Monday, July 20, 2020

Soft~Hackle Journal July~August


                                                     Isolation Diary


 
                                                        Placement:

A central focus on theme (placement) yet the internal narrative elastic & nuanced, stretching out to explore arising avenues & convergences.
                                                   
In a country of rivers & mountains without end; the aspens a million hands clapping in a hall forever lonesome.
                                            
Thunder clouds drum from the far, high Kootenay; sedges stir in nervous swarms above the pines, anticipating sundown.

The afternoon shower drives hard against the river stones, bowing the painted daisies to an assemblage of garish supplicants.

A dark traveler, the angry elephant head cloud drifts to the south & the sun breaks out bright as a hubcap.

Moisture steams from the hot slopes condensing to wisps of cloud rising like the smoke of ancient battles not yet dissipated.

Let go. The trajectory is secretly mapped on the brightening void air. Place the fly. Now. Without thinking.


Watercolor & Ink ~ Doris Loiseau



       

                                               Easy Trout Spey Leader

Here’s how to build a good 15’ wetfly leader to fish with a floating line: 2½’ of 30# mono / 5’ of 20# fluoro / 5’ of 12# fluoro / add 2½’ of  10# or 8# flouro. A rigging ring added to the 12# section gives the 15’ leader more versatility; or a ring attached to the end of the 15’ leader allows attaching lighter tippet for up to a 20’ leader for fishing wee soft-hackles over hatches. I like fluoro for a bit more surface penetration, though the entire leader can be built with mono for top-fishing. The 30# mono butt section provides good transition & a bit of stretch behind the fluoro tippet. 
   

B.C. Sky ~ Bruce Kruk

 
                                                  The Reel News









 
 Review: 
The Aquaz Trinity Wading Jacket

Not really in the habit of endorsing products & don’t do it unless I’m so impressed with the utilitarian usefulness & value of a piece of gear I’m moved to tell my readers about it. Being duly impressed with my Aquaz waders now going into the fourth year of guiding without a leak, I think it will do well to mention the Aquaz Trinity wading jacket, for those who may be shopping for a pro quality fishing jacket at an affordable price.  (I would say Aquaz quality is on par with Patagonia, while the price point is about middle of the pack).

 The Trinity jacket is made of the same waterproof, 3-layer breathable material as the Aquaz waders. I am hard to fit, being somewhere between a medium & a large, in most cases a medium. I ordered the jacket in medium & found it to be a perfect fit, with enough room to accommodate a heavy wool or down sweater worn underneath. 

All seams are taped & reinforced & the pockets tacked.

The shoulder/back section is caped & ventilated. The hood is billed & roomy, with three adjustment pulls to shape it the way you need it. The hood rolls into the collar, & the collar may be worn up or down. The inside of the collar is lined with a soft, fleece fabric, as are the hand-warmer pockets. 

 The pockets are impressive, seven in all, three on each side of the front, the handwarmer pockets & two ample tackle pockets on each side, one equipped with a row of rings for hanging leader spools & whatnots. You don’t need a vest or bag with this jacket, as it will carry all you could reasonably want in your trip kit (perfect for spey). And the back of the Trinity is double-layered to form a storage pouch occupying the entire back of the jacket, accessible through waterproof zippers located at both sides of the back. The back storage will hold a lot of stuff – water bottle, lunch, extra clothing, whatever.  


Sculpin tied by Bill Shuck




                                               At The Tying Bench

Red Drake Mayfly



Red Drake is king of the upper Columbia until the end of July. This big mayfly is actually a form of E. Grandis, (Green Drake), though mahogany colored, not green. It is an important mayfly in some of the Columbia tributaries. Mature nymphs are the same color as adults, so the wetfly I fish while drakes are present simulates an emerger, cripple, or  drowned adult.    
  



