With Rod and Line in Colorado Waters

By the time I had reached the Grand I had about seven pounds of fair-sized trout, besides having returned with all possible gentleness to the water a number of small-fry. I did not consider it much of a catch, as upon more than one occasion over the same ground I had filled my fourteen-pound creel in the same time. The Grand looked tempting as I waded out into the deep, clear current at the confluence of the streams, and dropped the peacock as far out in the deep pool as I could. I took that fly out in a hurry as I saw the gaping mouth of a leviathan, to my imagination, about to take it off. I speedily had the fly changed to one upon which I could rely, and commissioned it to that pool on business of moment. It had no sooner touched the surface than the glistening sides of my much-coveted triumph shone in the brilliant sunlight, clear of the water, as he darted for the fly and – missed. I thought the fish a little nervous, and I sent the falsehood over into the pool again; as soon as it touched the tiny wavelets that roofed the haunt of his excellency he was again visible, shooting from out the depths straight to his destiny. He reached it, and for a second lay poised as if in inquiry, and then, realizing that he had “struck it,” disappeared as suddenly as he had come. I realized, too, that I had struck it. There was music in the air – the music of the reel – and that trout danced to the measure with fifty feet of line before he allowed an inch of slack. He was nervous; there was plenty of water, a hundred feet at least, to the opposite bank, and miles up or down stream; there was no reason whatever for uneasiness – on the part of the fish I mean. But he seemed as much disturbed as ever when the slack was all in, and I, quietly and in as dignified but determined a manner as smooth stones and rubber boots would permit, backed up to the dry beach. Exhibiting the utmost reluctance to being thus led by the nose, he suddenly took it into his head to come voluntarily, started my way, but as suddenly changed his mind; the reel accommodated his whim and played a waltz; the old fellow, however, soon got giddy and asked for a rest; there could be no bar to so reasonable a request, paradoxical as it may seem; I immediately relieved him of the weight of the loose silk and gave him the privilege of a closer inspection of the gentleman at my end of the line. Had any other man been in my place, I should have concluded that the fellow on the fly was not favorably impressed, as he started with celerity on another trip across the Grand. Being myself a man of benignant appearance, I concluded, of course, that he had become enamored of the sound of the reel and was delighted that I had taken a hand in the revelry. Humanity, however, has not the monopoly on making mistakes, and as the reel was evidently taking a turn – this time at a dead march – I towed the gentleman round and gently drew him out on the clean gravel. He measured just nineteen inches; when I first saw him I thought he was “a yard long,” but even with his nineteen inches his capacity for conferring happiness was immeasurable. As I relieved his mouth of the hook, the Doctor, who had come down to me unawares, startled me with the remark, “You seem to take a heap of delight in catching a sucker.” There was a maliciousness in his tone that led me at once to inquire what success he had met with; his open creel disclosed three only, that would not weigh half as much as my capture; they were the result of his morning’s work. My own dignity will sometimes get the better of my reverence, and I read him a homily on envy.

