The last line of “The Body,” the short story by Stephen King that would be adapted into the excellent movie “Stand By Me,” has the narrator, Gordie Lachance, say “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12. Jesus, did you? A harrowing, emotional set of lines, especially after the time you spent with Gordie and his friends throughout the story.

Yet, I never quite had to experience it on a literal level in my life. All my closest friends that I had back then are still with me to this day. When I lived in Portland for a decade, nearly all of my childhood friends somehow ended up down there with me after our collegiate years had ended. They are still there and my wife and I moved back up to North Idaho to be with family (and extort them for free childcare) a few years back.

But one of my closest, dearest, and earliest friendships was with the myth, the man, the legend Andrew Galloway. After meeting in kindergarten, we were inseparable. A smooshed, stern face on a child, broken often by goofy laughter under cinnamon hair; a lanky boy like myself with a drive to be outside more often than we were in. I was at his place, we were at mine, we were at another house with even more of us little goblins with only one goal: get away with everything we ever wanted to do, and do it without getting a rise out of the parental figures.

And by god, we were good at it.

Bringing back “The Body,” I was the Gordie Lachance of the group: I was the fourth child, and with that brought out an insecurity with a penchant to reserve myself into my room, where I would make up stories to put down on paper through word or drawing, relying deeply on my friends – especially the closest of my friends – to protect me, lead me in the right direction, and provide support for whatever else was going on in my life. I had my Vern, and I definitely had my Teddy.

But Andrew was my Chris Chambers. Not for Chris’ familial or financial situation (other than having two older brothers that would definitely keep him in check), but for the fact that he was the only one that I could really rely on. He was rough, tough, and always had the right answer in a situation even if he could have a hot head. And along with my father and my high school English teacher Paul Bonnell, Andrew (though the same age as me) will always get credit for shaping me into the man that I have become today.

We always had a solid relationship but of course – as is usual between old friends – there was a period of a few years where drama, petulant conflicts about nothing and trying to figure out who we are compared to who we once were split us up. I was always a bit confused but accepting of the canyon between us, and always sided with the idea that all of it was worthless and the call to the woods would bring us back together.

Luckily, it did. After a late, convincing night with a flask of aquavit and reminiscing, we realized we are still just the same old lanky boys we always were, and soon enough we would be back among the trees, the dirt, the waters. Two years of planning, and a few of those plans falling through due to work and fatherhood, Andrew pulled into my driveway at 10 in the morning on a Tuesday after an early trip up to Bonners Ferry from his current homestead in St. Maries. I gave him a quick tour of my home with the new baby girl in my arms cooing for her mother, who quickly grabbed her to allow me to toss my pack into the back of Andrew’s rig, smooch her goodbye, and ride shotgun towards the Selkirks for three days and two nights of alpine lake fly fishing.

I felt guilty that I was leaving her behind with a nine week old and a recently quite rebellious five year old, but after a promise of a playground trip in Sandpoint and ice cream at the classic Dub’s if he helped around the house and acted well in the eyes of my wife the night before, I felt slightly better. But hope is a rushing river and that river can run dry. Fingers crossed, out of service and loading up at the trailhead up Trout Creek, Andrew and I began our four mile ascent up the mountains.

We huffed up the trail to the first Y, about three-quarters of a mile, and took our first breather of many to come. We were already breathing heavily, feeling the elevation gain in our legs as we put our packs down and drank some water. I immediately brought up the fact that I believed I had brought too much in my pack. Now, 15 or so years ago, while we were in our early20s and both wildland firefighters, hauling heavy packs along with heavy tools and chain saws up mountain trails such as this was a cakewalk. We could lower our head down to watch the trail, suck it up, and hoof it up any mountain without complaint and, most of the time, even becoming sore.

As we sat down at this first rest, we could see in each other’s eyes that we were not in that kind of shape anymore and that the trail only continued in the upward motion for the next three miles. At this moment, I almost blurted out that we should just cut left on the Y and head up to the Ball Lakes for some good cutthroat fishing, but I held my tongue.

We were here to dive deep into the Selkirks to fish for arctic grayling.

Ever since I heard that there was arctic grayling that Idaho Fish and Game stocked in Long Mountain Lake deep in the mountain range, I knew that one day I would have to make the trek and hook up on one. My opportunities to catch this odd sail-finned fish are mostly limited to this hike here or a trip up to Alaska where my sister is currently nestled in the wilds.

