Aaron Arrowsmith and Samuel Lewis, Arrowsmith’s 1804 Map of Delaware, 1804.
Delaware has a population of less than 1 million people, but at only 1,982 square miles, it has 469 people per square mile. That’s a lot. It is the sixth densest state. Montana, which has a few more people, has only seven people per square mile. Standing in your mile of Delaware you can rub elbows with 462 people you’d never meet in Montana.
All of the states denser than Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maryland, are its neighbors. There are other states with more people, but crammed into that northeast corridor are the densest states with the most people and the least land per person. One doesn’t choose Delaware for a wilderness experience.
Delaware ranks 49th in total area–I suppose Rhode Island must be last. There are three counties in Delaware, New Castle, Kent, and Sussex. That’s it. Its largest city, Wilmington, is in the far north, with over half the state’s population and a population density of 1,312 people per square mile. Blacks make up 23% of Delaware’s population, whites 69.5%, Asians 4.1%, and everybody else the rest. About 8% of the whites are Hispanic.
Delaware is not a poor state. Its median annual income per household ranks 17th, at $64,805. Wealth though is tied to race. In Wilmington the median annual white household income is $60,772. The black median annual household income is about $47,500.
From Wikimedia Commons, User Golbez, Map of the Slave States 1861.
On December 7, 1787, Delaware, then a slave state, was the first state to ratify the Constitution. In 1790 in Delaware there were 8,887 slaves, and 3,899 free blacks. The 1860 census listed only 1,798 slaves, of a total black population of 21,677, of a total Delaware population of 112,266. Delaware had not freed its slaves when the Civil War began, though attempts had been made in its legislature and there was a strong abolition movement in the state. Its slaves were finally freed when the 13th Amendment ending slavery was ratified in 1865, after the Civil War.
Gratuitous Photograph of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman, from Ingmar Bergman’s Persona.
How did slavery get to Delaware? The Dutch of course. Delaware was originally a Swedish colony, founded in 1636. Just think what we’d have gained if the Swedes had held on. We’d own Volvos. We’d have an excuse to post gratuitous photographs of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman. We’d all be tall and blonde. The Dutch (who still controlled New York) kicked out the Swedes in 1655. The Dutch thought African slavery was the very thing, and had already established slavery in what would be New York, which finally outlawed slavery in the 1820s.
The Dutch conquered the New World Swedes in 1655, and were in turn conquered by the English in 1664. There was some fussing over whether Delaware belonged to Lord Baltimore as part of Maryland, or the Duke of York who deeded it to William Penn, but ultimately it went to Penn. The Delawarians and the Pennsylvanians weren’t well-suited for a long-term relationship, and by 1701 Penn had agreed to a separation, though they continued to share a governor.
Contemporary Portrait, Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr 1577-1618. Baron De La Warr was English, not Native American.
A good name like Delaware should be Native American, but no. The Delaware Native Americans were the Leni Lenape, part of the Algonquins, and were also located in New Jersey and parts of Pennsylvania. They apparently didn’t observe state lines. By 1670 the Lenape were mostly gone, absorbed, killed by disease or otherwise, or pushed west. The Tribes of the Delaware Nation are now in Oklahoma. There were also Nanticoke people, who either moved west with the Lenape or north to Canada, but some remained in Delaware, and settled near the Indian River. The Nanticoke Indian Association is recognized as a nonprofit corporation by the state, which likes nothing better than a good corporation.
The Delaware Tribe in Oklahoma sports the same name as the state, the river, and the bay, and all of ’em were named for the first governor of Virginia, Thomas West, the Third Baron De La Warr. Delaware Indians must possess a finely honed sense of irony.
Physically Delaware is flat, coastal, and temperate. It has about 45 inches of rain a year, with average temperatures ranging from 76 degrees in summer to 32 degrees in winter, with winter temperatures along the Atlantic Coast averaging 10 degrees warmer in winter and l0 degrees cooler in summer.
Delaware Geological Survey.