Red Drake ~ hook: #8 TMC 200R ~ thread: rust-brown UNI 8/0 ~ tailing: pheasant swords ~ rib: yellow-gold 'D' rod wrapping thread ~ body: mahogany SST dubbing ~ wing: black hen ~ collar: red-brown hen ~ head: bit of dubbing


After drakes have had their day we’re back to caddis, & also a #16 ginger mayfly present in the mix of sedges into September. 

Ginger Mayfly ~ hook: #16 ~ thread: yellow UNI 8/0 or silk ~ tailing: coq de leon barbs ~ rib: silver wire ~ body: natural amber seal dubbed ~ hackle: light ginger hen 

Late Summer Sedge ~ hook: #12-#16 ~ thread: tan ~ body: light olive or waxed yellow silk with a thorax of hare's mask ~ half-wing: bit of Hareline UV Shrimp Pink Dub ~ hackle: brahma hen or brown partridge

Copper Sedge ~ hook: #12-#16 ~ thread: brown ~ rib: silver wire ~ body: copper tinsel with a thorax of hare's mask mixed witha bit of UV shrimp pink dubbing


Watercolor & Ink ~ Doris Loiseau





                                         A Barbarian from the West

Emperor Wu: Why, Bodhidharma, do you come from the West?

Bodhidharma: Waves on the river.

Emperor Wu assails: What pious deeds have you done? What merit have you gained?

Bodhidharma: No merit.

Emperor Wu: Then what is the first principle of the Holy Teaching?

Bodhidharma: Vast emptiness, nothing holy.

Emperor Wu demands: And who is confronting me?

Bodhidharma: I don’t know.

From there, Bodhidharma travels north until he comes to a row of cedars. Beneath the cedars he cuts off his eyelids so that he cannot fall asleep; & trilliums spring from the ground where his eyelids fall.  





Watercolor & Ink ~ Jan Cottrell

 Soft~Hackle Journal is a bi-monthly online magazine dedicated to the art of fly fishing, powered by the donations of its readers. 

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Soft~Hackle Journal May / June



                                                       Isolation Diary

Always been a sucker for old wooden boats. Paid too much for the one in flames, above, & it was already too far gone for restoration at the time I bought it. But I’m an optimist & have been for the last four years while the old drifter aged under the pine trees in the yard. And no it didn’t age like fine wine. It aged like plywood left shamefully out in the weather. Until I noticed the rotting bottom had sprouted a fairly good crop of jackpine seedlings.

Sometimes you just have to let things go & admit a loss. I suspect a lot of us are confronting that right now.  Don’t let it pull you off the high ground, ladies & gentlemen. Everything changes. Everything passes.



Time for a poem.

A lot of snowpack on the mountains this year & it is melting fast with warm weather & rain. The spate has swollen the home water over the banks & into the trees already. It looks apocalyptic juxtaposed with present events, yet we know that it means renewal.

                                            Anthropocene Memory

Contemplating Tung Po’s poem & the peace is broken. The rumble of an approaching wave & a fighter jet making the daily border run vaults                              from behind the ridge, hunting low. Tilted to a diving arc the jet claws down the smoky sky & roars down the swollen river course – pines on the bluffs turning red from the beetles.

                                                            ~                                                         
The river writhes bearing the loosened detritus of country ragged &                                          worried at the edges – traumatized landscapes & topsoil of the Pend Oreille & Flathead valleys. The wracked & splayed medusas of upended roots carried on the spate’s silver tipped shoulders.

                                                            ~
A fallen tamarack. A drowned mouse. An emptied & crushed beer can & a spent condom. The severed jawbone of a slaughtered wolf inching over bottom stones. Secret poison & the quicksilver dream of a tiny mayfly – the stained river a canticle of heartbreak whispers hinting shadows passing like the memory of fish – like the muscle memory of arms & hands.

                                                            ~
Resurrection lays hidden asleep beneath the shifting silt awaiting a word that cannot be written or spoken.

                                                             ~ 
                                                Everything passes.

