this section of the river because it is part of a study being conducted by the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife in cooperation with the McKenzie River Fly Fishers and Trout Unlimited. The objective is to try and track the native trout in the portion of the river set aside for their habitat and help determine a course of management for the waters that best serve the future of the McKenzie and the communities it touches.

Our aim was to capture, tag, and document the statistics of any native trout, known as the McKenzie Redside, that we encountered. Though he had put a rod in my incredulous but willing hands once before, and I’d practiced casting in the front yard to his encouraging refrain “You’re pretty good for a first-timer,” I was extremely skeptical that I would catch any actual fish. This was, I admit, skepticism with a tinge of hope… but I digress.

I sat in front casting into whatever waters Karl pointed me toward, marveling at the way one needs to read a river in order to be both safe and successful out on the water. There are eddies, jams, backflows, rocks, and still calm pools, all with their own kind of beauty and danger. I got to enjoy the course we set, while he had to be constantly vigilant not only for what might trip the boat, or catch my flies on a snag, but also for where the fish might be lying in wait.

He was busy making sure I caught something

After about an hour we anchored in a bend near a gravel bar that looked likely and I took up a dry fly casting rig. I’d been using a nymph and bobber, but it was a somewhat heavier setup and I was getting a little tired casting constantly. K kept pointing to “fish” in the water, but I could never quite see what he was trying to convey. As soon as he wasn’t busy with oars, he cast out himself. Almost at once he had a fish on. Once I saw the motion that indicated the presence of a fish, I couldn’t unsee it. He hauled in a smolt which he plucked off the line, plopped back in the river, and had recast with barely a pause.

His next hit was much harder. His pole bent at a far more dramatic pitch and he worked the fish far longer before getting it close enough to the boat to net it up. He hauled a large and lustrous native out of the river and held it out for my inspection. The fish was undeniably beautiful, but it was also thrashing in a desperate bid for freedom that sent me reeling a few inches back (there wasn’t really anywhere else for me to go in the limited confines of the driftboat) torn between honest admiration and utter terror. We tagged (#721) and measured the trout at 436mm (about 17.5 inches)  before we put him back in the water to scamper(?) off along his merry way.

#721

I did briefly reach into the cooler where we had him confined to touch the fish while Karl took his notes and recorded his stats. I realized that it wasn’t the slime on the fish that bothered me, so much as the unadulterated muscularity of the beast. These are creatures made entirely of motive force. They are remarkably strong for their size, and this is what I find so intimidating; they are much smaller than I am, but would totally give me a run for my money in an arm wrestling match. If they had arms. Or could breathe out of water. I mean, that would be a tough match to set up. The fish in a tank… me in some kind of articulated sleeve. A fish with arms…

Wait, what was I talking about?

After that catch, I had a clearer sense of what to look for in the river if I wanted to lay the fly down in a place where the fish might see it. I took to spooling the line out further and making an arc wider around the boat just past the rim of the shallows where we were anchored and into the deeps just beyond. After about 3 minutes of riding the arc, pulling the lure, and recasting the fly, I had a hard hit on the end of my line.

“I think you got a good one!”

I started pulling back on the rod to set the hook and was stunned at just how much force the fish was exerting against my tugging. Karl told me to let him run a bit, but my line was jammed and wouldn’t spool out so I just hauled on him with all my strength. In retrospect, it seems clear it was something of a miracle I didn’t lose him with my clumsy angling, but I did in fact reel him in close enough to the boat for Karl to scoop him into the net and bring him aboard.

“That, is a nice trout.”

His deadpan delivery was probably more convincing than any more effusive display would have been. We tagged and measured my fishy opponent and good old #723 came in shy of Karl’s redside, but not by a whole lot. He measured 428mm and was declared a nicer fish than most people land after years of trying, let alone their first go round fly-fishing. I credit the skill of my guide, wholly, for this outcome. I decided after some consideration, that I needed to record this victory, both over the trout and my own terror, by grasping the fish for the customary grinning-fish-gripping photo opportunity. This of course meant, I would have to touch the fish.

Heaving a deep breath, and steeling myself as best I was able, I took hold of the trout and hoisted him out of the cooler. He promptly thrashed with such force that he slipped my grasp and crashed to the floor of the boat. Chagrined, and not wanting him to hurt himself, I scooped him up again and took a firmer grip. Doing so, I managed to hold on, but it also more effectively communicated the strength I had found so shocking in competition with my flyrod; this was a strong fish.

This is happiness. Combined with terror. The kind that makes you think you might poop yourself.

