Continued Confusion - 2003

     A glance at the map showed a narrowing of the File around eight miles downstream. Looked about  the same on paper as what we'd just fished. We broke camp on the fifth morning and were off. Maps are useful tools but sure not the same as being there and just as sure weren't this time. What we hoped to be pickerel holding, fast water proved to be nothing more than a long cast of lazy stream wide and smooth bottomed to boot. However, we were in the middle of a learning experiment, didn't know better, figured 'what the hell, and looked for a landing. A quarter mile beyond we found another smooth slab with a niche perfect for sliding the boat up.
     Took a bit of searching till we turned up a tent site a short hike back in the woods but she was die-level and thick with caribou moss. Moss adds comfort but calls for a hands and knees search of the ground to find all the hiding rocks and roots. We quickly convened a meeting and by a vote of one to one, with me as senior member casting the deciding vote, Allan was selected to do the hand work. Though it didn't seem momentous at the moment - and for sure was not earth shaking - there was no doubt we were the first feet to tread this stretch of ground. After all we were on a minor side river and the landing was not something any right thinking woodsmen would look at twice.
     Over the next three days - would've been two but a dose of wind told us to sit around and read for a day - we searched upriver, downriver, immediately around-river and turned up nary a fish. Wasn't so much virgin water as it was sterile. However, immediately to our right was a ten acre, swamp-like bay that did prove productive. Fair-sized pike, a bucket or two of pickerel, and even a few jumbo perch, not a one in great numbers but enough to hold our interest till they got hip to our game. That and a mama bear doing her best to keep her three cubs in line as they passed on the far side of the bay. Don't know if they didn't see us - for sure they could smell us - but they paid us no mind.
     Reaching our tent called for a hike up and off the rock, through the bushes and back into the woods. For one reason or another Allan and I walked the new path enough times to start wearing a groove in the duff and soil. Over our three days it'd definitely become a trail. I have no idea how long such a trail would last, maybe no more than a week or till the next heavy rain, maybe for years. Once again I did an elbow first flop onto our slab. This time it was no more than two seconds after Al said, "Don't step there Dad, I just spilled some water." Damnation, there was no doubt in my mind this stone slab had been waiting hundreds of million years for the stars to line up, a little water to be dropped, and a bozo like me to come traipsing along. I could almost hear its laughter.