The next day the Doctor proposed a visit to Grand Lake. I suggested that it threatened rain, and he replied that he who went fishing must expect to get wet. The retort, I told him, was dry with age; but the mules were hitched, – they have not been lost, – and we started up the Grand Valley in the sunshine, but had not been long on the road before it began to rain. Rain is a good thing in the mountains; it freshens up the earth, brightens the wild flowers, fills the air with a new fragrance, makes the grass grow, and I like it. I told the Doctor how much I enjoyed it coming down in vast sheets, but he did not say anything, only smiled. I’ve seen that smile before; in a fighting man it is dangerous. I didn’t say anything more about the rain, but tried to impress him with my knowledge of locations for dairy farms, and the excellence of the neighborhood for the growth of turnips and potatoes for winter food, without irrigation. Toward noon we came to a stream, and he told me it was North Fork; it rained at North Fork. I asked him where the other prongs were. He said there was but one other, “up yonder.” I told him the style of fork was long out of date. He stopped the mules. I noticed that smile again, and immediately changed the subject by asking him how far it was to the lake. He said it was about a mile in a direct line, but we did not go that route. About an hour afterwards I asked again how far it was, and he said it was half a mile in a direct line. I was about to inquire why he didn’t take the “direct line,” but changed my mind, and reflected upon the uncertainty of distances in this light air, and the gratifying exactness of the information one derives from being told something is “up yonder.” It rained. Sometime during the afternoon we came to what appeared to me a long line of embankment of gravel and boulders that might have been thrown up by the Titans for a railroad bed in the long ago. We had passed a number of railroad grade stakes, and I inquired if the embankment was the road-bed of the Denver, Utah and Pacific. He said it was a moraine. I thought he was joking, but he always laughs when he gets off a good thing, and he looked as sober as a hired mute at a pauper funeral. I meekly suggested that we had already had more rain than – . He stopped me and the mules right there; said the lake was just over that bank, and had no bottom; that I deserved to be drowned, and wanted to know my weight. I told him that under ordinary circumstances not very heavy, too light to sink, at least, but when wet I swelled. He concluded to go on. It rained, and after awhile we reached the town of Grand Lake. It is hid from the lake, and I was thankful; for I could climb over the moraine – what a handy word for such weather – and look out upon a beautiful sheet of water nearly three miles long by half that in width, guarded at the east and south by mighty hills, while to the southwest I could have recognized Powell Mountain, the grand, with lower hills for distant foreground, and forget the two saloons, the saw mill, tavern and a few slab shanties that were hidden from view – by the moraine – while the clouds hid everything else; and it rained.

We crossed the north inlet and pitched our tent, at the recommendation of a friend, in the midst of a grove of young pines, where the ground was soft with the dead needles from the protecting branches. The couch was delightfully tempting, on the very margin of the lake, with the gentle murmur of the miniature breakers to lull us to sleep. But it rained; I think, however, I have mentioned that fact; there was another drawback, or rather a number of them – ticks. The next morning another friend exhibited to our wondering gaze about two quarts of fish, something less than a hundred to the quart, and said he caught ’em with grasshoppers. I asked him if the grasshoppers were small. He said they were ordinary grasshoppers. Then I asked him if he had to rip any of them open, and he wanted to know for what, and I said to take the fish out of them, of course. He was a polite friend, and he laughed, but I know him for a mimic. He said the fishing was splendid, and I did not tell him of my nineteen-inch prize, lest he might for the first-time doubt my veracity.

After breakfast, it looked as though we might have some “falling weather,” and, while I am partial to a little rain after a very long dry spell, I suggested to the Doctor that, considering we had to do some fording, we had better get to the Springs while we might. He went right off and hitched up those mules; never said a word; didn’t even ask me to help him. He wanted me to carry away a pleasant remembrance of the lake, so he drove round to the south side. Then it began to rain. It is raining yet, and, to all appearances, is settled weather.

I have been sitting under my canvas roof this blessed day, looking at the rain and watching the meanderings of the tiny rivulets outside, and the midges that congregate about their margins. They stand on the current and ride off, and I sometimes think they come back again to “keep the mill going,” as you and I did on the ice when we were younger boys than now. The ground squirrels and chipmunks come out of their holes to pay me brief visits and then scud back. The little chips are cunning chaps, their motions are agile, their eyes are bright, and the glistening rain drops that soak all else, leave no impression upon their glossy fur. They run up the stalks of the wild rye, nibble off a head and drop to the ground as quickly as falls the severed top, and then to shelter under the lee of a log or a projecting rock, to feast. One other visitor I have had to-day – a solitary blackbird with feathers awry and tail bedraggled. He had a melancholy look in his white eyes as he cocked his head despondingly, and his forlorn condition made me think he might be, in miniature, the larcenous and unfortunate jackdaw of Rheims, suffering under the Cardinal’s curse. His wretched condition was contagious, and I myself was about to request him to “move on,” when one of his brethren, dressed in blue and sable, a policeman, evidently, in their community, ran him in, or off. For aught I know he may be now before His Honor on the general charge of vagrancy, with a prospect of a fine and costs, or in default of means, with a term in the blackbird jail staring him in the face.

I want to go home. The Grand is brown, Williams’ Fork is gold color; the Troublesome is so thick that you can stick a knife into it, turn it round and see the hole. Trout fishing this side Egeria Park is not to be thought of, for it seems to have been raining as it never rained before. As if ’twould keep on raining, evermore.

