How he knew it was the weekend for the grayling to spawn I’ll never know. He just did, in that older cousin way, wise to the world of fish, and the lakes, and the mountains, that stands him in good stead even today as he guides the tourists through the Scapegoat and Bob Marshall. He said it was spawning time at the lake. It was time to go.
So we packed up our gear on a Friday morning, sometime in late May or early June, just after Winter but barely Spring in the mountains, and threw it all in the back of my uncle’s pickup. The heavy canvas Boy Scout backpacks, the canvas tent, the sleeping bags – in my case an old slightly musty thing inherited from my dead grandmother’s dead brother – the cast iron cookingware, some cans of food, cheap rain gear, some extra clothes, and all the fishin’ stuff the two of us owned.
And oh yeah the guns. We weren’t going hunting, just fishing. But my cousin said we needed the guns. There might be bears. And even though I’d never seen a one in the last ten years I’d been growing up in those same mountains, he was probably right there might be because it was the mountains. We were 14, and 17, just the age where we were allowed to carry guns without the adults, and you know, he was right. We needed those guns. We weren’t going in the woods without guns. Just felt right. There might be bears.
He drove the two hours from town to the wilderness trailhad in about 80 minutes, and parked the truck at the trailhead leading off into the Scapegoat. We finished the final packing, shouldered the heavy backpacks bristling with fishing stuff, and as a last final flourish, I strapped on the 30-30. And him a 30.06.
The first mile or so of the five up to the lake was about normal, no sweat, no hassle. But when we passed the little creek, and started heading uphill, especially the steep climb out of the little creek’s gully, I started noticing I was carrying a load. Not such a big load, as I’d done it before, but a bigger load due to that damn gun. Maybe 10, mebbe 15, prolly 100 lbs more than I’d ever packed in before.
We joked about those goddamn bears, hiking up the hills, until we met a couple of hikers coming down from the lake. They looked at us, kind of surprised, and now, looking back at it from 20 years, maybe scared, maybe like what the hell did we run into with these two scruffy kids with guns. But the woman joshed with us, and asked about our load of guns, and we didn’t have to kill her after all.
“Bears”, we said. “Oh!”, she said.
We laughed, when they were out of range. And no doubt she did too.
That was like mile 3.5. About mile 4 it began to rain.
That was the real ugly part, packing up that last steep little canyon with the cheap raingear on, slipping and sliding on the muddy trail, with the cast iron frying pans and canvas tent and all the fishing stuff we owned and those solid lead guns on our backs, all made twice as heavy since it was now wet. Even though we knew were damn close to the lake, it was a tough climb.
Suddenly we were there, on the ridge trail looking down onto the lake, to the flat spot down from the ridge where apparently the real wilderness expeditions stopped to camp, and stake out their horses, bears or not. Then the rain tapered off, so we decided that was a fine place to camp.
We halfways put up the heavy canvas tent, and halfways started a fire, and halfways set up a camp, before we were down at the lake, fishing, oblivious to bears. I don’t know how my cousin did it, bringing us up there on the perfect weekend, but he had. No sooner would the lure hit the lake than there was a grayling on the line, struggling and then flashing with its otherworldly rainbow dorsal fin. We hauled them out, one after another, simply tossing them on the bank like a nature film of bears at a salmon run, until we looked at each other and knew that not only had we got our limit, but that we were done, well done.
My cousin got the fire cranking and heated up one of the cast iron skillets, while he floured and peppered the fish. I mixed up a batch of runny biscuit batter in a stainless steel bowl. While I coaxed the batter into a shapeless mass of pseudo-baking powder biscuit dough, he fried the battered fish on one side, then the other, until the skin was a crispy golden brown on both sides. And then we ate, until the entire evening’s catch was gone, and I was stuffed to the point I didn’t want to move. But we could’ve probably eaten more, except we were out of fish.
We sat around for an hour or so after that, and my cousin nipped at a tiny half-pint bottle of Jack Daniels he’d packed along, and gave me a nip which was awful, he the older cousin who was always corrupting. We stared up at the crystal clear Milky Way shining down on the still mountain lake, and the fire burned down to embers.
Finally we got up and sort of cleaned up the camp, tossing the fishbones down the lake about 1/4 mile away so they wouldn’t attract bears, and hoisting our meager supplies into trees a good distance away from camp, just in case of bears. Both of us immediately passed out into deep sleep in the tent, snoring away, but with the heavy guns in easy reach.
No bears showed.