Delaware is the 6th flattest state, one flatter than Kansas. The highest point in the state, the Ebright Azimuth, is 447.85 feet above sea level, or at least it was before the seas started rising. I guess now either all things are relative or the point from which we measure sea level is underwater..
Delawarians tend to vote Democratic, it is Joe Biden’s state and both senators and its congresswoman are Democratic, but even in Delaware there is a rural/urban divide. In 2016 the more urban New Castle County voted for Clinton; the less populous southern counties voted for President Trump. Like I said, all things are relative. It’s not like Sussex County’s 165 people per square mile qualifies as ranch land.
We were going to lump our trip to Delaware together with our trip to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but getting ready we both read John McPhee’s The Founding Fish, which is McPhee’s paean to shad. Terry Peach at A Marblehead Flyfisher said that the shad most reliably run in the Brandywine River for the two weeks surrounding Mother’s Day, this year May 10, so now we’re going May 17. After all, who wouldn’t want to fish the Brandywine? Of course it doesn’t run through Hobbiton until somewhat further north than where we’re fishing. We’ll probably manage two breakfasts anyway.
Shad. If everything works we’re going to fish for shad.
One night last week I woke up in the middle of the night and checked the Washington weather. There were flood warnings again on the Queets and Hoh Rivers. The next morning the Queets was over 13.5 feet, and running at over 15,000 cubic feet per second. I gather that flows below 4,000 cfs are considered safe for wading, so flows of 15,000 . . . Probably not. We were supposed to fish the next day, but we went sightseeing instead.
Meantime that day it was 46° in Quinault, Washington, and 37° in Houston. I didn’t run that morning in Houston; I might have in Quinault.
On social media I viewed a succession of snow pictures from friends in the Texas Panhandle and Vernon and Dallas, which all-in-all were more interesting than the news about the failed Iowa caucuses and the impeachment vote. On a lark I checked the temperatures through the Great Plains. That morning it was 16° in Vernon, Texas, 19° in Wichita, Kansas, 16° in Omaha, and 16° in Fargo, North Dakota. I hope my friends in Vernon were warm. It’s been 45 years since I left there, and I can still remember both the bitter Plains winds and the excitement of a cold, still morning when the earth was covered with snow.
Tra Cardwell, Vernon, Texas, February 5, 2020.
That night Jack called from The Evening Hatch to warn us about what we already knew, that the rivers were blown out for Saturday, but Sunday and Monday might be better. I told him I could get in plenty of guitar practice on Saturday. He said good attitude. I didn’t tell him that attitude was fine but that what he should really wish for was a better guitarist.
Getting ready for our trip to Washington I read some stuff by Washington State writers. I didn’t rereadTrout Fishing in America, but Richard Brautigan was from Spokane. It’s the only Washington State book I ran across that was arguably about fly fishing, but I’d just re-read it two years ago when I started this exercise. I googled its genre because I figured Tom Robbins, a Seattle writer, was similar, and it might give me some insight into their mix of 60s sexual adventurism, improbable plots, and moral superiority. Magical realism came to mind, but I figured magical realism had to be South American, then I saw Robbins and Brautigan described as magical realists. As far as I can tell Washington State is decidedly not in South America, so maybe I was wrong.
But I also found their work described as Fabulism, which description I really liked, mostly because I initially mispronounced it “fab” as in “Fab Four,” and for me every good impulse in the 60s is summed up in the Beatles. Even if I didn’t exactly like Brautigan or Robbins or even the 60s. On reflection though I figured out it was Fabulism as in fable not Fabulism as in Fab Four, and that made more sense: these books are fables, adult fairy tales with lots of sex but still a moral. I suspect though that the moral is that having sex with the author is a good thing. Honestly, if all young male achievement is driven by the desire for sexual partners (and any male who doesn’t at least suspect that isn’t being entirely honest), Brautigan and Robbins may be the most honest writers ever, even if reading them’s a mixed bag, and if honesty by a fiction writer isn’t quite the point.