PHILOSOPHY

Upon the contingency of a rainy day it is always pleasant to have something to read in the mountains. A friend of mine gave me a pamphlet written by one Herbert Spencer, entitled “Education.” A level-headed appreciative friend who understands one’s needs, is a good thing to have. Education was my necessity. After being educated I became hungry for more. My friend had said there were “some good things in Herbert; that he was a philosopher, but given to infidelity.” I discovered that Herbert had written a library; I had, then, so to speak, the wide world from which to choose. I am a seeker after happiness, so I selected “Social Statics, or the Conditions Essential to Human Happiness.” If there is any one thing that I enjoy more than another, it is happiness. Having secured the key to the “Essential Conditions,” I felt as I imagine a hungry and ragged prospector feels when the assayer tells him he has “struck it,” and drew heavy drafts on the future, just as any prospector does. The “Essential Conditions” being philosophy, is not dry reading as you may imagine, that is on a rainy day in camp. It is good as a comedy.

Dickens tells us that the editor of the Etanswill Gazette employed a savan to write an article on Chinese Metaphysics, and that the learned gentleman did it after this fashion: He consulted the Encyclopedia Britannica, first under the title “Chinese,” and second under the title “Metaphysics,” and combined his information. The editor gravely informed Mr. Pickwick that the essay caused a sensation, as no doubt it did, and Her Majesty’s minions were put on the lookout for an escaped lunatic. Sometimes, while studying the “Conditions” – you study and do not read philosophy – I thought Herbert, when he labored on the “Conditions,” must have been a very old man, in his second childhood, for instance, and troubled with dyspepsia. Sometimes that he must have been young, very young, staggering under a heterogeneous load of information that had got the better of his mental calibre; that his mind, so to speak, was in the condition of a few acres of undergrowth just after a hurricane – demoralized, as it were. Sometimes – when his arguments reminded me of a horde of inebriated aborigines, each ready to kill his neighbor – that he must have been in good condition, with a view to sensation and ducats, and that if his theories, conceding he had any, could, by any conceivable method be put into practice, it would be when “chaos was come again,” but that his Christian readers wouldn’t see the joke, would take him to be serious, and advertise him with abuse.

“There are some good things in Herbert,” of course; I enjoyed them; unless a thing is good you cannot enjoy it; the only one to doubt this would be Herbert. He himself is an argument against total depravity, yet if you can find that he admits the contrary as to all humanity, except Herbert, call me Ananias, and his wife too.

What has Herbert Spencer got to do with Middle Park and trout fishing? you inquire. Not anything, except that he says no fellow has a right to own a mine; that if he – the fellow, I mean – finds a good mine, it belongs to everybody, and he must ask everybody’s permission to work it and convert the proceeds to his own use. I wish I were everybody, or “Society,” as Herbert calls it, I’d go right over to Leadville or Rabbit Ear Range and assert my rights. Being everybody, nobody else would be around to say anything, except the fellow who had the mine. If he undertook to draw his gun, I’d stand up in front of him and argue the point, while I went round behind him and took away his six-shooter. Being everybody, this would be easy to do. Then I’d let the fellow go find another mine, and everybody would go and tell him he was a claim-jumper and “must light out;” and I’d keep on until I had corraled all the good mines in the state. Then I’d go down to New York and interview Mr. Vanderbilt and other millionaires, and convince them that they entertained a mistaken notion as to the ownership of the many odd millions of government securities and sundry moneys and valuables, real and personal, said to be in their names. When I’d got all that, I’d buy – no, I wouldn’t – I’d take possession of New York; after that I should be capable of anything – except managing Mr. Conkling.

