Wadena Fishes the Big Hard-Hearted River (The High Ground)

Snow was falling softly outside. A thick, ghostly armada of snowflakes, big and fluffy, floated slowly and gracefully to the ground. The snow was piling up and all the outside sounds were getting more and more muted and muffled as the snow got deeper. The low sizzling sounds of the amber coals in the still-hot but slowly dying fire lightly touched my ears.

I was cleaning up some old fishing gear. Wadena was napping as close to the fireplace as she could get.

A glowing log shifted and clunked and Wadena's head popped up. She stretched and then yawned. "Well. This is nice," she said. "I'm warm clear through."

I was rubbing some oil into the leather strap on a much-used creel. "Time to retire this to wall-hanging, I think."

"It's older than you," she said--sounding amazed.

"We used it when we fished the Big Hard-Hearted River."

"I remember. You gave me a fish." She said it with her eyes dreamy and half-closed.....remembering. She's rarely nostalgic and it's invariably over fish.

Remembering.

It had been a beautiful cool fall day that time on the river. Golden autumn with sunshine and fiery maple trees that were in red, orange and amber party dress--having a last fling before discarding those leaves for the coming season of snow. The fallen leaves filled the air with their very own crisp smell--the smell of fall. They crunched and swished loudly as we walked.

I can still clearly picture the little brook trout between her gray paws.....it was in vivid fall colors, too--deep speckled green and fins aflame with the bright red tints of mating season. A fish spectacularly lovely as only a brookie in September can be. A jewel of the wilderness. A gift from me to her.

It was a beautiful day and a sad time--sad because I knew I was close to getting a divorce. We discussed this difficult thing as we walked along.....trying to understand it. The walking was easy at first, with nice trails on high ground along the river. Many had walked and fished here over the summer. As we moved farther, though, the trails grew thin and the walking more difficult.

"You humans," she said, "you get so emotionally entangled with each other. Cats know better."

"Cats take non-entanglement to extremes," I said.

She sat on a stump as I wrist-flicked a short cast under an overhanging limb. The hook and worm made a pleasing plop as they hit the water. "Extremes are all in your point of view," she said.

The line started to move on its own, slowly at first and then zipping to the dark, undercut place at the bank below the tree, where the clustered tree roots lived. It was exciting to see that line move in the dark water, knowing a good brookie was moving it.

This was not fly-fishing water. There was no room for a back-cast here. These were the small streams far above Lake Superior. They were slowly finding their way by gravity and instinct toward the big lake. They were narrow, brushy, winding rocky runs with wild brook trout and hardly room to walk. The brush snagged at my wrists as I set the hook and the rod tip pumped down heavily as the fish protested.

Wadena rushed to the edge of the water, pushing through the brush and watching the line move. "There's one! That's a good one."

Of course it was a good one to her. She had never met a fish she didn't like.

This particular fish, apparently, didn't like me. The line went slack and I reeled in an empty hook.

"You lost it!" Wadena gasped....one paw raised as though in protest or as to somehow reclaim the loss.

"It wasn't meant to be," I said. We fished on.

The brush got thicker and the soil muddier. The leaves no longer crunched. They were wet and muddy and the walking was less noisy and joyous. The water, too.....seemed murkier. The forest changed from deciduous to coniferous. The trees had become mostly deep green spruce--older evergreens with slate-gray trunks that were tall enough to block the light. Moss hung in sea-green masses from the dark, spreading branches.

We had not fished this stretch of river before. We had parked on the gravel and walked far on a grassy logging road and then cut cross-country for nearly a mile to catch a remote part of the river. Now Wadena found small animal trails and I was forcing my own trails on riverbanks where humans rarely traveled. At first it had been pretty and bright but it was rapidly turning swampy and gloomy.

Wadena found paths more easily than me, but still said, "I don't like this place."

I made my way, fending off branches with one hand and holding the rod in the other, finding spaces so the line didn't hang up in the brush. "It gets this way sometimes," I said.

She ran ahead as I struggled. "When it gets this way, " she said, "cats go the other way."

"It'll get better," I said.

"You hope." She sat on a rock to wait for me. "Doesn't look to me like it gets better."

More later.