I remember pretty vividly the last time I read Tom Robbins, in 1976. The book was Another Roadside Attraction, and I remember the couch I was on and the room I was in when I read it, but I don’t remember anything about the novel itself. This time I tried to read Robbins’ memoir, Tibetan Peach Pie, which made me think of Robbins as the enfant terrible who I might have envied a long time ago; I tried to read the book about the sexual adventuress hitchhiker with the big thumb, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (which happily set off a several-month long binge of Emmylou Harris singing in my head), but I got bored; and I started his last novel, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, but I gave up after four pages, when he said a moth resembled a clitoris with wings. Sometimes a moth is just a moth.
I only got very far with one novel, his second, StillLife with Woodpecker. It’s about a red-headed terrorist bomber nicknamed the Woodpecker having sex with a red-headed princess from a deposed East European royal family. The usual stuff. Sometimes Robbins can be an interesting observer: “That is why virtually every revolution in history has failed: the oppressed, as soon as they seize power, turn into the oppressors, resorting to totalitarian tactics to ‘protect the revolution.’ That is why minorities seeking the abolition of prejudice become intolerant, minorities seeking peace become militant, minorities seeking equality become self-righteous, and minorities seeking liberation become hostile . . .” Mostly though he’s only the enfant terrible: “And, of course, Bernard, as all men, carried around in his trousers the most renowned redhead of all—characteristically funny and dangerous.”
I don’t know whether I’ll finish “Still Life,” but I will recognize that woodpecker is certainly a double entendre, which is a lot of what you need to know about Tom Robbins.
The first 100 pages of Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette, may be the best travel guide to a city, Seattle, I’ve read. Early in the book Bernadette rants off-and-on about Seattle, and her rants describe the architecture, restaurants, rain, private schools, behavior, blackberry bushes . . . all the things that a good description would tell about a city. Bernadette is a bit of a Fabulist as well, and maybe that’s characteristic of a lot of post-WW II literature. But if Robbins’ characters achieve fulfillment through sex, Bernadette is surprisingly chaste: she only achieves fulfillment when she hitchhikes to Palmer Station in Antarctica and signs on to design the new South Pole station. Does that make it a women’s book? It does make me suspect that Maria Semple is built differently than Tom Robbins, and one is certain that Bernadette doesn’t have abnormally large thumbs, nor does she need them.
“They were young and scruffy, like they could all have worked at REI . . .” Was there ever a more Seattle-ish description of anything.
Gunderson’s Snow Falling on Cedars is as far from Fabulism as it gets. It’s a lovely book, with a flaw, but still lovely, slow and descriptive, evocative of a place and unforgettable. It is a story about a death that might be a murder, an accused the reader suspects is wrongly accused, and a moral dilemma for a damaged man. It is a story about a moment in time, post-World War II, when pride in the community mixes with guilt over the treatment of neighbors and friends: the Japanese internment, and the place of the Japanese Americans in the post-war community. It’s a book about a small town, an island in Puget Sound, and people who at their best are careful, deliberate. Their island demands it. The flaw—the accused’s silence—is explainable if not entirely convincing, but then the novel would have been profoundly different if he’d told his story early, like how you can’t have The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn if there were a realistic ending.
There’s a good movie version, that looks just like the book reads.
If I recommended a single book about the Pacific Northwest it would probably be Timothy Egan’s TheGood Rain, and if I were to recommend a single book about the Texas and Oklahoma plains it would probably be Egan’s The Worst Hard Time. The Good Rain is an older book now, published in 1990, but Egan told me that I was going to a place where the best descriptions might be green, rivers, Pacific, mountains, logging booms and busts, and drip, drip, drip. For Oregon and Washington Egan talks about the right stuff, the history of the place, the natural world, and the people who could only come from there. The book holds up well.
Post script: there was an moment when we were driving through the Olympic Peninsula, re-listening to The Good Rain in the car, and Egan was describing the road we were on. Good timing.