Idaho Fish and Game started stocking them in this lake at least 39 years ago as a means to provide angling diversity to the area – also stocking golden trout in Parker Lake for the same reasons – and honestly, it isn’t the worst idea. Especially with how careful they were to make sure that these non-native fish in the salmonidae family would not go out and infest the streams of rivers that house our native westslope cutthroat trout.

Unlike Idaho’s horrible ideas with no forethought in the past such as stocking invasive and aggressive brook trout in the rivers and streams throughout North Idaho to cater to folks of the east and provide unique angling opportunities while allowing the brookies to completely infest and dominate many of our pristine westslope cutthroat trout waters, Long Mountain Lake is a self-contained lake with no outlet, locking the arctic grayling in for good and providing avid fly fishers like myself a unique opportunity to go hook up on a fish that I normally don’t have much of an opportunity for.

We swung the packs back on, nodded to each other, and continued right at the Y to make our way up to Pyramid Pass. The well-beaten trail wound through the Engelmann spruce and sub-alpine fir like the creek that made occasional appearances as our feet pounded up the hills. Black-capped chickadees sung of cheeseburgers, a few downy woodpeckers could be heard drilling for grubs and beetles in the many snags of suffering timber, the mosquitos fed on us in the shade. Sawdust covered whole sections of the trail where a forest service member had recently cleaned off bundles of large blowdown from the string of violent windstorms we have had over the past few months.

We made it to the next Y, hanging the first and only left of the trail. At this point, we got our first section of sunshine beating down on us as we looked up at Pyramid Mountain. A few minutes later, we were resting on its pass.

In “The Body” after the infamous leech scene where Gordie attempts to pull a leech from his genitals and it bursts in his hand, causing him to faint, Teddy argued and fought the group to say they should take Gordie home and that this adventure was going too far. On top of this pass, our shoulders hurt, our legs were Jello, and we had the worst part of the hike in front of us. I was nearly the Teddy in our situation, about to say we should back track, we had gotten ourselves too far in the muck and we weren’t cut out for this anymore.

But, like Gordie when he recovers, I had a clear goal for this two night trip that we had embarked on: to catch a grayling with another underlying goal of continuing to get closer to one of my oldest friends.

To get us back to where we once were.

We had never been quitters, though I had been close, but I was with the guy who always egged me on to do something I was too afraid to do back when we were kids. From bike jumps over sprinklers, excursions into the woods to raid dead and unused junkyards in the North Idaho woods (luckily with no “Chopper! Sic balls!”), pulling unnecessary but hilarious pranks, and getting me to continue playing baseball after nearly killing me with a backswing in a game of backyard ball.

Andrew knew what I was capable of and how to give me the courage to do those things. He was hurting like I was but he was pushing on. So must I.

We dropped down Trail #7 to the trail junction for Trail #221 with its near-sheer 540 foot elevation gain where each step included a grunt from both of us, a new body part to be sore, and another thought of why have I never thought about purchasing a mule for moments like this?

After an embarrassing number of breaks heading up to Parker ridge, we were soon on top overlooking the Selkirk canyons on either side of us. From here we spotted Russell Ridge, Parker Peak, Long Mountain Peak, Pyramid Peak, Smith Peak, Fisher Peak, the Boundary County High Point and the rest of the gang. A pika or two chewed us out, a blackbilled magpie scolded us for being too close to a nest. But down below, 300 feet below us, were the pristine, clear waters of Long Mountain Lake where the arctic grayling called for us in their shimmering scales and iridescent coloring.

A fish so willing to take a dry fly, something we believed would be easy to catch. Two days of tight lines and fish in the net.

But what we came to find was the most technical fishing for eight-inch fish in an alpine lake that I have ever seen or heard of, and a severe lack of arctic grayling.

We descended the trail to Long Mountain Lake, shining like a great beacon of hope and prosperity with its glassy blue-green waters broken up by trout feeding, rimmed by large granite outcrops that dropped off towards a canyon lined with the Selkirks that acted like a frame to the view of British Columbia to the north. We tramped through snow and bushwhacked our way through the forest towards the granite platform that we would use as our camp for the two nights we planned to stay.

