I hear water pushing past granitic forms like antlers cutting past snow ladened wind — elemental and musical, tooth and nail. Pine and fir are rusting in a smoky breeze. I smell the rot of dead salmon.
Closer to the lake, the kokanee are running. I stand on a cut bank, look out over their neon bodies and watch them stack up in a deep pool, ritualistic, mildly pissy and faithful to their ancestry. I, too, must make my journey, pass upward against the current, be cut down by wind, whittled by water and refined by flame.
Two boulders down, I see a sipper surface. I open my fly box and choose again.