Did you know that if you took any song written about Mexico, and changed it to Idaho, the meter still worked? That’s why Canadians sing “South of the border/Down Idaho way.“
What We Took
We took gear for trout. We took a 3-weight rod, a 4-weight rod, and two 5-weights, and we never took the 4-weight out of the luggage. I liked the flimsy 3-weight just fine until it got windy, but it got windy a lot so I finally gave it up for the 5-weight. Both rods I took were Winstons, a new Pure 5-weight that Trout Unlimited sent me because I won their annual spelling bee, and a Boron IIIX that I picked up at a Gordy & Son’s remainder sale because Winston came out with the Pure. Kris took her Helios 3D 5 weight. I fished it for just a bit. I’m used to big booming saltwater rods. I’m not used to big booming trout rods. That rod is a big booming trout rod.
We took floating lines and some 5x and 6x leaders I’d tied. We didn’t use the 6x, and I think the guides laughed at me for owning 6x tippet. We took some reels, a couple of Abels, a Ross, a Hardy, but I caught exactly one fish on the reel, and then I was reeling in my line for a pause in fishing when for some unfathomable reason a fish hit the skating fly.
We took waders and boots for Silver Creek, but didn’t take them on the Middle Fork. The guides strongly discouraged waders in the boats, something about getting thrown out, waders filling with water, and drowning. All things being equal I’d just as soon not.
Our gear was limited by the weight we could take on the bush plane, 30 pounds apiece, and I was already taking 11 pounds of guitar and case. I paired down and then paired down again. Instead of taking all ten foam hoppers that I’d tied, I only took five. Really. I’m stupid.
We took a bottle of Four Roses bourbon in honor of William Faulkner’s birthday, and poured the contents into a plastic water bottle to save weight. Happy birthday William!
I gave myself a new guitar case for my birthday, a Visesnut, maybe the best guitar case made (though they make a carbon fiber model for about $800 more). For years I’ve traveled with a cheap 3/4 size classical that I would stow in the overhead bin. Coming through Chicago Midway on Labor Day I talked to a guy who always checked his guitar with his luggage, and when I asked Kris if I should get a better case and check my guitars she immediately said yes please. Apparently with a guitar case on a plane I’m a nuisance.
We took too many clothes, but that’s probably because we had great weather. I discovered that I really liked wearing a fishing shirt on the water, the kind with lots of pockets, because, well, pockets. When I just wore a knit pullover I wanted pockets.
I bought a new pair of shoes for the trip, Simms Riprap wet wading shoe. They worked great, except that I didn’t wear socks until the final day on the water. I should have worn socks. They’re better with socks.
What We Lost. Where We Didn’t Go.
Kris destroyed her IPhone on Silver Creek by dunking it. I destroyed my Nikon Coolpix W300 waterproof camera on Silver Creek by ignoring the warnings about cleaning the seals and then dunking it. If you ignore the warnings it’s not waterproof. I had to take pictures the rest of the trip with my GoPro, which was better for stills than I thought it would be. Kris had to use my phone. She takes most of the photos I post, and is better at it than I am.
We didn’t go to McCall or Couer d’Alene, both of which my parents loved 60 years ago. I’m sure they haven’t changed. We didn’t fish the Henry’s Fork.
What We Ate.
On the way out of Boise we stopped by the Basque Block and bought a baguette and cheese, which got us to Ketchum. Ketchum is a strange mix of college town sans college and affluent resort, but I enjoyed the Pioneer Saloon, where I had a long conversation with an older south Idaho rancher and his daughter about barrel racing, how I could never break 20 seconds as a kid, and why I don’t much like horses. Some of us just aren’t really horse whisperers.
The guides kept us fed on the river, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In order of dinner entrees: fried chicken, pork chops, fajitas, salmon, steak. It was always excellent, though Idahoans could use some advice on how to serve tortillas. I got two deserts on my birthday, though one may have been for William Faulkner.
Books
I’ve already written about Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, which stands alone as a peculiarly great book about Idaho. Hemingway famously died there, but he didn’t really write anything important in Idaho except maybe A Moveable Feast, and that’s about Paris. But did you know that Hemingway’s buddy Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho?
