Blessings From The Trout Lily

            I was beyond excited; for the experience of an adventure of course, but even more to simply have the opportunity to “Get out of Dodge.”  It’s probably been said that, “Too much of a good thing is too much.”  I’d been feeling that way about a few things all school-year long; especially in regard to things that were once considered good.  So when the chance to finally take a personal day presented itself, and when I found that it could be spent trout fishing with my Dad, I jumped on it.

            Following a good service at church, my wife and I came home, ate lunch, and went to school to work on lesson plans while preparing for the week.  It seemed to take forever while the clock on the wall announced each individual second with a tick.  I finished what I needed to do and set it all up accordingly, after more hours than I care to admit, but not before my Dad had already arrived at our house and was sitting in the driveway waiting for us to return.

            I mention these things only to show the anticipation that was building.  I grabbed my gear that was already lying out, and then quickly packed a bag while heating up some food to take with me for dinner.  We planned to drive North for a couple of hours, spend the night in a hotel, and then finish the last bit of driving in the morning so we could be standing in running water shortly after the sun rose over the horizon.

            After saying goodbye to my wife, my Dad and I hit the road.  We talked most of the way about what was going on in our lives.  We slept well, and were the first ones to arrive at the continental breakfast in the morning.  We had to lift the chairs down off the tables, and the gravy for the biscuits was still cold, but we really didn’t care; those were simply the details of what actually did happen.

            When we arrived at our destination, after a beautiful drive along high ridges and deep valleys, it was with a sigh of relief.  Two days out from the opening day of trout season in Wisconsin, and we had the place to ourselves.  It’s one of the blessings of going fishing on a weekday.

            The walk down to the creek is on a footpath that hugs the East side of a steep ravine.  Water trickled along the vertex to the angled sides, and when it opened up into a level valley floor, spring wild flowers abounded.  Most notable was the skunk cabbage in the soft, wet soil, but along the slightly higher ground the trout lily was also in full bloom.  It’s a small little plant, but it makes up for it in its beauty.  The yellow flowers go without saying, but the two leaflets that form the body of the plant are colored a mottled brown and green, much like the markings on the back of the speckled, brook trout; hence it’s name.

Flowers Of The Skunk Cabbage

Skunk Cabbage

The Trout Lily

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            We spent the better part of the day fishing; by that I mean from the early morning to the late afternoon.  We ate our packed lunches after each of us had caught a nice sized brown trout.  We ate sitting on a sandy bank while listening to the gurgling water that swirled against a rock walled bluff.  Once we finished, we walked around in the bright sun, capturing its welcome warmth.  It was then that I took some pictures of the trout lily.

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            We totaled ten hours out along the creek that day; most of it was spent fishing.  I assured my Dad, shortly after he commented about the day, that I doubted too many 78 year olds could do what we had done.  To finish the endeavor we had about a 40 minute hike up a hill, and out of the valley, to get back to his car.  It’s a trek; let me tell you, especially in waders!

            We each did well that day.  Dad caught 8 fish, and I caught 12.  All of them were good looking brown trout.  A majority of them we released, but we did keep a few to share as a meal with our families later this spring.

            The highlights were numerous.  Most notable was the scenery and setting.  It’s one of my Dad’s favorite places, which is why we went.  The fishing was decent too; just enough action to keep us going.  The birds and spring peepers provided the behind the scene symphony; an encore to the blue skies.  A marked first was the discovery of the Northern Brook Lamprey; spawning in groups along the gravel bottomed shallows.  It’s a native to these waters; small, a filter feeder, short lived, and interesting to watch.  The pinnacle of the fishing came on the last straightaway before we got out of the water.  I was up on a high bank scouting ahead of where my Dad was casting.  Following a near hit when a 12 to 14 inch brown trout shot out, took a swipe at his lure (missing), and then sulked away, I could see he was approaching a nice run that had some depth to it.  Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a flash of gold in that very run.  I was sure there was a slab of trout in that section.  I told my Dad I would help guide him into position; where to stand, and where to cast.  I had an excellent view of the situation from where I was standing back on the bank.  His first cast went through the tail of the run without any action.  His second cast landed in the middle of that run where it was a little deeper, and he instantly had a hit from the brown trout I had predicted.  I hopped down off the bank onto a sand bar, and scooped it into my net for him.  It was a great way to end our day in the creek; a last fish on the last cast.

The Northern Brook Lamprey

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            We arrived in a small town for a late night dinner.  The burger tasted delicious after a day spent outside.  We arrived at my house a few minutes before 11:00, and Dad was home by 11:20.  I made it to bed by midnight after putting my gear away.

