The Names of the Stars by Pete Fromm

Author:Pete Fromm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

18

Bob Marshall Wilderness, Montana

May 2004

The next morning, instead of slop and rain, I kick through frost on my way out of the park, the sky clear, the sun climbing above the mountains as I slip down the stiff mud to the river at Spruce Creek and back into shadows. There, in the crystal-clear number 4 bucket, I discover a single egg with a tail. Like a tiny, pink tadpole, it swims away from me, or the light, burrowing in under the other, slower, eggs. In number 5, there are more, and in a few of those I can see ribs along with the spines, and maybe even gills, some kind of rapid, rhythmic respiration. As the sun reaches even here, I tip to block it from the delicate DNA, can’t quite stop a proud, parental smile. These kids are going places. I jog up the slope, hustle down to Biggs, but the eggs there are, well, still just eggs.

But, with even just the idea of sunshine, I’ve carried my fly rod all the way, waving it like a baton as I marched across the flat, and I break down Biggs for the North Fork, maybe a mile downstream.

For a long way, Biggs Creek looks like something you might find in LA, an almost straight shot of featureless river rock, no cover, no vegetation, no holding water. A waterway or canal more than a mountain stream. I wonder how the grayling, three-eighths of an inch long, will do tumbling down this raceway.

Then the hills tighten to the creek, the brush and trees too, and soon I’m crawling down deer trails through thickets of unburned timber, scrambling over deadfall. Visibility drops to a few yards, and, with the creek rushing, the wind chuffing through the leaves and needles, I can barely hear myself as I try to sing and shout. I start to wonder if I’m on a deer trail, or bear. If I get devoured on my way to go fishing, Rose will pick through the bear shit just to stomp on my remains.

Eventually the bluffs open into a wide flat, the creek braiding into a delta on its last run to the river, the opposite shore a steep cliff only a few hundred yards away through the grass and river rock, what’s left, after the fires, of a large stand of big cottonwoods. Only a step into the clearing I stumble across an enormous load of ancient bear shit, all hair and bone fragments, uniformly crumbly and weathered the lifeless gray of old man’s hair. I glance behind at the trail I’ve just emerged from. Shifting some jerky strips out of their Ziploc, I bag the two biggest turds. Backwoods treasure for the boys.

Last year’s dead, gold grass sweeps my legs until I reach the cutbank at the water’s edge. Almost clear, the river races by, more water than I’d pictured while sitting at home. Big water really, though the bank of white river rock I stand on shows that at times it’s much bigger yet.

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