Ezra Pound is at the heart of American literature, he really is. I like some of his poems very much, and there is still no writing more beautiful to me than Pound’s The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter.
At fourteen I married My Lord you. I never laughed, being bashful. Lowering my head, I looked at the wall. Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling, I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever, and forever. Why should I climb the look out?
Ezra Pound circa 1913, doing his best Bob Dylan, from the Paris Review.
That said, I suspect I wouldn’t have much liked Pound in the flesh. Since college, whenever I’ve thought of Idaho, I’ve wondered how Pound could have been bred and born in Hailey? I finally looked it up. Turns out he was born there because his broke father took a political appointment in Hailey’s general land office. He was born and then a month later Mom left one of the most beautiful places on earth for New York City because she wouldn’t raise her son in such a God-forsaken wilderness. Dad soon followed. It explains a lot.
Baseball
When we left Ketchum and civilization, the Astros had clinched the American League West. When we got back to Salmon they had clinched home field advantage over the Yankees and the Dodgers. It was a good way to return to WiFi. That whole Ukraine thing happened with the President too.
Birds
Kris birds, seriously birds, as in she’s permanently attached to a pair of binoculars and a birding guide, and she spent as much time in Idaho looking at her copy of Peterson’s New Birder’s Guide as I spent playing the guitar. There are birds, eagles and ospreys, that fish for a living, and we saw ospreys but we never saw an eagle. She was thrilled with the osprey skull found at a campsite.
There is a small bird on the river, called an ouzel by the guides but the American dipper by the guidebooks. It lives in the rocks by the river and is a delight and joy. They’re the only aquatic songbird in America, and one dusk when we heard a bird song I said to Kris that sounds like a mockingbird. Of course I always tell Kris every pretty bird song is a mockingbird, even when in Idaho where there are no mockingbirds, but for once I was sort of right; it was an ouzel. The New Birder’s Guide said its strong sweet tones sound like a mockingbird. And they do.
After Kris got tired of my collection of Josh Ritter (which is surprisingly extensive, and his Wolves is a great favorite), she found a bunch of songs with Idaho in the name or the lyrics and an internet comment that said there are a lot of songs with Idaho in the name or the lyrics, none of which have much to do with Idaho. Like I said, you can substitute Idaho for Mexico anytime you want, and it looks like lots of songwriters do.
Victor Wooten, a well-known jazz bassist and the bassist for Bella Fleck and the Flecktones, was born in Idaho. His parents were military, and he apparently stayed about as long as Ezra Pound.
b-52s, Private Idaho. I could do without ever hearing this song again.
Riders in the Sky, Idaho (Where I’m From). Ranger Doug is a great Western Swing guitarist, and Too Slim is responsible for the Paul is Dead Hoax.
Bryan Lanning, Idaho. It is stunning that there are so many songs called Idaho. This may be the only pop anthem called Idaho.
IDAHO, To Be the One. And this may be the only band called Idaho. I’d change my name, just because it’s so hard to google.
Gregory Alan Isakov. Idaho.
Gorillaz, Idaho. Bon Iver meets Harry Nilsson, and I’m not sure it works,.
BoDeans, Idaho. I’m just a BoDeans kinda guy. They’re from Wisconsin.
Jeffrey Foucault, Idaho. I liked this. Foucault is also from Wisconsin, and this song would have worked if sung about Mexico.
Y La Bamba. Idaho’s Genius. A Spanish lament out of Portland that mentions Idaho. I should have had these people on our Portland playlist.
Hot Buttered Rum, Idaho Pines. Bluegrass. Tennessee mountain music about Idaho.
Caitlin Canty, Idaho. Clean voices, clean guitars. Good Nashville.
Down Like Silver, Idaho. This is also Caitlin Canty, with Peter Bradley Adams. She must have a thing for Idaho.
Ron Pope, Twin Falls Idaho. Road song. More ok Nashville, but it’s kind of the problem with songs about Idaho: they don’t have to be about Idaho. It’s convenient. It’s exotic. It’s a place to yearn for in a sadly yearning sort of way.