            It was a much needed day.  It was a good day too; a blessing in a lot of ways.  Etched now in the memories of my mind, I will consider that day fishing with dad a blessing from the trout lily.

            See you along The Way…

The Mark

  

I love maps; love to get the boys together on a slow winter afternoon and pour over them, find places – sometimes right up the road – where none of us have ever been.

            “You ever get up in here?”

            “No. You?”

And that faraway look goes around the table from fisherman to fisherman.

Fly Fishing Small Streams (1989) – By John Gierach

            It was after the fact when I first made the connection.  I had perhaps been shown the map long before as a boy, but its relevancy failed to register at the time if indeed I had. 

            Almost twenty one years ago now I caught my first trout.  It was during the summer of 1997, just a few months after my son was born.  I had attempted to catch them several different times while growing up, but it was to no avail.  For the last two decades or so I’ve been able to make up for lost time, however, and reconnect with my lineage.

            The map had belonged to my Grandpa Orlo.  He had hunted, and fished, and explored the Northland of Michigan when much of it was still wild in the first half of the last century.  It was during a time when going “Up North” took the better part of a day or so as the roads were only two lanes.  One had to travel from small town to small town back then, and if you branched off from those small state highways you most likely would work your way down to dirt roads and narrow two-tracks.

Grandpa Orlo-Around 1930

            Orlo died when my own Dad was just 14 years old, but the nostalgia of him is none-the-less set deep in my mind.  Black and white pictures, and stories passed down, add to his lore.  The irony is that I was born just a stone’s throw from an area he often stayed at with his family and friends when he wanted to “get away” up North.  But it’s his old map that haunts me.  It’s not a haunting fueled by fear, or anxiousness, or uncertainty.  It’s restlessness.  Perhaps it’s more of a restlessness bound by the spirit of adventure.  I’ve been introspective about that thread of my character, and have self analyzed it to the point of trying to understand if I feel like I have to prove something or live up to something.  In my own diagnosis it’s more about making a connection to a missing piece of the puzzle; a piece of my heritage; a piece connected to the mark on that map that not too long ago I didn’t even know existed.  In fact, as my other three grandparents lived well into their 90’s, it’s one of the only unknowns in my link to my past.

            My Dad helped bridge that gap to Grandpa Orlo.  While both my Mom and Dad invested their time in nurturing my love for the outdoors, Dad connected me to the fishing aspect.  Tales of his days on the rivers and streams are likewise etched into my mind.  I’ve been fortunate to have walked and fished some of those same classic waters my Dad often fished.  Since then my Dad and I have even christened some of our own waters together.  But even his stories are linked to a calling from the past.  It all comes back to that old, faded map that he has.  It’s held sacredly in a leather briefcase; a satchel for all intents and purposes.

Dad and Teddy - 1965

            The map is a Michigan Road Atlas that was copy written four years after my Dad was born, in the throes of World War II.  It was used I’m sure a few years after, when life and the world as a whole was a bit more grounded.  It was then that the map received the mark.  It’s a mark that’s hardly noticeable, written in a dull pencil, and drawn in an obscure part of the state.  Orlo drew that mark; an “X” really, at the end of a trailing, twisting line that extended up from a small town in Northern Lower Michigan.

            Enter my cousins and me.  For the better part of ten years now we’ve met, bonded, and rooted ourselves within the North Country over a camping expedition.  We camp an easy drive from the area where I was raised; out in the “sticks” and “back-country” as they say.  That first year, 2008 to be exact, we explored the area’s rivers and tried to get our bearings on the best places to go; our favorite places to go.  It was the last day of that first year’s outing, while out driving and exploring, that we happen chanced upon a small river that immediately captured our hearts.  It was the setting.  It was the waters.  It was all of these parts bound together in a synergistic sort of way that hasn’t released its grip on us yet.  In fact, it’s only been tightened.  Each year since, we set aside a day, a holy day really, to spend alongside that snaking waterway.  We arrive early, cook breakfast (sometimes even adding the area’s blueberries to our pancakes), fish, rest (sometimes after a run and swim), cook a dinner of brats, sauerkraut, and beans, and then head back to our base camp at dusk.  It’s a day well spent.  Fishing the sandy bottomed currents with its deep bends, for the elusive, beautifully marked trout, is only one small facet of what makes the area and excursion so enticing year after year.

