Page 47 - Studio International - May 1974

Sitting in a boat in the middle of William's Early teens, fishing at Jump-Off-Joe. By this Rainbow Steep Ravine t972
Watercolour on paper
Lake with my Dad. The sun was up and the time, sexual awareness and fishing were like
Photo: Geoffrey Clements, New York
fish were not. For me it was time to move to a rocks in a tumbler, mushing around, getting
better place, for Dad, time for a nap. I the rougher edges off. Two young beauties Tagging salmon on a north-west river.
couldn't understand this, you only slept when were sitting down by the boat dock. I had my Lunchtime: put out the beachseine; keep,
you had to — as the snores increased I eased own fly rod and a green and black woodsman one chinook, one silver and with luck a
myself over the side, with all my clothes on, shirt. I got my rod and strolled down to the steelhead. Drift down river looking for a
including shoes and fishing pole and swam dock. I don't think anyone had caught a fish small island covered with debris from the
towards shore. I looked under water and saw in that spot for a hundred years. I was shooting winter floods. Weave planks of vine maple.
bass laying like Zeppelins near the bottom. out some long casts and doing some tricky Fix the fish, meat-side out, on the planks. At
I almost drowned trying to fish while swimming. retrieves. I worked out to the end of the dock the water's edge, prop the planks up. Light
and after a few casts was knee-deep in water. the island afire. Anchor in the middle of the
Going to Canada with mighty dreams, for the I was standing on the boat lowering machine river and drink a case of beer. Eat.
first big exotic fishing trip. My senses flapping and was being launched. I decided rather than Late in the summer, floating the upper river
like a truck tarpaulin. We-passed an- Indian to lose my cool and scramble back up on the and feeder streams, looking for tags. Diving
Reservation. For the twentieth or thirtieth time dock, I would continue my performance. In into a deep pool to recover a tag. The salmon
in our lives together, Father: 'We're going the sunset, with head and shoulders above bodies, schooled by the current, floating in
through an Indian Reservation'. Me for the water I made my last cast. space above my head.
twentieth or thirtieth time wondering what I
should see. We passed a field, there was a Sitting on the shore of Lake Merced with an
young Indian woman bending over picking art student friend, catching nothing. My
something. Her breasts like honey and pollen. friend asked me if I knew what the bottom
In the deepest of ways, it filled every dream was like where we were fishing. He then told
I had ever had. A very confused fishing trip. me there were seven or eight cars below us he
had stolen when he was a kid.