Rick Pickren, Here We Have Idaho. This is the state song. It’s kind of a polka song.
Jeremy McComb, Bury Me in Idaho. McComb was born in Idaho. McComb sounds like he’s from Nashville. What is it with Nashville and Idaho?
Old Bear Mountain, Idaho. More Idaho Bluegrass.
Ronee Blakly, Idaho Home. This was from Robert Altman’s Nashivlle. Inauthentic old-time Nashville meets Idaho, and Blakly is still authentically great.
Clare Burson, Take Good Care. I don’t know what this song has to do with Idaho.
Cori Connors, Idaho Wind. I don’t know what this song has to do with Idaho.
Rosalie Sorrels, Way Out In Idaho. Sorrels was part of the 50s-60s folk movement, and recorded a number of Idaho timber and mining songs. They’re very earnest.
Tony Rees, John Renbourn and Stefan Grossman, 1978, Norwich Folk Festival.
John Renbourn, Idaho Potato. For guitarists of a certain type and age, Renbourn is a hero. This is classic Renbourn. If I were picking out a road trip playlist, this would be my Idaho song.
Drew Barefoot, Idaho. Instrumental that would fit just fine on an Ennio Morricone Spaghetti Western soundtrack.
David Robert King, Bad Thing. This guy listened to too much Tom Waits as a child. This is off his album “Idaho.”
The Eisenhauers, Idaho. Every time this came on I had to pick up the phone to see who sounded so great. They’re Canadian. I think they thought they were writing about Mexico.
Amy Annelle, Idaho. Annelle is from Austin, and has a troubled medical history and a lovely voice. Apparently writing about Idaho in Austin isn’t quite the thing that it is in Nashville. She’s the only Austin musician on the list.
All those songs called “Idaho?” You may not believe it but every one is a different song. If I ever write a song I think I’ll call it Idaho, and it will never mention Idaho once.
Reckless Kelly is from Idaho. I think of them as an Austin band. My fail.
One song named Idaho stood out: Idaho by Afroman. “Idaho, Idaho, Idaho baby/potatoes ain’t the only thing they grow.” Then the song gets obscene. Really really party rap obscene. Don’t listen to this with your children. Don’t listen to this if you’re squeamish. I’m squeamish, but it was funny to listen to once or twice.
We fished Silver Creek because it’s required, like going to Wrigley Field if you like baseball. Going to Wrigley doesn’t mean that you like the Cubs: Who likes the Cubs? It doesn’t even mean you like Wrigley. It’s a dump full of drunk Cubs fans, hard tiny seats, obstructed views, cold cold wind off Lake Michigan, and was once the home of the Federal League Chicago Whales. The Whales. The Chicago Whales. Still, it is a baseball shrine, and later I always find ways to work into conversations that I went to Wrigley last time I was in Chicago.
It’s a burden to place on a small river, and it’s a slip of a river, only 12 miles long from the originating springs. It’s a mineral and bug-rich high desert river that supports populations of wild browns and rainbows and 150 species of birds. It’s not quite clear as glass and not quite smooth as glass, but it’s clear and smooth enough for the description to work, even when it’s overworked.
We fished the Silver Creek Preserve in the morning, owned and managed by The Nature Conservancy, and later in the day fished private Silver Creek water accessed by our guides, Picabo Angler. Where we fished in the Preserve the river wasn’t much more than 100 feet across. Deeper portions are fished with float tubes, but it was late September and for us Houstonians the weather was cold beyond imagining. We stayed shallow and waded until the arctic wind drove us off the creek for lunch. I swear it was colder than 60°. Brutal.
By my lights Silver Creek is bigger than a creek, smaller than a river, honestly more like a bayou, a really clear bayou without alligators and mud, and with lots of trout and lots of bugs. Silver Bayou just doesn’t have the ring of Silver Creek, though just about every state seems to have a Silver Creek this or a Silver Creek that: Silver Creek Apartments, Ranch at Silver Creek subdivision, Silver Creek Industries, or just plain ol’ Silver Creek with some water in it. There are two, count ’em two, Silver Creeks in Idaho. There’s still only one Silver Creek. Even in Idaho.
