But Birds

Lead us outside where we belong.

Around here all the gods live in trees.

-Jim Harrison

As I sit in my living room on a cold, windy early autumn day, I am a bit melancholy. Partly due to the fact that I was planning on taking a drift boat down the Kootenai today with Bret Ashworth and Leanna Young to do some good ol’ trout fishing but had to cancel my participation in favor of taking care of my son who has come down with the first (of hypothetically many) cases of back-to-school illnesses. Partly due to the sad puppy eyes that are looking at me through the window as the nearly one year old yellow lab is deep into the heat cycle and, well, dripping a bit too much to stay inside. But mostly due to cooling temperatures correlating with the loss of my favorite time to be a fly fisher: the wet wading season.

If you don’t know, a pair of waders keep the fisher dry as he or she hobbles around a river bed in search of a rising trout. This is their main function, and they work well for what they do. They also keep the legs warm in the chilly waters, can provide protection from sharp rocks or thorny bushes, and they can also be a flex on how much money you spend on the hobby. Now, that last point is one I addressed before and I do not believe it is the case with 99% of the fly fishers out there in the world but I wouldn’t mention it if I had not met people who use them for just that reason (there was no reason for you to be wearing them inside of that one Coeur d’alene fly shop that was a good distance from any decent fly waters, sir).

I used to wear a pair of my father’s old thick Hodgmen neoprene waders during my winter fishing trips up the Moyie river until I fell through the ice in January 2023 and tore a big hole in them on a river rock below. Now, I own a pair of cheap-o hip waders that work very well if I need them, which in reality is not that often. Sure I use them if I am going to try to tightline nymphs on the rivers around here in the cold months, but that really isn’t the style of fishing that I find much enjoyment in.

For me, the ideal day of fly fishing is my lightweight pair of Korker wading shoes, a pair of shorts, and cold water rushing past my bone white calves. I could dwell on the introspective aspect of being bare legged in the waters and how it affects me on an existential level, but I will explain it in basic terms instead: there is just something special about being outdoors with only the things that we need to make ourselves happy.

However, “only the things that we need to make ourselves happy” has a different definition depending on each individual you ask.

Average people and the outdoors can tend to be a bit of a water and oil situation. People tend to not know too much about what they are doing, or what they are capable of doing, when they go out into the great outdoors (which is basically the whole constant gag of the classic movie The Great Outdoors) and they cannot be bothered to do much, or any, research on the “adventure” that they are heading out to do. As an example, I had a lovely older woman at the bookstore a few weeks ago who grabbed one of our postcards that had a bull moose with a large pair of paddles on its head and brought it up to me. She asked if I had ever seen a moose in person.

“Of course,” I replied (it’s about every three times I am at Perkins that one scares the bejeesus out of me by hopping into the lake while I am mid-cast).

“They don’t really have these, do they?” she asked while pointing at its antlers on the postcard and then imitating them up on her own head.

I looked at the postcard, back at them, and I asked if they had bear spray, a pair of good hiking boots, and a double digit IQ. Of course, I don’t actually ask that, but it is one of those things to remember when dealing with anyone who doesn’t smell like fish slime or campfire smoke, have a jacket that is just too clean, or aren’t breathing out of their mouth enough.

These statements could be read as me being cruel, unkind, or cold, which I would agree with. But there is a certain knowledge that one should have while outdoors that a large portion of people think they have but in reality, they completely lack.

Doomsday preppers are a group of people I scoff at, I joke about, and I stifle laughter when I hear how much they have gone and spent on food that lasts long on a shelf but will go bad before they ever have to use it.

But that doesn’t mean that they are technically wrong.

Any time I am out in the sticks fishing or hiking or exploring, I prepare for the worst as well. Old advice I received from my father was to have clothes in your pack that are for colder weather than which is forecasted, have extra food items of high caloric value, and have some dried tinder or fire starter with you just in case (it’s where the smoker in him was always prepared since he had that precious lighter constantly in the breast pocket of his Lands End flannel.

This type of preparedness is found in all activities outdoors. For some people, a good pair of waders are as important to them and deemed as necessary as the rest of their fishing gear they have. Many of these folks also have large shoulder bags full of multiple fly boxes, dozens of spools of tippet and leader material hanging from it, nippers, hemostat, floatant, drying powder, extra spools for their reels, maybe multiple rod cases. For me, just let me have a pair of wading shoes, my rod and reel, and a small sling pack with a spool of 5x and 6x leader, one fly box with all I need for that day, a small net, and a Grayl water filter hanging off the back of it. I go a bit minimalist in a lot of things in life (due to myself enjoying it more or due to myself not having the funds for anything bigger) and in fly fishing, especially when creek hopping, it is much more enjoyable with the less things that you have. In my car will be a large pack with refills of the things I may need, a change of clothes, a coffee pot and pocket stove, and maybe an extra fly rod and reel.

I guess the point I am trying to make as I drift in and out of thoughts about my boss’s giant grin while he holds up his umpteenth Kootenai Rainbow of the day and I am listening to my son’s deep cough, is that people do their things in their own way. Every person is different, and that is alright. I may judge the man that is all tech’d out in the midsummer heat, sweating his junk off in his $700 waders while I contemplate high holing him in my pasty white but slowly tanning scrawny legs, but maybe it is just jealousy seeping in like a child looking into a candy store from outside and watching other children eating all the candy that they can’t afford. Or maybe, just maybe, I find my enjoyment in a different way with the hobby. A $1000 rod, expensive waders, tech clothes and Costa sunglasses will only catch you more stares, not any more fish. Though, it would be nice sometime to have that R.L. Winston that keeps appearing and disappearing from the online shopping cart…

All in all, get outdoors any way you can. You don’t need fancy things and you don’t need every piece of gear imaginable. All you need is a good bit of local knowledge of where you are, an understanding of how to find your way around, and to be prepared for what could potentially change the course of your day out in the great outdoors.