Patches of glacier lily (erythronium grandifloram to the Latin, maxa to the Ktunaxa) and white mountain heather (cassiope mertensiana) covered the area of soil that cut through the large chunks of ancient magmatic rock in the small glacial cirque we had chosen as our home for the time being.

We arrived and dropped our packs, moving and turning and stretching and jumping to try to get our noodly legs back to normal.

Yet, there is something about water like this. All we wanted to do was relax, knowing that we did not have to carry our heavy pack again for a few days, sip some whiskey, make some coffee and some food, enjoy the immaculate view and upcoming sunset, and conk out hard in our sleeping bags to feel refreshed in the morning. But there is something about fly fishers when they see a rise in a river or on a lake.

We kind of just want to start throwing stuff at it. Before I even filtered some water into my nearly empty bottle, I rigged up my rod and tied on a #16 CDC caddis and threw it in the middle of the rises and waited. The water was very clear and you could see dozens of fish swimming around our section of the lake. One rise, two rise, three rise, four. But to my fly?

All the fish did was look.

A few would bump the fly and spook. One took my fly, and immediately spit it out before I could react. This was not how I imagined the trip. After about 30 minutes, a load of fish rejected the flies I presented to them, and missing strike after strike to the delicate small takes the fish were making, I was disappointed. Were we going to be skunked? Were we going to get skunked after that hike, and on something as easy to fish as a stocked alpine lake?

My stomach was grumbling, and I am sure that Andrew’s was as well. It was dinner time. It was filling-up-my-water time to not get myself lost in dehydration. It was whiskey time which would not help with my worry of dehydration, but it was a very necessary accessory to our relationship and our time up in these mountains.

The campfire was roaring, and we began the type of reminiscing that only happens with friends as old as us. It starts slowly with more recent stories of what has been going on which evolves into telling each other the same old funny stories about our childhood which then ends with us sharing stories that one of us didn’t remember until it was brought up at that moment.

Sometimes repressed memories, sometimes a much needed cacophony of nostalgia-riddled tales that sparks into one of three statements: “there should be a movie written about that story,” “I forgot about that, but boy am I glad to remember that” or “dear God, I forgot about that and I hope we have enough to drink so that I forget about that all over again.”

We have conversations that we wouldn’t want any other than us to hear in fear of them being disgusted, repulsed or our careers becoming jeopardized. But there is a comfort being around someone in which you can have conversations like that; unadulterated, unhinged conversation in which there is no one who can tell you what or what not to talk about, how to talk about such things, whether or not we are bad people.

We aren’t, I promise you, but in this day and age everyone tries to be much better than what they are; living, breathing mammals. Simple cogs in the flat wheel of time where only a very few humans alive this day will be remembered in100 years while the rest of us just live our life to our fullest for the time we had allotted. That is a beautiful thing.

As my camp version of thai peanut curry was cooking and subsequently being eaten, an osprey was fishing the lake. Numerous dives we watched, then I turned to Andrew and said, “at least he is as good a fisherman as we are tonight.”

The sun set over Parker Ridge and the temperature began to drop. The fire became a blaze with the addition of numerous very dead, nigh-bonsai sized sub-alpine firs as the conversation exploded into the joys and woes of parenthood. We talked of our same aged boys and compared and contrasted how they were. There were plenty of similarities, plenty of differences. It made me question that on any of the Boy Scout trips we did together with our dads almost 30 years ago, did they talk about us like this?

We were both their last children, so how did we compare to the others when they spoke about us around the campfire while we slept in our tents when it was our bedtime but not theirs? Are we walking in their footsteps now as we queued up anecdote and anecdote, complaint and congratulations over and over of our children? Are they proud of how we turned out, and will we be proud of how our children turn out? This fluster of thoughts stayed in my head as the conversation shifted once again to whether or not I could come down to their property in St. Maries this fall to pick fruit from their trees, shoot some turkeys in their yard for my freezer at home, and fish the Joe in its prime and hopefully not get skunked like the last time I made the trip.

As the bottle emptied, so did our bladders and the day itself. After a hike like we had, it didn’t take too long until I drifted off, waiting for the songbird alarm in the morning and hoping that the rising fish would start to be a bit less picky.