Today's ride was in a "gulch." That's an ignominious name for a beautiful U-shaped box canyon/valley, scooped out by glaciers.
This little house on the prairie was cute, especially the broom.
It was parked by a corral with horses. This little trailer was meant to be a repositionable cottage or boarding house, not an RV, but for whom? If only a Basque shepherd or vaquero would have stepped out of it.
Soon we came to the high end of the "gulch", and saw large waterfalls. The dirt road devolved into foot trails that climbed over the top of the surrounding, U-shaped massif.
On the return trip I stopped to chat with a fly fisherman, a likable guy, but I usually like fly fishermen. Close to the Continental Divide the streams are only a foot deep, and are fast. A fish must be desperate to make a living if it swims in this stream all day. Once again I toyed with the possibility of taking up fly fishing, but wasn't sure why. It certainly wasn't the appeal of all that cluttery paraphernalia. Nor does standing stationary seem interesting. Still, I was hooked on the idea.
Perhaps it is the beauty of a couple books by fly fishermen. Consider "A River Runs Through It", by Norman Maclean. p. 43:
My goodness, I'm such a sucker for this fly fishing-cum-philosophy stuff. Or maybe it's the memory of how hunting, during my adolescence, led to the realization that I didn't care about shooting a silly squirrel--I was only using that as an excuse for walking outdoors in cool, autumn mornings. This led to hiking, and then to bicycling.
What would fly fishing, if I let out enough line, lead to? I only knew the short term answer: the fisherman pointed out the old Boarding House clinging to the side of a mountain, high over our heads, at 11,000 feet.
A famous old mine was up there. Living on site spared the miners not only a daily "commute," but also the snares of notorious Blair Street in nearby Silverton. One look at this sight and our next hike was decided.
This little house on the prairie was cute, especially the broom.
It was parked by a corral with horses. This little trailer was meant to be a repositionable cottage or boarding house, not an RV, but for whom? If only a Basque shepherd or vaquero would have stepped out of it.
Soon we came to the high end of the "gulch", and saw large waterfalls. The dirt road devolved into foot trails that climbed over the top of the surrounding, U-shaped massif.
On the return trip I stopped to chat with a fly fisherman, a likable guy, but I usually like fly fishermen. Close to the Continental Divide the streams are only a foot deep, and are fast. A fish must be desperate to make a living if it swims in this stream all day. Once again I toyed with the possibility of taking up fly fishing, but wasn't sure why. It certainly wasn't the appeal of all that cluttery paraphernalia. Nor does standing stationary seem interesting. Still, I was hooked on the idea.
Perhaps it is the beauty of a couple books by fly fishermen. Consider "A River Runs Through It", by Norman Maclean. p. 43:
"Ten or fifteen feet before the fly lights, you can tell whether a cast like this is going to be perfect, and, if necessary, still make slight corrections. The cast is so soft and slow that it can be followed like an ash settling from a fireplace chimney. One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful, even if it is only floating ash."
Or consider "Home Waters," by Joseph Monninger, p. 46:
"I cast to the tail of the pool, not far from where a log lay submerged beneath a white sheen of running water. In the instant the cricket landed, the white sheen seemed to gather its molecules and become a trout. The shape appeared not from the bottom or from the darkness near the log, but came, as a thought, to take the fly. I lifted the tip of my fly rod and suddenly the fish swirled and became separate from the water, and I saw it as an animal, a creature, and I led it to me."
My goodness, I'm such a sucker for this fly fishing-cum-philosophy stuff. Or maybe it's the memory of how hunting, during my adolescence, led to the realization that I didn't care about shooting a silly squirrel--I was only using that as an excuse for walking outdoors in cool, autumn mornings. This led to hiking, and then to bicycling.
What would fly fishing, if I let out enough line, lead to? I only knew the short term answer: the fisherman pointed out the old Boarding House clinging to the side of a mountain, high over our heads, at 11,000 feet.
A famous old mine was up there. Living on site spared the miners not only a daily "commute," but also the snares of notorious Blair Street in nearby Silverton. One look at this sight and our next hike was decided.
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