Brad, Brian, Sean, and Me - The First Year: 2008

            What happened was innocent enough, but while sitting and talking at my parent’s house three years ago now, the subject turned to fishing, “back home”, and maps.  My Dad went downstairs and came back up with that brown, leather satchel.  In it was the (now coveted) map.  It instantly became the missing link when I saw the penciled mark; the “X”.  The mark was located on the river of our dreams where we spend that holiest of days each year.  Incredibly it was just a few bends down from the hillside ridge where we typically camp out for the day.  I could hardly believe what I was seeing.  After explaining to my Dad the coincidental connection between where my cousins and I fish each summer and the mark on Grandpa Orlo’s map, I quickly took a picture.  I sent the picture with a text to my cousins who were equally excited.  We now had a direct association with our Grandpa.  He obviously must have felt a bond to the location to have placed an “X” on his map.  We, his grandsons, had unknowingly discovered that same relationship to this tract of land hidden deep in the North Country.

            A veil had been removed, a mystery revealed, and a piece of the puzzle put into place once we discovered the mark on that map.  Fishing an out of the way, special place had been our original objective, but it has become much more than that now.  Seventy years ago our Grandpa walked these same sacred banks and fished these same clear waters.  Can you imagine what it looked like seventy years ago?  Can you imagine if he could know that his grandsons had found this place to be equally sacred?  Some of our favorite white pines line that river.  It’s Michigan’s official state tree.  My cousins and I have taken a bazillion pictures of those hallowed trees that were most likely small seedlings when the North Country was first lumbered off in the late 1800’s.  They are considered the originals by today’s standards.  Their boughs, the boughs that whisper secret stories of the past with the ridge’s easy breezes, often shade us on our excursions and meanderings on that one special day we spend there each summer.  It’s a day we set aside reverently apart from our base camp on another river a few miles away.  Those same pine boughs once shaded and whispered to our Grandpa Orlo as young trees.  He spent that time walking the same ground and fishing the same waters.  It’s holy ground now, as it was then, and more than worthy of a precious, faded, mark on an old map.

            See you along The Way…

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The Picture Album

2009

2010

2012

2013

2014

2015 - At "The Mark"

2017

The Day Camp

Breakfast (Wild Blueberries Added)

Dinner (Brats, Kraut, Beans)

The Fish

A Leaping Trout

Sean - 2011

Brad - 2013

Mike - 2013

Brian - 2013

A Favorite White Pine

A T-shirt To Commemorate " The Mark"

Finishing My Journal Entry For This Blog On A Cold, Blustery. Spring/Winter Day

Afternoon At The River's Edge

Heading Out In The Old Jeep

                This afternoon I had the opportunity to take two of my nephews into the great outdoors for an adventure.  I took my younger sister's boys to one of “Uncle Mike’s Favorite Places.”  As a result of the recent flooding, the banks of the river I took them to were covered in mounds of freshly deposited sand.  It was the kind of sandy beach only a person from the Midwest could truly appreciate; perfect for the beginning of our Spring Break.

            After hiking through the woods we came upon an ideal place to call our own for a few hours.  We broke up some branches for firewood, and then while I cooked the food, they talked, played and threw sand and sticks into the water.  It seemed like the right thing to do with mildly warm temperatures.  The river bank itself helped block the wind that had been blowing fairly hard most of the day; enough that it allowed each of us the luxury to peel off our coat.

            The boys thought the taste of the food made it one of their favorite meals, and after topping it off with seconds and a cup of hot cocoa, they went back to playing at the river’s edge.  They talked, jumped, and splashed.  I took some pictures of them while gradually packing up our gear.  The skies cleared and turned blue, revealing crystal clear water.

            When I said, “Well boys, are you ready to pack up and head back?”  My younger nephew said, “No!  We want to live here.  It’s a perfect place for two boys to run around and play tag!”  Hmmmmm.  I loved that response and thought to myself, “No argument here.”

            Eventually we did head out; stopping only to pick up the occasional old bottle or can discarded in the woods, or to squish a puffball mushroom left from last fall, or to climb on a fallen tree trunk.  Before reaching my old Jeep, I had the boys place their hands on the bark of an old green ash tree.  This last week the last male of the nearly extinct northern white rhino died.  Now, due to the exotic emerald ash borer beetle, the green ash tree is following the fate of the rhino.  I wanted a picture of their hands on a tree that may be a forgotten memory by the time they are my age.  They also hugged a giant of a cottonwood; a grandmother tree.  Together the three of us couldn’t even encircle it when holding onto hands.  We were about a foot and a half short.  The tree is simply massive.

The Boy's Hands On A Green Ash Tree-A Dying Species

New Moss Shoots

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            By the time we were halfway home, the boys had fallen asleep due to the day’s fresh air and sunshine.  It obviously was a great afternoon to spend at the river’s edge.

            See you along The Way…

Heading Back In The Old Jeep   : )