But I hear you inquire again: What has all this to do with Middle Park and trout fishing? Not anything. But that I am puzzled to know, under the circumstances, what I am to do with the gentleman last above named. If Herbert were only here he could, perhaps, help me out of my dilemma; he can set up a dilemma and help himself out of it as easy as – falling off a precipice, and there is nothing hard about that till you get to the bottom. It must be because his dilemmas are all imaginary, or that mine is not a dilemma. Let us see what he says of one of his: “Of this (dilemma) nothing can be said, save that it seems in part due to the impossibility of making the perfect law recognize an imperfect state, and in part to that defect in our powers of expression. As matters stand, however, we must deal with it as best we may.” See how he has helped himself out of that! There is a world of wisdom in it all, especially the last sentence, I know, if I could only find it. But that’s the trouble with Herbert – You ask him for bread and he gives you a stone. I know I can do as best I may, but I want to know what to do with Conkling; I cannot go on and perfect my monopoly according to Herbert’s philosophy without disposing of Roscoe. This planet is not big enough for both. I am in possession of all worth having. It is well demonstrated that two bodies cannot occupy the same space. He is too old to educate. I am, as Herbert’s disciple, opposed to coercion. Everybody, that’s me, is entitled to his own free will, but here I can’t have mine. He says that nothing can be said, and yet all the newspapers of the country, for three or four months, have been saying a great deal. Then he tells me of the difficulty of making the perfect law – that’s me, again – recognize the imperfect state – that’s Roscoe. But the latter makes me recognize him. What use is there in telling me I may deal with him as best I may? I didn’t need a philosopher to tell me that. I want that impossible possibility of Herbert’s – a perfect law. I am in some degree mercenary; everybody is. If I had that law it would be a curiosity, valuable as some of the mines voluntarily surrendered, as already stated, and particularly valuable at this crisis. I want to know how to dispose of Conkling.

You ask me again: What has this to do with trout fishing and Middle Park? and what good is it? Nothing, except it is some of Herbert’s philosophy considered in a light atmosphere; where the air is thin, and you can see a great way, it is easier discovering obscure objects in the distance. Herbert could not have expressed himself more clearly.

Well, all right; I’ll stop right here. But I would like to say just a word about Herbert’s style. I like his style – when I can understand what it is. His arguments are something between black-letter Norman-French and a fashionable bonnet. The one is incomprehensible to the ordinary mind, and the other is a delightful combination of vagaries. Good-bye, Herbert. I hope you will have a good time. But if you don’t find it harder work traveling over your own turnpike with the load you have on than driving a jack train over a blind trail, you can set me down for a fool or a philosopher – the difference is so slight that one may be happy as either.

The conditions essential to happiness are three, and may be described thus: Two primary, and one primary and secondary, or primary or secondary, depending altogether upon the existence of the two primary. Thus: the first condition essential to happiness is – that is human happiness; “I do not wish to be misunderstood,” nor have the happiness of which I am now writing “confounded (nonsense! No, sir) with some other” happiness – an appetite; this is the first primary. (No, sir! I am not a ward politician.) Let me repeat: the first condition essential to happiness is an appetite. The second primary condition essential is a good digestion. Dependent upon these two is the third condition essential, which may be called something to eat. Thus, if the appetite and digestion are good, the third – something to eat – becomes an essential condition and primary. If the appetite and digestion, or either, is impaired, the third essential condition becomes secondary or useless, so to speak. These, the essential conditions, concurring in one man, he is capable of happiness, mental and physical, otherwise not. Observe, I do not affirm he will be or is happy, but that he is capable, merely, of happiness. The conditions essential must concur, however, and in one man. This is a necessity more than a condition, and may be called properly a concurrent necessity, rather than a condition essential. But the appetite requires food. I mean by this that the appetite of the man – and the term is used in a generic sense and includes women – the most superficial thinker will concede without argument that there must be a man to have the appetite; the man, therefore, will be understood, thus: The appetite of the man requires food. If he have the appetite and not the food, the conditions are non-concurrent. If he have the food and not the appetite, there is a similar, but not exactly parallel, non-concurrence. If he have the appetite and the food and the dyspepsia, which is the corollary of indigestion, and the opposite of good digestion, or equivalent to no digestion at all, there is a lack of the conditions essential. It would seem, therefore, that there are only three conditions essential, but those three must necessarily concur in one man before he can be happy.