                                                             ~                                                            
And who resists the ambiguous torrent even knowing? Sidestepping a dreadful dream, careful to conceal my executioner heart, repeating a gesture,
I lift the rod & hurl an offering to the dazzling void. 


 
                                                    The Reel News










                                           Aquaz Wader Review

I never do a paid endorsement though, once in awhile, when I use a product that I feel is an outstanding value to SHJ readers, I do a voluntary review of that product. Aquaz waders have been around for awhile & are a favorite among some professional guides in the PNW who are savvy, though are just beginning to get some traction in the land of name recognition marketing that is America.

A few years ago, on the advice of a guide friend, Jeff Cottrell, I ordered some Aquaz, felt-soled, bootfoot chest waders like the Evening Hatch guides where wearing on the Klickitat. While visiting there I’d been impressed with the obvious quality & also the natural colors of the Aquaz waders. 

When mine arrived & I tried them on I was pleased to find they were the best fitting waders I’d ever pulled on. Each size comes in regular-cut & full-cut, allowing for a fairly tailored fit. The rubber boots, though heavier than lightweight wading boots, feature built-in, cushy, neoprene linings that hug your feet providing a snug, form fit. The boots are supportive & don’t flop around.

Of course the Aquaz are available in stockingfoot models as well. And for those of us whose bladders are shrinking toward the size of a penny balloon, they are also available with a zippered front so as to allow easy, quick access to the nozzle. That’ll be my next pair. If I can ever wear my first pair of Aquaz waders out.

I need good equipment for my guide work. I’m in waders about 150 days a year. And I like a good value, I’m not rich. Been using the Aquaz waders for three years now & haven’t even developed a single pinhole leak, & the half-inch thick felt soles are barely showing wear. That’s a first. I usually get, at most, two years out of a pair of waders, & by then they are plastered with Shoe Goop.    

After a three-year trial, I would rate Aquaz waders equal to the best in quality, while the price point is pleasantly lower. In my opinion these are the best value in waders available.

I have an Aquaz wading jacket on my wish list as well. Here’s a review of the Aquaz Trinity jacket – & I also like the looks & the price of the Kenai jacket on the Aquaz site:

Here’s a review of the Aquaz zippered waders: https://www.tu.org/blog/aquaz-dryzip-waders__trashed/

Aquaz, partnered with TU, is working on a habitat restoration project on the North Oregon coast called the Salmon Super Highway (SSH). Aquaz is giving back, having agreed to donate 25% of each product sale from its website to SSH.

                         Aquaz Products: https://www.aquazfishing.com/


 
                                               At the Tying Bench

 At last, as the merry month of May wraps up & the river rises, the two major hatches of May & early June are underway. The arrival of these two completely unrelated insect species, the grannom caddis & the carpenter ant, occurs simultaneously, hence I fish imitations of both, as a tandem rig, a grannom softie trailing behind the ant.

Carpenter ant mating flights occur on warm, sunny days.  The ants are everywhere & many end up falling on the river where the trout are waiting for them. This simple thread ant is my favorite. 
Carpenter Ant ~ hook: #8 ~ thread/body: UNI 3/0 wound to form the body shape ~ hackle: black or furnace hen ~ coat the body with head cement or Hard As Nails

Grannom Pupa
 
Grannom emerges mid-day through the afternoon with egg-laying flights gathering in the afternoon & occurring into evening. On my home water the best fishing begins late afternoon when a lot of spent egg-layers have accumulated on the water. Emerging pupae are various shades of olive over the abdomen with shades of brown through the thorax area. Adults are nearly black over the body with subtly mottled, tannish-grayish wings. A plain old Partridge & Peacock is usually good fished over the spinner fall. Here's some grannom patterns I like:

Partridge & Peacock

Grannom Pupa/Emerger ~ #14 hook ~ thread: brown ~ hackle: partridge ~ rib: silver wire ~ body: olive dubbing with thorax of brown (rabbit) dubbing