DCIM\101GOPRO\G0031307.JPG
Our particular Picabo Angler guide was Rob Curran, who also practices law in Ketchum, about 45 miles from Silver Creek. We didn’t discuss legal nuances much, just enough to get a notion of Rob’s practice. We talked more about Rob’s avocations: paragliding, mountaineering, fly fishing, ultra-marathon running, going to Baja for a month to chase rooster fish, all the usual stuff that one does. Sometimes Rob runs races where he runs up a mountain then jumps off on a paraglider, then does it again. Go figure.
There seem to be plenty of young, attractive, fit folk like Rob in Idaho, male and female, who have traded the muggle life back home for the wizarding Northwest outdoors life. Rob in fact seemed more grounded than most, balancing a law practice with all that other stuff, but they mostly scrabble together a life that makes me feel soft and paunchy and hidebound, which I guess I am, and old, which I guess I also am. But I’m also happy that way, and I doubt that at this late date anyone would hire me to guide fly fishers or work on their ski lift. If I tried paragliding I’d likely do injury to myself and others, not to mention giving my cardiologist a heart attack. And I like running my three miles every other day on the flat track around Rice, where there isn’t a single incline, unless you count the curb.
On the flight from Houston to Boise I finished Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, which when published in 1980 won the Pen/Faulkner award and was a Pulitzer finalist. I had first heard of Robinson when she published her second novel, Gilead, in 2004, twenty-four years after Housekeeping. Gilead won the Pulitzer, and is brilliant, but Housekeeping is even better. There isn’t a long list of Idaho writers, but any state should be proud to call Robinson their child, and Housekeeping must be the only great novel set in Idaho. Spoiler alert: it’s also the perfect Idaho novel. Ruthie, the child-narrator, gives up her attempts at common domesticity to become a fishing guide. Ok, not really, but close enough.
As for Silver Creek, it’s become a test of fly fishing prowess. Its clarity makes it difficult and its ties to Ernest Hemingway make it legendary–it’s Ernest’s last fishing ground and son Jack is generally credited with its preservation by the Nature Conservancy. It’s a delicate dry fly kingdom too, and in these decadent days of euro-nymphing and bobbers and droppers and whatnot that makes it special. We were there for the fall baetis and calibaetis hatch, tiny blue wing green olive mayflies and slightly less tiny blue wing green olive mayflies, but Silver Creek is most famous for early-June brown drakes, when anglers line the creek for combat fishing. We pretty much had the creek to ourselves.
Once you get off the bank and into the creek, it’s easy to wade. There are heavy river bottom weeds, but open paths of hard sand and small gravel snake through. There always seemed to be a path to where I wanted to go. I fished a 3 wt., which Rob said was about right, and Kris fished her Helios III 5 wt. We had 5X leaders, tied from a formula I cadged off of Troutbitten, though I think Kris traded hers for something less cranky. My leaders ended up closer to ten feet than nine, but when I was paying attention they turned over well enough for me, and the brown Maxima leader in the butt made them easy to watch on the water.
Was I good enough angler to fish Silver Creek? Well of course I was. Sort of. I caught fish. Lots of fish, probably 20 fish. All of them but the one rainbow I foul-hooked were circa five inches. I am the master of Silver Creek tiny browns, bright and perfect as bluegills and just as gullible. I couldn’t keep them off my baetis. Kris probably caught bigger and more fish than me. I know she caught plenty. I know she was happy.
But what the heck. I watched a lot of fish, many bigger fish, and I believed in the creek as a special place, a shrine. Clear and smooth as glass, rich with bugs, rich with fish, it’s a place that you could happily fish a season or two or ten and still learn, and that you could still happily or greedily or maybe just obsessively return to. It’s better than Wrigley, and I’m guessing there aren’t any Cubs fans. It’s just that close to perfect.