Karl snapped a few photos, and we slipped him back into the river, tagged and ready for fishy action. We had a few more bites, but nothing else quite so dramatic. As we neared the pull-out, Karl let me row the boat for a bit, and I found that my capacity to do so with some facility pleased me almost as much as landing the trout had. And touching the oars was lots less distressing.

It was really a fine and wonderful day on the river. I expected to enjoy myself in the company of the boy I like, but there was something more fundamentally gratifying about the experience. I was cold and surprisingly tired after we were finished. Not least of all, I was slightly sore from having done battle with my first Redside. Doing so, I learned something about the water, and about myself. I pushed past the borders of my assumptions and saw something that was  indeed powerful, and intimidating in it’s way, but also beautiful, and singular to this place we live in. It made me care profoundly about protecting something that nonetheless scares me.

Some of the proponents of the continuing presence of hatchery trout in the McKenzie river watershed make the claim that inexperienced fisherfolk, (read here: tourists) can’t land a native. That they are too elusive, strong, and wily to be caught by anything other than a relative expert fisherman. That without these planters, who are slow, weak, easy to catch, and who compromise the habitat for other wild species, the tourist fishing industry on the McKenzie will collapse. I submit the following rebuttal: if a person who is utterly inexperienced, generally uncoordinated, and nervous about fish such that she is not even entirely sure she wants to catch one lest it be in the same boat as she, can catch a native, and on her first time out, anyone can.

v.tr.
To correct beyond what is needed, appropriate, or usual, especially when resulting in a mistake.

American Heritage Dictionary

Also, meaningful;

An over-compensation of a mechanical fault during the performance of a motor skill.

I am full of myself. Vain. Arrogant. I have unwarranted self-confidence and an insufferable tendency to boast. Even the very exercise I am now engaged in, all too closely mimics mental masturbation, eh?

Ah, me.

But it is unquestionably the case that this is the result of a swerve, wild and desperate, that I have not yet gotten a handle upon. Meant to avoid remaining bedraggled and bruised, pitiable and pathetic, lost in self-loathing. It was a coping mechanism, not so unusual, to try and repair damage untold, as dealt by indifferent parenting and unenviable circumstance. But like most things meant to help us cope, if we rely on them too heavily, they create a host of new problems which must then be confronted; mastered.

I believe my braggodocio springs in no small part from an odd quirk of mine that developed as a result of my “mechanical fault.” While quite small I was functionally blind. I could see shapes and light and color, but nothing was in focus, and there was two of everything. It made it nearly impossible for me to navigate in the world. I wasn’t totally sightless, so I didn’t rely as heavily on my other senses as I could have. I was constantly running into things, falling down, tripping, and generally hurting myself repeatedly through my stubborn determination to get where I was going, under my own steam and at top speed.

My older sister, and mother, took to shouting warnings at me when I was about to run into trouble. Brandy particularly took it upon herself to follow me around and warn me when I was about to bump into something, when there was danger I might fall, or if there was something I could trip over in my path. As noble as her efforts were, I have noticed that it has instilled in me a need to hear something, before I can truly absorb it. I do not trust the evidence of my other senses quite so thoroughly. Additionally, it has created a tendency to rely on the assertions of other people altogether too much when evaluating my self-worth, circumstances, or correct course of action.

So, I say what I want to believe, that I can hear it and thus accept it as true. I say it to other people in hopes they will agree with me and give the declaration greater credence. My assertions are almost always uncertainty waiting to become assurance.

And I will not claim to have ever even tried humility on for size. I think I bridled at the notion of it, seeing it as somehow in conflict with my favorite virtue Truth. To fail to pronounce my strengths, as well as my many, sundry faults, would be to deny the truth of who and how I am. When I encountered the trait in people I admired, I always found it baffling:

“But, you’re awesome!! Why aren’t you telling everyone in earshot??”

Because it turns out, most people don’t require this kind of mechanism to believe good things about themselves. They just sort of do. They prefer to demonstrate their worth by their deeds, quietly and with grace.

Someone recently mentioned to me that their approach to life was to underpromise and overdeliver. I saw firsthand evidence of how lovely it could be to be on the other side of that course. The surprise and sense of discovery were profoundly satisfying. And it dawned on me that I have denied anyone who has ever met me the pleasure of that sort of revelation. I am so quick to tell them all there is to know about me, they have no chance to see and decide for themselves. This is especially important when I am forced to admit that not everything I “know” about myself is true for everyone else.

