When I moved to the wild and woolly West after a childhood on the East Coast, I had precious little understanding of the way that the world works in this area of the country. Forty-degree temperature swings on the daily, vastness that knows no bounds, and huge variances in snowpack from year to year. That last item is the impetus of this story.
Nobody ever told me that trout fishing in the epicenter of the Mojave desert is middling, to say the least. Driving five minutes down the road after getting off work to wet a line was no longer an option… I’ll take the bad with the good, I guess.
President’s Day falls on the third Monday in February. If you’ve spent any time in this area of the country, you know that you can look up in elevation on the third Monday in February and see feet and feet of snow piled on the mountains. Spring hasn’t even thought about springing (sprunging?) yet. This would all be news to me, who had moved to Nevada one month before and assumed all of it resembled the cholla-strewn bajadas of the Eldorado Valley.
In the epicenter of the state there exists a wild and free stream which will go unnamed for the purposes of this article. With (presumably) rotenone treatments planned to remove invasive trout species and further the recovery of the native Lahontan cutthroat, all bag and possession limits on brook and brown trout had been lifted. As a day off of work, mid-February seemed as good of a time as any to rip some lips.
As I ascended the forest road winding away from the pavement, mottled and melted patches of snow became more homogenous, and after a few dozen minutes had fully metamorphosed into a blanket of the purest white.
It was February in the Great Basin, and this place captured that essence to a T.
The time came to turn off what could be generously called the main thoroughfare and onto the two-track that I would follow for two or three miles to the trailhead, where I’d then don my waders, grab my fly rod, and descend into literally limitless fishing nirvana. I had to rely on the GPS and a tired old carsonite marker, as nobody had traveled down this road in the last few snows. I turned right, rolled down the window, and leaned out; the snow was up to the wheels, but my All-Terrains hung on for a bit. Just a bit, really.
Wheelspin. Shift into four and rock the car out. Proceed again. Wheelspin. Repeat.
This went on until I buried it pretty good in a muddy patch under the later of freeze-thaw ice and snow. The recovery boards came out and after a while we were back on our way again. Only a few miles to go.
And again.
I am a pretty obstinate individual, but there reaches a point when even I will understand the reality of the situation and tap out accordingly. I had reached this point. Looking at the maps… a three mile hike down to the water, fish, and then a three mile hike back. Doable?
I got out of the truck and the snow was up to mid-calf as I made my way around to the back and popped open the hatch. I had all the correct possibles with me; I slid my pack out of the trunk and in went the reel, rod, my trusty chest pack, a thermos full of coffee, a few snacks, and my landing net. I put on my waders and wading boots — perhaps not my best idea — and began to posthole through the snow drifts in the general direction of the water.
Once I got going, the arid cold was plenty tolerable, but progress was slow and miserable. After what was likely only a quarter mile of progress, I pulled out my maps and looked at the breadcrumbs and the elapsed time. So close, and yet so far…
The round trip would take hours longer than expected; regardless of any fishing action, the trek down to the river and back would be cutting into that safety buffer that becomes so much more important the older you get. I got the sense that I needed to be out of the high country before the night’s cold set in and things froze back up, and I my greenhorn self wasn’t going to allow anything to go so sideways while flying solo out here in the remotest reaches of the Great Basin.
You gotta know when to fold ’em. Time to turn the horse into glue. Throw in the towel. Hang up your spurs. Discretion is the better part of valor, as we know.
And so I turned around and retraced my steps in the most literal fashion back to the Toyota sitting there, shimmering and onyxlike, amidst the monoculture snow. Contrary to the title of this story, there would be no fishing today. No brookies or browns. No creel full of dinner for the rest of the week.
I got back to the truck soaking in sweat (another rookie mistake) and hastily threw everything back where it had come from. Except the still-warm coffee.
I sipped it as I gazed out through the windshield at the panorama of some paradoxical future and present. Of a missed opportunity and of a lifetime more to come. Of failures, and successes within those failures. Of pursuits where technical victory is secondary to just being there — to being the man in the arena. Where doing the thing is the point, not the thing itself.
I thought that even though my line stayed dry today, I probably got the best of what the universe wanted to tell me anyway.
Good trip.
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