I like positive people with positive opinions, not people who are perpetually preferring exceptions. Now I have one of those non-committal mortals, who is willing to admit that my conclusion is correct, indisputable in fact, except that I have not taken into consideration the possible non-concurrence of the conditions essential in the event that the food, admitted, has not been properly prepared. While I am free to admit that I have not as yet discovered anything esthetic about the mere operation of eating, and, farther, that it is purely an animal necessity, yet I must contend that the preparation of the food is so far secondary as to be a condition non-essential, as I will now proceed to – .

Well, just as you say; I’m never disposed to bore one if I can help it, though you might have so augured in the premises, after reading the title. Do not swear. I give Herbert up with regret; the sun has come out after the rain, and it is delightful outside this canvas house of mine. The air is fresh with the new dampness, and the rain-drops will not linger long in the shirt fronts of the mountain daisies. What could I have done this afternoon if not for Herbert?

AN IDLE MORNING AT GRAND LAKE

From under the shelter of a friendly pine I look out upon a long stretch of water, two miles and more, to a sloping beach of a few yards in width, and then a belt of young trees growing back to a rugged mountain gorge. The bright green of the growth contrasts with the time-stained hues of the great piles of rock, and these grow more wild as the eye follows up the defile. Then a white patch, the length of a man’s arm and the breadth of a hand, glistens in the rays of the morning sun, here inaudible, but there a roaring waterfall a hundred feet high.

The gorge widens and drifts away to the right and left, but reaching high, with irregular outlines traced against the blue sky; the tints of brown and gray and green intermingle in bountiful confusion, but never wearisome; then, seemingly, blocking up the gorge in huge and awe-inspiring massiveness, a dome-shaped mountain, with miles of base and height far reaching above the growth of vegetation; just below its summit a bed of snow, shaped like a dove, defying the hot rays of an August sun, sparkles like a jewel on the mountain’s brow. Silent and grand, it o’ertops the beautiful lake, mirrors its rugged outlines upon the calm surface, and faintly tints the clear waters with the colors of its robes. To the right and left the nearer and lower-lying pine-covered hills reach round and down to the water’s edge.

And the lake, a gem in the mountain fastness, how calm it is! There is no melody in the pines this morning, their sighing is hushed, and the lake is still, its smooth surface only dotted here and there with the widening rings made by the leaping trout. How deep it is no man knows; how cruel it has been is the subject of many a story within the experience of the whites about its shores, and legends not a few among the red men. Seductive it is in its silent beauty, and treacherous as grand. Cold and relentless as fate, “it never surrenders its dead.” The Ute cannot be induced to approach it, and mentions its name with a shudder, while ye gentle angler commits his frail bark to its bosom with commendable prudence. There is no telling when a storm may come; the clouds are not always the harbingers of a gale; it may come when the sky is clearest, and the awkward skiffs that prevail hereabout are not the safest, even under skilful hands.

But, as the sun puts behind him the early morning hours, the dark tints of the smooth waters change, and a mile or more away a ray of silver flashes across the lake; its outer line moves my way, and as the tiny waves reach my shore, the breeze that moved them brings the sound of the waterfall. I listen to the melody it sings, always mellowed in its highest notes by the distance, and then dying gradually away as if sighing the requiem of the lost lying buried here, or as fade the last moments of a weird dream.

And, while I am dreaming, a friend of mine, to whom this ripple is a never-failing sign, pulls out into the lake. I mark the long, steady stroke, and wonder how it is that one so long out of practice can feather his oars so well, when he catches sight of me, idling away the time, and stops. But I wave him on, and watch him as he makes for a point on the western shore that we both know; where the light tint of the water changes suddenly to a hue almost black; where the depth on one side the boat is six feet and on the other may be six hundred; where the trout are large, and where we have had many a good fight. In a few minutes he has business on his hands. I can see his rod, against the dark background of the adjacent pines, bend and spring back, and bend again, and then the flash of silvery spray as the stricken trout breaks the surface in his vain effort to free his mouth from the cruel barb. But a few moments, and the mastery is awarded to human skill, and I see my friend hold up his capture for my delectation. In his enthusiasm he does not stop to consider that I have to take a great deal for granted, that I can at best see only a minute something glisten in his grasp; but he takes off his hat, waves it over his head, and I conclude he has a pounder at least. It turned out to be a little short of double that.