Grannom Spinner ~ #14-#16 ~ thread: black ~ hackle: partridge ~ egg sack: highlander green UNI yarn ~ rib: silver wire ~ body: peacock herl

Grannom Spinner ~ #14-#16 ~ thread: black ~ hackle: partridge ~ egg sack: highlander green UNI yarn ~ body: a few strands of black midge flash twisted with the tag of the tying thread & a thorax of 50/50 black & brown rabbit


Rootbeer Spade ~ Henry Loiseau Graphics




  A dark comedy of sorts:                                                         
                                                                    The Silent Pines



          Bill carried his boots not wanting to clunk through the house and wake Ada. The brown western cut polyester suit fit him too snug. He’d decided he didn’t need the necktie.

     In the kitchen he poured a cup of yesterday’s coffee, heated it in the microwave, then drank it black and bitter while watching the first light of day spread along the flat horizon beyond the kitchen window. A skiff of fresh snow covered the ground and lined the bare limbs of a tree in the yard. He drank the cup empty, placed it on the table, then pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket and propped it against the cup so that it would stand out above the clutter of bill and notice envelopes filed on the table.

     He pulled his boots on, took his hat from a peg by the door and walked outside. His footsteps crushed the dry snow with a sound like groans. The sky sagged. Signs, he figured. The world was losing its light and a secret foulness ranged afoot. Bad damn luck. He spat.

     Passing the pickup truck parked in the barnyard he caught his distorted reflection in the side window, the head freakish, elongated. Averting his eyes, he plowed on. The pickup would not take him where he needed to go that day.

     At the barn, he threw a few handfuls of oats into the trough in the paddock then went out to the corral and caught his horse and saddled it while it finished the oats. He was already leading the sorrel out when he thought of it, and returned to the tack room to fetch his spurs. 

     The spur rowels clinked and his breath streamed in the raw cold. Bill swung up onto the horse and urged it to a fast walk and then into a trot out across the pasture over the leached, snowy ground. A broken line of cows escaped single file down the distance, their heads bowing and lifting.

     Beyond the pasture the land tilted and juniper and pine thickened along the higher ground. He followed a cow trail, then hooked off onto a narrower path, a trail made by coyotes and rabbits. The path wound over a rise and down into a draw where an old bullpine stood in the snow like a hefty ranch wife in a dough spattered house dress, its limbs akimbo in a posture of eternal furor against the ambiguous sky.

     Bill reined the sorrel to a stop next to the tree, directly beneath a stout branch almost low enough to brush his hat. He took his Stetsen off and tossed it away then unstrung his riata from the saddle and threw the loop over the branch and then reached up and tied the bitter end hard and fast.

     He placed his head into the loop and drew the honda tight against the back of his neck. The sorrel stomped a foot and blew.

     Unable to extricate himself from the momentum of his own designs, he drew a plastic zip-tie from his pocket, looped it around both wrists and used his teeth to pull the loop closed to make sure.

     Bill sat on the horse and looked straight ahead inhaling the scent of pines. A crow lit in the top of a nearby tree sending a spit of snow falling down the branches. He couldn’t think of one good reason to pray. He pulled his feet from the stirrups and the big Spanish rowels of his spurs sawed upwards against the sorrel’s loins and the horse leaped forward.

     Snow avalanched from the tree and down onto him. The fall was not enough to break his neck and his face turned from red to purple to black and his eyes bulged out onto his cheeks and his bladder let go darkening his pants while his coupled arms went up and down in a chopping motion faster than they had ever dealt cards, and his feet danced and kicked and danced, faster than they had ever danced at the whorehouse in Wheeler. And he danced and danced.



He dangled.      



     The crow dropped, spread its wings and lifted over the trees. Bill’s body slowly rotated at the end of the rope, this way, then that way, under the branch in sepulchral light amidst the silent pines.



