Another dispatch and some fine writing from the Roaring Fork Valley’s Cameron Scott:

With prime float fishing months just around the corner, a call to all bumbling oarsmen, rowing fools, and bridge duckers. Think we’ve already forgotten about that scrape with the downed cottonwood last
spring, or spinning your buddy from the back seat of the boat playing bumper rocks? Well, we haven’t. Keep your beer dry and your hoppers drifting. These two are for you:

Floating Through

We went floating through, skipping cities
on our way to rivers, living in small
towns and in the backs of trucks: water
our highways, fish our currency.

And though we carry proper names,
make no mistake about the course of our lives
which wind back and forth.

For we are the last of the acid droppers,
tattooed oarsmen, scholars and dirt bags,
every one of us living on drifts and mends,
inextricably linked by rivers.

The Nature of Wind

All day long heavy coils of wind
push the boat in circles. Over and over
I tangle my nymph rig while Joe
catches fish after fish on streamers.

As we finally pull around the last bend I sit slumped
in the seat while Joe rows with a big grin.

Joe jumps out, drags the boat to shore,
and runs to get the trailer, suddenly
yelling as he removes a leg sized branch
from the collapsed hood of his jeep.

We drive home, Joe hitting the horn
hard as he can, staring out of a cracked
windshield, radio reception shot
from the stub of a broken antennae.