The Life and Times of the Plume

I cannot believe my ears and mind were able to isolate the sound in the first place.  It’s a miracle that I heard it.  I was running on a single track, my footsteps driving me forward through the woods in rhythmic, soft thumps.  The wind was in the scrub maple and aspen, the dogs were crashing through underbrush on the hunt for voles, chipmunks and grouse.  In the swirling ocean of sound around me, I heard a still, small noise — the soft licking tone of a trout nose breaking the surface of water.  I stopped as soon as I heard it, my upper body and knees objecting to inertia, and I slowly turned my head to the right, to look down into the clear, cold waters of City Creek.  My eyes adjusted to the play of shadow and light on the surface of the water and there, in the rapidly moving translucence strewn with twigs and last summers leaves, I saw the speckled back of a native cutthroat trout, busy with the calm and stabilizing flutter of fins and tail; treading space and time.

I gasped aloud to myself!  It was a nice little fish, I estimate it was eight inches in length which sounds like nothing to write home about, I know, but allow me to tell you about City Creek.  City Creek is a spring creek that flows, year round, off the West Bench of the Portneuf Valley.  It runs cold, clear and bright, as spring creeks do.  At its widest, it might measure four feet in width.  While there are some deeper pools on it’s course, it is, for the most part, roughly three inches deep.  It is precious to me because Robert and I are the sole owners of water rights to this creek and its waters have fed and grown our property here in Pocatello since it was first established as a fruit orchard 117 years ago.  Our water rights are historic and deeded to our property.  Water rights in the West are a holy thing, people use to kill each other over water here and there’s still a lot of fighting that goes on regarding every drop that comes out of the sky and off the mountains in the interior West.  The water is our lifeblood, our livelihood, the thing that dictates the quality of our existence in many ways; it’s also the stuff we stalk in search of some of the most beautiful critters on God’s green earth: trout.

Beyond the actual implications of basically owning the water in City Creek, I view this water as one of the crown jewels of our home.  The West bench rises up from our property here in Pocatello and I view the mountains I see out the front windows of my home as my front yard — a space I play in every single day and take great delight in exploring.  To have seen, for the first time in my seven years of life in this valley, a native trout in what I consider to be my creek, was nothing short of a miracle.  A miracle!

Furthermore, just past our home, City Creek plunges off a nine foot tall cement wall that was installed in 1965 to help control flooding in the heart of Oldtown.  This is the other reason why seeing this fish shocked me out of my skin — it’s old stock.  I consider it impossible for any fish to have recently made its way up City Creek from the Portneuf River!

As I stood there on the bank of my creek and looked down into the water at my miracle trout, I heard him rise to kiss the air a few more times and marveled at the music of the sound that plucks at the heartstrings of fly fishermen and fisherwomen around the world.  Is there any music quite like trout rising up against the thinness of the sky to simply touch the air with a blunt nose or slurp a bug off the seam that stitches the heavens to the waters?  I think not.  It’s a sound I live for, it’s a sound that drives me mad, it’s a sound that calms the senses.  I crouched down and stayed there, watching my fish skitter about the shallows, until he hit a splashy pocket of water beside a large stone and was carried away by the current, down the mountain, closer to the sea.  I sighed aloud, stayed there a while longer, in the absence of time, in the shade of the woods, on the edge of a trout home, on the narrow and rippling shoreline of a speckled life lesson.

Eventually, I picked myself up off the creek bank and kept on running up the trail, passing in and out of light and shadows, feeling my skin warm in the sunshine as the wind combed my hair.  I was thinking hard about that trout and pulling forth the life lessons and truths from his appearance in my life that afternoon.  I thought about how steadily that fish approached life no matter the strength of the current or the depth of the water.  He simply navigated, to the very best of his abilities, the waters he found himself in.  I thought about persistence, longevity, survival, simplicity, legacy and as always, the notion of home.

My feet carried me higher up the mountain, into the arms of the wind and the warm spice of the juniper stands.  I felt my mind relax as I fell into the space and calm that comes to me when I run big distances — the place where the world around me seems to pause and pulse with delicate details and infinite opportunity, the place I physically, emotionally and mentally break free of my shackles.  I covered many miles, pushed up and over switchbacks built of mafic rubble, entered deeper into the sunshine and bluebird sky, and somewhere along the way I felt my true, free-self, gently press up against the smooth surface of the world around me and I know I made that same music the trout makes when it reaches up to touch the sky.

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I’m pairing up with Orvis for the next while to help them celebrate women and men who love the outdoors.  They are currently holding a photo contest with plenty of great, quality prizes.  You can enter images in the contest with your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter accounts using the hashtags #orvis and #findyourpause .

The photo contest is for USA-icans only and is open until May 20th — so hurry up, submit a few photos and get inspired for the summer months and that good old outdoor living.