                                                                *     *     *



The letter began:



Dear Ada,

You have been a good enough wife and this is not your fault. There is evil in the world and it has got a hold of me. Those times I told you I was going fishing…



     He confessed nearly everything.

     Ada’s mourning was fused with anger. Breaking all of Bill’s fishing rods helped her to work through that. Of course, she’d already known. Not the details. Until the letter. She’d detected the wind change long ago and looked the other way. You can’t change a person, really. Especially not Bill. She knew. Trying would have just made her life more miserable. He’d done some pretty crazy things she knew of. He’d always been surly under pressure, and her mother had warned her that was a mark of weakness in a man. He’d been worrying about the bills a lot. The Wheeler Chicken Ranch addiction had cost him at least three hundred dollars a week. And all that crazy political talk-show stuff he listened to on the radio all the time seemed to make him angrier, spinning him even further off his footing. Still, she simply couldn’t wrap her mind around it and didn’t really want to, didn’t think she ever wanted to. She’d quit going to church. It didn’t seem to do anybody any good. Hadn’t done Bill any good.

     Selling the ranch brought enough to pay off the bills and buy the condo. She loved Hawaii. The ocean. Year around flowers. She didn’t miss that never-break-even ranch at all. Nothing but work. Cold winters. She forgave Bill for almost everything. Men are fools. She forgave him that. And, though she would never admit it out loud, she had to allow that, in the end, Bill had given her a gift of sorts, and she secretly appreciated and thanked him for that.         ~Steven Bird



Soft~Hackle Journal is bi-monthly art & information fueled by reader donations. Thank you for supporting SHJ.



 




Sunday, March 22, 2020

Soft~Hackle Journal March / April



                                                       Isolation Diary

Running a bit late getting this issue of SHJ out. Lots of excuses, not the least, a week on the road dodging rest areas, motels & restaurants in an effort to avoid the C virus while getting home from wintering in Cali. Not down to hoarding toilet paper, just taking common sense precautions where possible. 

Hope you all are keeping well.

Got through the border on the last day it was open, gone up to see Bruce Kruk & gather some gear I left with him last fall. With the border closed I’m going to miss fishing with Canadian friends & bummed about that. Friends on the U.S. side, hunkered down, aren’t coming around. Only a few cars on the river road all day with nobody going through the border.

Heedless, the birds are going on about their business, the recently arrived robins working the russet ground between patches of lingering snow. The first swallows showed today, always landing just this side of the equinox. If they returned next year to find us gone, all of us, would they give it a thought? We haven’t been easy to live with…

Social distancing? An excursion down an inviting race or tailout. Isolation is exquisite next to a river; the sound of water over stones like a thousand hands clapping in a hall forever lonesome.

Good to be back out on the home water. The trout are still there, though not giving themselves up easy. That’s okay. They are worth waiting for. They know no allegiances or patriotism or borders, quietly suffering catastrophe without much help & very little mercy, yet they persist. But they do exact a tax, & the taxing is energetic.



The river is low, in perfect shape for swinging. Hiking in over the dry riverbed I found a skwala stonefly sunning on a stone, a healthy #7, so I started with a suitable pattern & swung it down a quarter-mile run for nothing.

So I changed flies, switching to a #2 Red Demon. Pre-spawn rainbows like red.






And that did turn the trick on a fine, colored-up UC tanker (a ‘tanker’ is a trout of 24’ or better).

I went out late, seems like our trout bite best in the late afternoon this time of year, when the water has warmed to the highest temp of the day. The second trout came as the sun touched the ridges, not quite a tanker, though a strong & determined misbehaver just the same, & elegantly dressed for the party.  

