Happy Birthday, Georgia

Today is the birthday of Georgia O'Keeffe. Would that we could see even a fraction of the beauty and sensuality that she saw in nature.

The Beautiful Blue and Green Music, 1921 

Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue, 1931 

Deer's Skull With Pedernal, 1936 

From the Faraway Nearby, 1937 

Rust Red Hills, 1930

An Orchid, 1941 

Flower Abstraction, 1924

Ram's Head, White Hollyhock, and Little Hills, 1935 

Oriental Poppies, 1928 

Red Hills and Bones, 1941

Blue Morning Glories, 1935

River Report: Sneaking

Not much time left in the day, but you want to go down to the river behind the house. The eagle sees you, but you hope the little old lady next door who told you you couldn't cross her land won't see you...crossing her land.

Not much cover anymore. Uh oh, she's coming out on her back porch. Is she looking right at you? No matter, you're off her land now. You drop down and fish awhile.

No room for a backcast. But that's a long, deep, tumbling backwater eddy, and you want to fish it. You roll cast. Then you try one-handed spey casting. Then you go Great Lakes and drift a nymph under an indicator as far as you can.

You climb out, hike upstream a ways, slide down a deer trail, and wade in where you can stretch out a long backcast and swing a fly. You comb over a long run. You're fishing, and that's good.

It's getting dark. The rising moon is backlighting the overcast. You climb up the deer trail and sit on the edge of the high bank. You brought your old thermos, so you have a hot cup of coffee and watch it get dark.

Then you sneak back home again.

Dude, Check This Out: Wooden Shjips

Does this San Francisco band play experimental rock, minimalist rock, drone rock, space rock, or psychedelic rock? The answer is yes.

Just yesterday they released their latest, "Back to Land." Sample below.

Wooden Shjips - Back To Land from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

From their website:

Music Journalist Ben Ratliff reviews Back to Land in the New York Times Playlist this Sunday. You can read the review here!

“Back to Land is also centered and relaxed and open, almost pastoral. It’s music conceived for interior spaces but influenced by open-air ones.” – New York Times

And, for good measure, here's all of their 2011 release, "West."

Remembering In the Dark

I miss those long, warm summer days on the water....

Paintings by N.C. Wyeth.

Typhoon Haiyan Relief

Remind me never again to complain about our weather....

Click HERE to find out how you can help with relief efforts.

Heart

After my last post, this photo caught my eye.

Everyone who has ventured into a river with waders on has gotten dunked, even when we were young and lithe. As I get older, though, I find that I'm not the wader I used to be. I've wondered sometimes what it would be like to no longer be able to wade a river.

Kudos to this gentleman, who demonstrates again that what we are able to accomplish will always have more to do with what's on the inside than what's on the outside.

River Report: Getting It Over With

The steelhead season opened on October 16, so since closing out the trout season on the 31st I've been looking for a chance to get on the river. Today looked real good. It was a little warmer than the past few days, and the sun had broken free of the persistent overcast. Maybe not ideal for the steelhead, but pretty nice for the fisherman.

So I cleaned off the fly patch on my vest, switched over the rods and fly boxes, and headed out. I decided to go see how my old stomping grounds by the bridge was looking. It was looking good.

Well, it was pretty anyway, but the flow was a little fast and high. I tried to wade in under that bright yellow tree, but over the past few years the river has eaten away the bank and deepened that hole, so I gave up until the water gets skinnier.

I waded in upstream of the run and made my way out to mid-river where I could work the run over pretty good. There were some little fish--probably smallies--nipping at the fly's heels on every other swing, but otherwise no action.

So here's the thing. The air was warm, but the river was cold. And I worked the run twice over with two different flies. So my feet got a little numb, and my muscles stiffened up a bit. But of course I never know that until I try to wade after already standing there too long.

My options were to wade on across--something I've done many times--or wade back out. But the water where I was standing, which is usually barely knee-high, was lapping fairly close to my wader belt. And there's a hole at the other side that's usually waist deep, so today that would make it--well, you can do the math.

So I decided to wade out the way I had waded in. All well and good, but there's another thing: wading into the river you're quartering with the current, and wading out of the river you're quartering against the current.

But I did it. I stumbled, and I was slow, but I made it out of the main current safe and sound. Now, just two or three long strides and I'm out.

Yeah, that's when you commit yourself to that big step and your foot comes up against that big rock that you didn't see for some reason, and you do that swan dive straight into the current, and you flounder around trying to get your feet under you as the river keeps trying to push them out behind you, and all the time the water is rushing into your waders through your open collar.

But you know, I got up before everything in my wallet was soaked. My camera is waterproof, and my cell phone (why did I have my cell phone on me?) was tucked into an inside pocket and stayed dry. My left hand came down on the rocks to take the weight of the fall, but I didn't injure myself. And I kept my right hand high, so the rod suffered no damage. Not bad.

Some of us like to think that even when we fall, we do so gracefully.

Oh well. Good to get that over with on the first trip before it gets really cold and a dunking would be life-threatening.

I can hope anyway.

From "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman

Earth, Jupiter, and Venus, seen from Mars.

I do not know what is untried and afterward;

But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail.
Each who passes is consider'd--each who stops is consider'd--
          not a single one can it fail
Nor anything in the myriads of spheres--nor one of the myriads
          of myriads that inhabit them...

. . . . . . . . . . . .

I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinked systems,
And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim
          of the farther systems.
Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
Outward and outward, and forever outward.
My sun has his sun, and round him obediently wheels,
He joins with his partners, a group of superior circuit,
And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage;
If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces,
          were at this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not
          avail in the long run;
We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
And as surely go as much farther--and then farther and farther.
A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not
          hazard the span, or make it impatient;
They are but parts--anything is but a part.
See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that;
Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

This day before dawn I ascended a hill, and look'd at the crowded
          heaven,
And I said to my Spirit, When we become the enfolders of those
          orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them,
          shall we be fill'd and satisfied then?
And my Spirit said, No, we but level that lift, to pass and continue
          beyond.

. . . . . . . . . . . . 

And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and
          composed before a million universes.

From "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855.

Vintage Steelhead

Puzzling over how to catch a Steelhead? Try this one. Just click the thumb.

TROUT ART

TROUT

Colored Plates by

H. H. Leonard

From

"Trout Fly-Fishing in America"

By

Charles Zibeon Southard

Published 1914

November and Norway

"November always seemed to me the Norway of the year."  --  Emily Dickinson

Family Post: Halloween Pics

Hope you had as much fun on Halloween as my Grandkids did. I sure had fun getting the Halloween pics from my daughters. What a treat for a proud Grandpa.

Liam and Aedan, still willing to superhero up and save the world.

Rodrigo Sebastian, who could have been a Jack O'Lantern with that shiny new tooth.

Iris riding on Radar when she was a baby...

 And now, "Radar Jr."

"The Bear" by Jim Harrison

When my propane ran out

when I was gone and the food

thawed in the freezer I grieved

over the five pounds of melted squid,

but then a big gaunt bear arrived

and feasted on the garbage, a few tentacles

left in the grass, purplish white worms.

O bear, now that you've tasted the ocean

I hope your dreamlife contains the whales

I've seen, that one in the Humboldt current

basking on the surface who seemed to watch

the seabirds wheeling around her head.

"The Bear" by Jim Harrison, from Saving Daylight. © Copper Canyon Press, 2006.

April On Showtime

I hate to shill for Showtime, but I'll shill for April anytime...