Today you’re seeing part 4 of a series. Read the beginning of River Apollo here.
Paul wasn’t an off the rack kind of guy. His rocky past and idyllic present were each a few standard deviations away from the middle of society’s bell curve. He knew this. He was thankful for this – even for the struggles and the scars that they left. As much as anyone would love a life on the banks of a picture-perfect trout stream, he enjoyed it more because of where he’d been. But his picture-perfect trout stream wasn’t average, either.
It was a spring creek. A wide, slow, grassy spring creek. The current never seemed to flow in a straight line downstream, but the water always ended up in the next pool. The bugs came out at weird times. The fish holed up where they shouldn’t be. The wading bordered on unsafe. Paul loved it for it’s eccentricity and how it paralleled his own perpendicularity.
He learned the value of maintaining the river’s eccentricity nearly 25 years ago. Within days of moving in, anglers and local historians were dropping in to “welcome” him. Gerry King’s predecessor, Carl Hybel, brought some sort of casserole that his wife had made. Paul wasn’t one to spurn generosity, even when it was a dish nearly a decade out of time. But if there was an emetic that could bring back something eaten in the late 90’s, Paul would gladly imbibe a bottle of it. Because that tater tot-topped trojan horse led to all sorts of trouble.
Carl returned a few days later to collect the casserole dish, etc.
I’m glad you liked it. Kathy is a real whiz in the kitchen. Hey, Paul. You mind if the guys from the chapter access the creek from your property to do a little stream cleanup?
“A little stream cleanup” sounded benign. Turning down “a little stream cleanup” would have been akin to spurning free snow plowing or trash hauling or pressure washing. “A little stream cleanup” was mitigated speech for another euphemism: habitat improvement.
Within days multiple dump trucks were idling in Paul’s driveway. Pickup trucks that he’d seen around town, at the fly shop, or, much less frequently, in the state maintained lots downstream, were also there. Heavy machinery came next. Paul was no (longer a) hippie, but the noise, exhaust, and brush-clearing approach struck a green nerve. He walked up to Carl, who was something in between an Orvis model and a foreman, and asked what the plan was.
We’re getting rid of some chunks of concrete from an old bridge. And while we’re in there, we’re laying down some gravel and also securing the banks with old telephone poles. The browns will be thick right here. And you’ve got quite the view, Paul.
The diesel smoke cleared. The pickups pulled out. The evening fell and it was so quiet. There were mosquitos, but there weren’t any bugs. And that was just the start of it. Paul had landed plenty of nice trout in the water bordering his property. He’d also caught some good fish just downstream. Being new to town, to the stream, and to cooperative conservation work, he assumed that things would be down for a month – a season at most.
The peculiarity of this stream was something that drew Paul to this small town and this rural property. The creek bordering his land didn’t behave by the rules. Swampy banks, weed-choked pools, and downed willow trees were good for this ecosystem. They were good for the fish. They were good for the brook trout for millennia. And even when people screwed that up, the brown trout found a way to make the most of things. “Habitat improvement” practices for freestone streams were square pegs and his spring creek was a round hole.
It took a decade for things to be okay. They weren’t the same as they were. That, Paul thought, might not happen in his life time.
And now Gerry King – at his front door – and all of the local, state, and national conservation thrust wanted to do it all again.
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