  


                                                    The Reel News

   




                                            

                                               At the Tying Bench

                                                    Seeing Red

It’s a fact that pre-spawn rainbows are fond of the color red – & the same is true of cutthroat, brook, brown trout & landlocked salmon. What is pre-spawn? Inland trout generally have a two-month spawning period, rainbow & cutthroat in the Spring, & brookies & browns in the Fall. I consider the pre-spawn to begin a month prior to initial spawning, when trout are coloring-up in anticipation of the mating rituals to come. Red is the color of passion, & passion is beginning to bloom in trout minds during the pre-spawn. Not having hands to hold onto attractive red things, they use their mouths. 

Red Spot Spider ~ hook: #6-#8 ~ thread: pink ~ hackle: furnace hen ~ rib: red wire ~ body: pink floss with thorax of pink dubbing topped with red wool yarn 
 

Spruce Variant ~ hook: #4-#8 ~ thread: black ~ hackle: brahma hen ~ body: red tinsel with copper tip & thorax of peacock herl ~ tailing: gpt tied in behind the thorax ~ winging: dyed yellow squirrel


Swing Clown ~ hook: #4-#8 ~ thread: wine ~ tailing: peacock swords & red hackle fibers ~ rib: red wire ~ palmer: red saddle ~ body: copper tinsel ~ half-wing: gpt ~ rear collar: red guinea ~ front collar: black hen


Red Ass Variant ~ hook: #6-#10 ~ thread: wine ~ hackle: partridge ~ tailing: red yarn ~ rib: red wire ~ body: red tinsel with thorax of peacock herl
Royal Dee ~ hook: #2-#8 ~ thread: brown ~ tailing: golden pheasant crest ~ butt: peacock herl ~ butt collar: gpt wound as a collar ~ body: peacock herl with a girdle of red tinsel ~ hackle: red-brown hen ~ wings: white goose slips

Mickey Finn ~ hook: #2-#6 ~ thread: black ~ tag: red tinsel ~ rib: silver wire ~ body: silver tinsel ~ winging: yellow/red/yellow bucktail ~ jungle cock cheeks

Black/Red Spider ~ hook: #6-#10 ~ thread: black ~ hackle: red guinea hen ~ tailing: gpt dyed with red marker ~ rib: red wire ~ body: black rabbit with a thorax of 50/50 black rabbit & red seal

Ounaniche ~ hook: #6-#10 ~ thread: wine ~ hackle: red guinea hen ~ tailing: barred waterfowl flank dyed with red marker ~ rib: gold wire ~ body: claret dubbing with a thorax of hares mask


Kruk's Ducati ~ hook: #2-#4 ~ thread: black ~ tailing: gpt ~ rib: oval silver ~ body: red/black seal ~ palmer: black spey hackle ~ collar: guinea hen, sparse ~ wings: red goose slips

Spawn Sack ~ hook: #8 ~ thread: pink ~ body: red tinsel ~ toppings: red egg yarn/orange SST/red flash ~ hackle: white hen touched with pink marker

Red Demon ~ hook: #2-#4 ~ thread: brown ~ tailing: red gpt ~ rib: silver wire ~ butt collar: burnt-orange grizzly ~ body: red tinsel with thorax of Hareline UV Shrimp Pink dubbing ~ hackle: red/brown pheasant rump/blonde pheasant rump/pheasant church window/head of philoplume from the back of the church window





              A Spring Tale of Continuity, of Sorts

                              The Temptation of Lilith

I suppose you could say the kid’s fishing pole is a bad idea. A Snoopy pole – picture of Charlie Brown and Snoopy on the package, fishing. I don’t know. It might not be that great of an idea for a gift. Even if there is a kid, it would only be three years old and no three year old can operate a Snoopy pole, not without help anyway. But there’s really nothing I can provide, realistically, so I guess the gift is just my way of being a dad, if by chance I am a dad, and a way to show my appreciation on the anniversary of our meeting.  

I didn’t get her name. Not sure she had a name, she never spoke.  Not in the way most of us speak. Yet no denying she was a master of body language able to get her point across. I call her Lilith. 