And I am tempted, for the first time, to try this humility thing after all. To pull the wheel slowly towards center, and proceed…

traditionally meant the condition of having sensation (including the feeling of pain) blocked or temporarily taken away.

Current recipie: podcasts, shopping, sleep. It has not been entirely effective.

I am aggrieved it feels so necessary.

I like my hands. I think they’re quite nice. I’ve always been a bit vain about them, and oddly they are the part of me that look most like my mother; I totally got her hands. They’re relatively small for an average sized woman, but my fingers are unusually long. I also grow very nice fingernails, when I leave them be to grow. It’s a weird thing to be vain about, but I can rise above and be vain about most anything, it turns out.

I do not, on the other hand, much like my guitar playing. It is in no way my strong suit, musically. I came to it late, am self taught and rather lazy about practicing, but care a great deal about sounding good when I do bother to play. Usually because I am trying to impress a boy.

But to do the latter well, I must relinquish the former. I picked up Livingston tonight and looked sadly at the state of my fingernails (perfect) and knew that in very short order indeed they would be made sacrifice to the strings. I even tried playing without trimming them, but was forced at last (since the child absconded with my clippers) to bite them all off in order to play with any degree of satisfaction.

On the bright side I’m not nearly as rusty as I expected to be…

When I was a senior in high school, our conductor elected to have our choir perform a particularly ambitious piece for our state championship tournament. It was so not only for it’s difficulty, which was acknowledged as generally well beyond the capacities of the average high school choir (which we were decidedly not) but also because the piece was quite new; it had been written within the previous several years and the conductor was still living. This chorale also included a solo of a particularly demanding sort; a soprano had to maintain one constant note throughout the entire piece. This tone had to be sung with great sensitivity to nuance and exacting control. More, the singer had to manage with one voice, through an entire chorus of seventy others not to overpower, but to pierce.

Dr Uphaus told me he had never even considered anyone else for the job.

And so we went to state. And we didn’t win. But, one of our adjudicators was Dr Bruce Brown who was at that time the musical director at Portland State University. He made a point to compliment us on the execution of such a challenging piece of music. He also told us that the composer Arvo Part* was coming to Portland with his choir to perform THE VERY SONG with the Portland State Choir at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, and should we so choose, we were welcome to join them.

So, I and a few of my cohorts decided that would be swell. We toddled on down to PSU for 3 or 4 practice sessions. On the first of these Dr Brown cast around the room and said

“Is the young lady that sang the solo for state here in the group?”

I raised my hand, slightly terrified.

“Oh, grand. None of my singers can quite manage it. You’ll help us practice, yes?”

Of course I would.

Over the next few practice sessions, I just naturally assumed that M. Part would be select one of his own singers to perform the coveted solo. It turned out, rather, that he had wanted to leave that honor to Dr Brown, his host. When he was preparing us the night before the performance, Dr Brown turned to me with complete aplomb and said

“And naturally Autumn will be managing the solo as usual.”

I was completely, utterly, and in every way paralyzed by this pronouncement. I had not prepared myself in any way for this possibility, and I was in a paroxysm of terror in anticipation of it. I sat there in my plastic chair for ten full minutes after the larger group had broken up and wandered away, gripping the sides till my knuckles were white and my breath came back, though in gasps. It had taken all of  my will and every bit of my strength to stand up at state, with my own dear choir at my back, and lift my voice to this purpose. To do so instead, with hundreds of strangers (most older than myself and some professionals at their trade) and no less than the composer of the piece to witness was beyond reckoning. For you see, I had near crippling stage fright. Don’t laugh, It is completely true.

And so. I had to approach Dr. Brown and tell him that though I was deeply honored by his confidence in me, I could not redeem his choice by accepting it. I was too scared, my voice would not rise as it should, and I would fail him. He tried his best to change my mind, but I refused his persistence and cried over my mortification. He let me go, expressing his deep regret, not only for the performance, but for me. He knew then, as I did not, how much I would eventually lament my choice. Someone else sang the solo. The show went on without me entirely. I couldn’t even bring myself to go, I was so ashamed.

And in many ways, I still am.

I am not a person who lives with many regrets. I fuck up, things go wrong, I learn from them and usually see these detours with some equanimity. This too, taught me something tremendously valuable; I am afraid and I might falter, but I forge ahead nevertheless. In truth, this has probably lead to more emotional pain than any other philosophy I subscribe to, but I do not ever find myself dwelling on how things might have gone, should my courage have not failed me.

*There needs to be an umlaut over that a, but I can’t figure it out.

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