Dylan's 1st Trout
Samuel's 1st Trout and at nearly 2lbs, the biggest of the day!
I thought I had seen it all, until Kodiak took my family fishing with marshmallows. Even now, my best estimate is that the small sugary drops of goo act as bobbers and something to catch the gaze of passing fish. In the preparatory talk, to plan our little excursion, for fish and a family picnic under the shadow of the Sweetgrass Hills. I was warned that the road was a bit rough in spots. While he wasn’t lying, he did forget to mention that the last four to five miles were completely off-road. Cruising at low highway speeds across open pastures in a late ninety’s Ford Taurus, my children sat in the rear of the car; silently, yet steadily, invoking gods that I had previously attempted to shelter from them.
That was a year ago. Now, literally a thousand miles south, I sit in wonder under the scope of Sandia, watching the first winter storm roll across the central New Mexico high desert. The local weather alerts warn of temps dropping to 28 degrees (above zero). I laugh at the thought. I adore my new desert mountain hide-a-way, but curse the damn economy that led me away from my open-court Montana studio.
The Jimmy Buffett song, “Come Monday”, plays through the speakers and I’m back in the cool, late-August prairie, loading a hook with marshmallows and a solitary worm; waiting for my sons to land their first trout. - North