                                                           *    
Winter had recently gone from the low country along the river; the newly exposed mast beneath the pines still snow-damp. Runoff hadn’t begun, the major portion of snow still holding on the high country, so the river was low and in good shape to fish. It’d been warm the past few days, triggering a hatch of grannom sedges. Really felt like spring. That day it seemed like the whole world was hopping to a swinging rhythm. It was palpable along the river where the critters make the first big showing at getting down to the procreation business. Sedges flying around hooked together. Love was in the air alright. Such a sweet day I couldn’t quit hiking and ended up four or five miles upstream of the trailhead before starting to fish. Wild, lonesome, it felt good to be in the back country.

I sing when I feel good and don’t think there’s anyone around to hear, and I sang out loud: “Do not for-sake meee O0o0ooh my daarrrlin…. Oh don’t e-verrr let me gO000o …”  Hey. Nobody around to be offended. Right?

The fishing was good, but, weird, after awhile I started to get the feeling I was being watched. I chalked it up to the energetic nature of the day working senses that’d been shut in the cabin most of a long winter and now a bit overwhelmed by Mother Nature’s unfolding charms. I concentrated on casting the wee soft-hackle and minding the drift.

Like I said, the fishing was good. Leaning over the water releasing a nice cutthroat, I caught a flash of movement in the brush.

I stood still, scanning the woods.

There – a patch of auburn showing through a break of scrub cedars. Fur. A big animal, I was sure. Then, higher, another patch of fur showing through the greenery. It jiggled.

No. It wasn’t an elk. An elk would make a mad dash out of there with a nose full of human at this range, I reasoned. A bear. Had to be a bear. Okay no big deal, outfitting, I encounter them all the time. Not grizzlies. Black bears. Unlike grizzly bears, black bears are fairly shy and will avoid you if you respect their space, usually. The jiggling color patch was a concern. I estimated it to be about seven feet above the ground, which meant the critter it belonged to was taller than any standing black bear. I figured: yup, shit, a
grizzly, and a big one, stalking me, standing over there behind that bush inhaling my scent and licking its teeth.

“HEY YAH YEEAH!” I made a two step false charge toward it waving the flyrod over my head.

I held my breath. Thought I saw it move. But my yelling and stomping hadn’t come close to producing the affect I wanted, which was to get it to flush and run. At this point the smart thing to do would’ve been to ease back out of there, but I’d already thrown down a territorial challenge, so I figured the stalking bear might interpret my retreat as a sign of weakness, inspiring it to more aggressive stalking. While I swirled in the conundrum, the cedars quivered and out into full view stepped Lilith.

She was fully eight feet tall, and not thirty feet away, looking at me.

My mind couldn’t allow it. No. This was a thing that did not fit my reality frame. I turned my head and looked toward the stream, considered making another cast and just carrying on with the fishing, then looked back to see her still standing by the cedars.

Obviously female. She stood straight, not bent forward like an ape. Other than being eight feet tall and entirely covered with red fur except for her pink face, she looked human. Well, closely related to human. A ‘kissing cousin’, forgive the pun. The gold, almond shaped eyes possessed a considered intelligence and, something else I couldn’t immediately read. The mouth was straight and broad, showing just a hint of lips spread across the slight protrusion of a muzzle – not much of a muzzle – but a muzzle, no getting around it and… not altogether unattractive. Her breasts weren’t the shoe-sole breasts of an ape, but round, glorious basketballs capped with distended pomegranates. Her head was crowned with a maelstrom of red hair, a shade redder than the auburn tone of her fur, matted to dreadlocks, looping to below her waist. She was striking. Magnificent, really.                      

