When I first woke last Friday morning, I would have sworn I was camped under a streetlight instead of at a walk-in camp along the Au Sable. The hands of my watch stood out clearly in the silver glow radiating through the tent, and read three o’clock. I stepped outside for a little bladder relief and saw every unshaded piece of the landscape illuminated in stark, ghostly white. A late rising moon had created a riverbank of lace and frost. If I’d gone fishing right then, I could have tied on fly without an artificial light.
Only once in my life have I seen moonlight that bright, on a trip to Utah when my wife and I wandered through the desert as easily as we could have at high noon, thanks to an enormous green-silver moon that seemed perched atop a nearby butte. I’m sure I could see such things more often, were I given to waking at that hour. When I was younger I had horrible insomnia, and on very rare occasions, like last Friday, I miss it a little.
The world had a pallid look again when I woke after daybreak, this time as a result of a heavy, low-lying fog. Peering up, I saw blue sky, so I figured I should skip my breakfast and get on the water before the sun broke though and put the trout off of theirs. I walked just upstream from where I’d camped and worked a streamer (a trick-or-treat) through a long riffle. I caught a 12” brown fairly quickly, and had a few more nips and brief hookups. A little before 9, the fog had gone, the sun was bright, and my shadow was long, so I reeled up, drove to town and treated myself to breakfast at the Au Sable River Restaurant. Good stuff.
While I ate, I browsed one of those real estate flyers stacked in the doorway of every diner in northern Michigan. My daydreams of a riverfront cabin clouded a bit as I overheard a conversation at a nearby table about the problems someone else was having with theirs. Apparently, three siblings had inherited a cabin from their parents, and two of the heirs were commiserating about their brother’s neglect of the property. I gathered that he had used the last of the propane on his last visit there and not refilled the tank, and had neglected some maintenance he’d promised to do a long time ago. The upshot was that these sisters and their husbands would have to spend most of their getaway fixing things instead of fishing and canoeing. I hear a lot of people grumbling about the time and work required for cabin upkeep. Maybe I’m better off with my tent for the time being. You miss some conveniences, but you never need to mow grass around your campsite.
After breakfast I broke camp (no closing costs or realtor commissions!) and drove off to explore some new access points. I found one I liked very much, and did most of my day’s and night’s fishing near it. I don’t know if the locals have a name for that stretch of river, but I christened it Alligator Flats. There’s an alligator sticking its head out of the water there. I’m serious. Not a real alligator, of course. Just a wooden one. But the outline of the beast is unmistakable. It serves as a helpful navigation marker for wading anglers, and a lawn ornament for what seemed like a sizeable household of trout. (continued tomorrow)
No comments:
Post a Comment