Grab Your Hat

Billy Holiday crooned these lyrics during the 1930s, Satchmo’s horn section wailing behind her. The USA was in a funk. Jobs were scarce; bankers stood in soup kitchen lines next to cab drivers.  Billy wanted us to shake off our miseries.

Sound familiar? Got the election blues?

Tomorrow, at breakfast, reach over and turn off your iPad or close your laptop (careful not to knock over your coffee cup). Grab the remote; turn off the TV. Forget breaking news, unless the news is that there is a fire in your basement. Why do you need bloviating talking heads whose function is to rile you up? Better you should pick up the cell phone and call your brother in Rahway or your sister in St Louis and ask them how they are doing. Go to the ice cream parlor when it opens at 10 o’clock and order a banana split, cherries on top (extra whipped cream, you have my permission).

Another possibility is to join me and my son Hutch on a trout fishing expedition, our sunny side of the street. Join us in his yellow Defender as we nose up in the early AM to the side of Rocky Mountain Anglers, a fly-fishing emporium in Boulder, CO. We find a gaggle of expectant folks clad in LL Bean gear awaiting assignment to their guides for the day. We shake hands with our guide Ethan, an athletic, curly-haired 20-something with an engaging smile. We hope the smile is still there at day’s end.

The first business is to try on chest waders and boots. The waders fit well, but the leather boots have been through the Crimean wars, have as many gullies and ravines as Keith Richard’s face. I tug, groan and wheeze to get mine on. Next, we are handed a legal document to sign that releases RMA from responsibility for injuries we may suffer from rutting moose or elk. Nothing in it about RMA’s responsibility for a troutless day.

Transportation for the day is Ethan’s venerable Town and Country van, “Betsy.” Betsy has been his ride since he was sixteen and has chugged over 150,000 miles. He opens the trunk on a cornucopia of fly-fishing gear, coolers, and camping paraphernalia There is a patina of scattered debris from a hundred fishing trips. A crack in the windshield sallies from one corner to the next. A talisman, an antique quill bobber, painted and lacquered like a Faberge egg, dangles from the rearview mirror.

Our drive to the Rocky Mountain National Park parallels the Flat Iron Range for miles and then ascends west. We learn that Ethan is an Environmental Engineering major at CU, a few credits shy of a degree. A grandfather of a new CU student myself, I have learned that the University of Colorado is referred to as “CU,” not “UC.” Comparably puzzling, Hutch went to an establishment known simply as “The U.” Go figure.  

We pass through a park entrance gate, staffed by a friendly green-clad ranger. I show her my Senior Lifetime Park Pass. I flash on a scene decades ago when My Life’s Editor and Hutch chatted with a lady ranger in her Smokey the Bear hat. They leaned, peering over the precipice of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, while far behind them I clutched a scrub oak for dear life. Buzzards circled below.

The park has “free stone” streams, fed by glacier and snow melt rather than springs. They drop quickly down the mountain over rocks and boulders, with pools and runs. Surrounded by aspen, spruce and pine, the streams are gin-clear, eye candy to a Floridian. They are also full of trout, some immigrants like the brook trout and the rainbow, and some native, like the cutthroat. All of them are wary, having seen easily as many fly fishermen as the head count at a MAGA rally. In these small streams a 12-inch fish is considered a brute.

Having geared up beside old Betsy, we walk a distance to a stream, fly rods armed and ready. Ethan spots trout loitering in a small pool. He instructs us to tread carefully along the bank as we approach. Fish have a lateral line on their body that detects water movement and pressure changes. If we tromp heavily, they feel the vibe and say, “Whoa, another damn fly fisherman,” and sulk.

As the oldest and baldest, I get first cast. The wind, a fly fisherman’s bane, is swirling but I manage to drop a dry fly where it is supposed to go. An obliging trout says, “Hey, there’s lunch,” and whacks it. I jerk back like I had put my hand on a stove, hooking the fly in a bush. The trout sneers at my performance, lamenting the recent decline in angler quality, and flees the scene. We move on to another pool where we howdy a shiny black mink, who has also been fishing. We do catch trout, beautiful cutthroats with a rosy patch on their gill covers.

On to a new fishing spot, where Ethan sets out folding camp chairs in a trail head lot, and we plop down to lunch. Hutch has opted for an Italian sandwich on ciabatta bread and me a smoked salmon with cream cheese, capers, onion and tomato. In mid-munch I recall the park ranger we met at our first stop. He had been shooing a bear away with a paint ball gun. I glance around.  Would I have to fight for my smoked salmon hand to claw? We see a mule deer with her faun, partway up the hillside, also lunching. The only bump in my road of bliss is that I need an assist getting my bum out of the chair.

Walking back to Betsy from an afternoon’s fishing, we pass a contingent of yellow-vested park rangers on the trail, carrying digging equipment, rope and other work gear. They are friendly and capable looking. I feel reassured that the park is in good hands. We hear an elk bugling. It is the beginning of rutting season, and the guys are stating their case for the ladies.  At the roadside, visitors stand beside their cars, cameras focused on the elk responding to their primal urges.

On the drive home we are righteously tired. Ethan has his Spotify station on, and Tanya Tucker leads us, as we sing, thumping out the beat:

Delta Dawn, what’s that flower you’ve got on

Could it be a faded rose from days gone by ….

A mellow day, on my sunny side of the street.

The Sunny Side of the Street lyrics © Reservoir Media Management Inc

Delta Dawn by Alex Harvey (Country) & Larry Collins