I was in shock and off guard when she rushed me – 

Stupidly, I tried to fend her off with the antique Granger, and even though the stick was imbued with the mojo of a hundred rivers and easily worth a thousand dollars, it proved useless, a limp reed disintegrating to splinters against Lilith’s swift charge. She snatched me up, tucked me under her arm like a football and ran upstream covering impossible lengths of ground in a stride. I kicked and flailed like a crazy man – which served to bring rib-breaking pressure from the giant arm, forcing me to stop. Caught, crushed, terrorized, I flopped and dangled like a half-dead carp fated for the canning jar. Hooking up a spur canyon she proceeded uphill never breaking stride.

This was a bad dream and I couldn’t wake up. I pissed my waders.

Lilith stopped at a rock overhang near the top of the ridge.  A bower of cedar branches arranged like a large nest had been laid on a level spot beneath the overhang. She dropped me into the center of the nest then scrambled back to study me, the prize.  
    
I didn’t move.

She squatted there for a long time, watching me.

I observed her while carefully avoiding direct eye contact. Something in her attitude convinced me that she didn’t plan to kill me. If that’d been her intent she could have easily done it by the creek. Still…

Then, slow, deliberate, never taking her eyes off me, she rose to full height, stretched her arms to the sky and put her palms together. She smiled. I think. I interpreted the expression to be a smile. Then she swept her arms out to the sides, each hand assuming a strange, delicate mudra, and she began to dance, graceful as any hula girl, her hands like bird wings opening and closing, shifting through a series of mysterious poses. Something about her… she was entrancing, magnetic. I couldn’t look away. She was seducing me. I’m not completely thick, I know when I’m being seduced. The notion was terrifying, yet, the urge to jump up and run was dissolving, somehow.   

Then a thought struck me and I tensed, imagining a ten foot tall jealous buck sasquatch busting from the bushes in full-cry fury, grabbing me between his thumb and forefinger and pulling off my arms and legs and all the other grippable appendages, easy as plucking petals from a daisy – he loves me… he loves me not… then pinching my head off.  Any sparking aspiration to romance I might have been entertaining, maybe somewhere in some secret backroom of my mind, was iced.

Lilith began to sing as she danced, a song without words, melodic inhalations and exhalations of breath and rhythmic sighs punctuated with low whistles: “Hih hih hih sweeeeeee,”  – all the while her eyes pinning me.

I tend to reason in phases. First, the reactive, presumptuous monkey-mind phase: I was past that one. I figured she wasn’t going to kill me, at least not right away.

Then the pragmatic phase: I reasoned that the beguiling Lilith was under the influence of her biological clock, ‘in season’, if you will, and there was no male sasquatch available in the territory, so I was to be That Guy.

That, leading to some considerations regarding taxonomic boundaries, transitioning me to the meeting house filled with severe Puritan ancestors who stood me on the precarious fulcrum between a sense of Darwinian duty, rooted in the pragmatic phase, and a moral dilemma, which always precedes the final phase: In which I transcend reason and surrender to The Flow.

Lilith ceased her song, stopped dancing and stood giving me the soulful eye.  Then she stepped to the bower demure as a maiden, turned her back to me and sank to her knees on the cedar bed, her twin haystack bottom looming inches from my face. She smelled like a honey-glazed baked ham. The pink yin-yang between her legs blossomed to a chaotic rose before my eyes. This girl was good to go no doubt about it.

My call. I possessed the key to my own salvation. My only hope was to place it into the slot and do my level best. And I did need to get out of those wet waders…    

                                                         *
There’s no good reason to relate the intimate details. I’ve probably divulged too much already. For those dying of curiosity, I offer that it is an actual fact, the higher primates really do practice every type of pleasuring enjoyed by folks. We shared the granola bars from my fishing vest. I was secretly proud when the energetic Lilith, at the end of my second day of captivity, succumbed to sleep. That’s when I made the getaway.             

I hike in every year on the anniversary. This year I’m bringing the Snoopy pole and the usual bags of frozen berries and granola bars. I know she likes granola bars. I’ll leave the stuff at the old bower under the ledge. Never seen any sign of her since that time.

Love?  Well. You feel something.  

 
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