Monday, February 18, 2019

Fragments: Craig, MT - Aug 2014


It exists for only one purpose. Trout. It wouldn't be here without them.

An easy vibe, older gents in their Simms and Patagonia puffies and quick-dries; younger wearing the same but somehow making it look different. Hats, sunglasses hung around necks. Three fly shops, a restaurant, a bar, a takeout breakfast. And cabins. Talk at Headhunters and Isaac's is easy and jovial. Everyone’s been or is going fishing so what’s there to complain about?

Mornings are abuzz with the comings and goings of drift boats. Anticipation of a big day. Whether it’s realized or not it’s all good, or it should be.

Big portions for big appetites. Dogs come and go everywhere making it a good place by my reckoning.

The world is away. Cell phone and wifi signals are scarce so you quickly get used to being disconnected, adding a small melancholy based in shared loneliness. An isolation.

At the bunkhouse:
“Got room for three people?”
“What kind of people?”

Do any other kind come to Craig?


Note: Not much going on, either here on the blog or out on the water. To jumpstart these pages I've taken to leafing through my ragged pile of old travel journals and attempting to decipher the barely legible notes scribbled within them. Low hanging fruit for a writer on the rebound. This, then, starts a series of brief Fragments. Unedited passages originating from hither and yon that might have evolved into something but were ultimately left to languish in their moleskines. Raw material relegated to musings, word pictures, and random odd thoughts. Unconsidered, undeveloped, unread fragments.

Until now.

Monday, February 11, 2019

Mike's Gone Missin'...


No one’s seen him ‘round these parts in months, nigh on a year. Not since McMinnville. Some say those Tennessee backwaters swallowed him up whole or that a big mama musky ate him as a snack, the bony little bastard. Others claim he’s giggin' with some skanky blues band, touring the dive bars and low places along the Gulf coast for gas money and beer. Getting thrown out of most. And there’s a lady in Pittsboro that swears he’s off working on the next Great American Novel. But, let’s face it, if he’s writing it ain't on no novel. More likely he’d be stuck in an endless editing loop on an obscure six hundred-word piece, hoping some fly fishing mag might lower their standards, just enough.

Sure, there have been sightings. Unsubstantiated, of course. Odd trickles of reports. Idaho. Michigan. The Louisiana marshlands and south Georgia swamps. Then there's the quiet suggestions that the fishin’s been shit around his home waters for so long that he’s given up the sport entirely - and with it, his soul. Who knows? One thing’s for sure. Wherever he’s been, it hasn’t been here. This blog's been silent as a tomb.

But lately, there have been whispers…