Beyond the Bear by Dan Bigley, Debra McKinney Read Free Book Online Page B

powder. John, who’d worked at the Russian River Campground for two summers, showed me all the sweetest fishing holes. What I appreciated most about John, a quiet and thoughtful Wisconsinite with a long red ponytail and a matching red beard, were his spiritual priorities, evident in his willingness to go fishing anytime, anywhere, day or night. Working the graveyard shift at the Alyeska Prince hotel , John could punch out at 7:00 in the morning, and be on the road for fishing by 7:15.I was always good to go, too, even if the urge hit at one in the morning. The way the two of us saw it, we’d catch up on our sleep come winter.
    My grandfather had made a fisherman out of me. I’d become an instant convert upon catching my first fish before I’d outgrown the training wheels on my bike. During our grade-school years, my older brother, Brian, and I spent time each summer at our maternal grandparents’ remote lakeside property in southwest Ontario, accessible only by boat or floatplane, a CB radio the only means of communication with the outside world. The place included a main cabin and a small guesthouse built of hand-hewn logs, a boathouse, and a dock on Clearwater Lake with water that lived up to its name. I could lie on my belly at the end of the dock, look down through water well over my head, and see the bottom as clearly as if looking through glass.
    While our grandmother grumped about the rustic accommodations, particularly after chasing bats out of the rafters with a broom, our grandfather loved the place. A retired Purdue University professor and agricultural geneticist who normally kept himself creased, starched, and splashed with aftershave, he’d trade his dress shirt, beige trousers, and buffed shoes for blue jeans, lace-up boots, a denim jacket marinated in grime, and a ratty ball cap with a corncob emblem across the front , a fitting off-duty uniform for a man who went by the CB handle “Rusty Rooster.” Every day that the weather was even halfway decent, he’d take us two boys fishing for walleye, lake trout, and bass. At the end of the day, he’d pull up a stool in the boathouse, fillet the fish, then hand me and Brian a bucket of heads and guts and let us take the boat over to an outcropping poking from the lake to make an offering to the gulls.
    “Oh, you did good,”our grandmother would say upon presentation of the day’s catch. “Now go wash up.”
    She’d then tie on an apron, make a mountain of coleslaw or potato salad, heat up some Boston baked beans, mix up a pitcher of Tang, and set dishes atop the red-and-white checked tablecloth in front of the picture window overlooking the lake. If we brought home lake trout or bass, she would be in charge. If we brought home walleyes, my grandfather would take over, dipping the fillets in flour, then whisked eggs, then coating them in seasoned cornmeal, and sizzling them in peanut oil in a cast- iron skillet. After supper, I would join my grandfather in banishment to the screened-in porch where he’d smoke his Kools and I would listen to the loons wail and the old man’s stories, animated by the comet of his cigarette doodling in the dark.
    Under my grandfather’s guidance, I learned how to speak in hushed tones and how to be still in a boat. I learned to catch my own bait, to tie a reverse clinch knot, to read the water, to drive a skiff. By example, I learned to love fishing as much as catching. My grandfather had high expectations for me, as a fisherman and as the man I would grow up to be. After his death in 1994, I never failed to bring him along beneath my shirt, up against my skin, whenever I was out on a river. My grandfather was always right there with me whenever some fish brought it on after taking my hook and arcing my rod, which was an extension of my arm, which was an extension of my heart, which was an extension of the old man who taught me patience and humility, as well as the fisherman’s motto: “Early to bed, early to rise, fish