High Hopes

Hope all of our elected officials put their communties and country ahead of their re-elections bids.

Hope to find trout that prefer dry flies to nymphs.

Hope all of our soldiers come home and reunite with their families.

No more wars, no more a saber rattling.  Work harder at peace. 

Find more Vets work.

The Seattle Seahawks make the playoffs next year.

We all want to remember this is the way war’s end.  Gone is the patriotic fervor or the 24 hour news cycle, which dominated the television.   There isn’t the gaggle of embedded reporters that escorted the troops into the war.  The embedded reporters came home quite some time ago. 

The war seems to end silently for America.  The one percent that fought the war slide into their communities.   In places like Ft. Benning, Ga. or Ft. Hood, Tx. they carry the weight with high suicide rates and high divorce rates.  Soldiers and their families seem to go unnoticed.  Valor is ignored, honor slighted and sacrifice lost.

In Afghanistan, on the far side of the planet, a 19 year old kid with a rifle and 70 pound pack stands guard watching the moon come over the Hindu Kush.  Unfortunately, his fate is wrapped up with a group of people who claimed a pizza is a vegetable.

Here comes Santa Claus

This is Santa last year in Bagram Air Base.  He resided in a place called Cherry Beasley where I spent two winters.  We lived in dilapidated shacks called B-Huts and we were the lucky ones.  We weren't in the 100 man tents with no privacy and soldiers living out of their duffel's.  There wasn't a Best Buy, Christmas lights or Christmas Carols there was just the soldier to your left or right wishing you a Merry Christmas.  Christmas came from the heart.

with a whimper

The war in Iraq ended today reported the evening news.  Soldiers are coming home.  Our national character will be measured on how we treat the men and women in uniform in the years to come.  Today, there isn't a ticket tape parade in New York or Washington D.C.  It seems we give a national yawn and turn the channel.

Guides and sons

John Howard is as good as it gets when it comes to guiding.  John is just plain fishy but what makes him invaluable is his innate sense of joy.  Fishing is not a quantitative experience it is quality experience.  Quality can be clear skies, empty streams, a feel for the both the wild and the wilderness or hitting an inside straight with an all in bet. Regardless, joy is always best shared.  Fishing with John is joy unbound.   He just got off the Smith and had no problem getting into fish.   His son, Jensen starts as a gearboater with us tomorrow.  Let the games begin.

A toast to hope

 

Two weary contenders Brandon Boedecker of PRO Outfitters and Mike Geary of Lewis and Clark Expeditions staring at the watery abyss of Montana.   Slightly reminiscent of Walter Huston and Tim Holt in Treasure of Sierra Madre where the only thing left was laughter.  Where there is laughter there is hope and he who has hope has everything.

Oh, sing in me Muse!

I am still awaiting the Muse. Apparently artistic inspiration is not a direct route. I plan on opening up my subconscious and having my chakras checked. I must remain open to the universe. Although, I suspect there is a God, he appears to be pissed 90% of the time.


We fished on a little known river that had clear water. We had a fish hit a dry fly. Hope is eternal in a fishing boat.

Fire the next time

June 20, 2011 - More water in the state of Montana than I have seen in 30 years. This spring is an Old Testament flood where God wiped out the earth in a good old fashion biblical smackdown. Not many can match the fire and fury of an Old Testament God when he gets going. I have misread the end of millennium signs.


The Smith River is on hold until the end of the month. My two options are to prepare to sell real estate or become a screenwriter. The two career choices for every longshot player and day dreamer. I will await the arrival of the Muse.

Ain't no sunshine ....

It has been raining and raining and raining. Creeks are rivers and rivers have plunged out of the banks making the whole world damp, wet and most important non- fishable. Not a good day to be a fishing guide.


Dairy Queen is open at eleven in the morning and I was going to take the edge off with a mini-blizzard at $1.99. Jack Daniels used to do the same but I washed out of few decades using Budweiser’s and Jack backs. The Mint Oreo Blizzard was safer.



The girl at the counter was a young teenager with two small spikes coming out of her lower lip. A weird Gothic look for Helena, Montana and more proof that I have been misreading the end of millennium signs in 2000. The signs are all over. But, I live in a non-judgment era and I wanted my Blizzard. She took my $20.00 continued talking to her friends behind the Dairy Queen bar and mechanically made my Blizzard. Bartenders are more empathetic.



The Smith River where I make a living is out of its banks and totally unfishable. The weather report continues with lousy forecasts it is has been a long winter and spring. I am in the business to take people fishing and my future doesn’t look to good. The Blizzard was excellent and it is raining frogs.

Perhaps to fish

This lurking lunker comes from the vast landscape of the American West.  He was brought to hand mid-morning on June 6, 2011.  This is also the date the action of the novel Ulysses by James Joyce takes place.  The occurence of both of these magical feats is coincidental.

Please note the gritty determination of the angler.  The lines around the seasoned eyes of our fisherman who has just witnessed the heroic struggle of his quarry.  For some a moment of  triumph for others a time of  humility.  The joy is in the contest of the contender.  All glory is fleeting and the winner takes nothing.

Fishing is more than fishing

This photo was taken on May 6, 2011 on the Smith River in Montana.  Six wounded warriors from Iraq and Afghanistan with a community of fishermen, saints and sinners supporting our soldiers.

All Quiet On The Western Front

The following is the preface to the brilliant war novel All Quiet On The Western Front.  "This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it.  It will try and simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war."

We just finished a trip with injured warriors on the Smith River.  Five days of fishing and floating knowing they have lived and seen the shadows of their souls.

Mr. Big

For over a thousand years...



...Roman conquerors

returning from the wars...


...enjoyed the honor of a triumph,

a tumultuous parade.


In the procession came trumpeters

and musicians and strange animals...

...from the conquered territories...


... together with carts laden with

treasure and captured armaments.


The conqueror rode

in a triumphal chariot...

... the dazed prisoners

walking in chains before him.

Sometimes, his children,

robed in white...

...stood with him in the chariot,

or rode the trace horses.

A slave stood behind the conqueror..

...holding a golden crown...

...and whispering in his ear

a warning...

... that all glory...

...is fleeting.

the best things about being in afghanistan

The best things about being in Afghanistan:

I missed the Oscars.
I missed Joan Rivers for five wonderful months.  She looks like the Joker in Batman.  Who pays to look llike that?
I missed the Screen Actors awards.
I missed the Peoples Awards and don't really know what they are.
I missed the NBA All Star weekend.
I missed the Grammy's.
I missed everything that has to do with someone named GAGA.
I missed everything that has to do with Charlie Sheen.
I haven't heard from Rush Limbaugh in five months.

I might sign up again.

John Shaft to the Hindu Kush on the double

Who is the black private Dick that is a sex machine to all the chicks?
Shaft?  You damn right.

Who is the man who will risk his neck for his brotherman?  Shaft



Who is the cat who won't cop out when there is danger all about?  Shaft. Right on.

Who is the man who will risk his neck for his brotherman?
Shaft.  Can you dig it?

They say this cat Shaft is a bad mother.....Shut your mouth.  But I'm talking about Shaft. Then we can dig it.

We need John Shaft on the double

He is a complicated man but no one understands him but his woman.  John Shaft

60 months out of 120 months

He is wiry, alert or just looks caffeinated. He comes in every morning to return movies and pick up a couple more. 110 straight days of movie watching for him. It is more than a diversion. Yesterday, I handed him the Quiet American with Michael Caine. The movie is about America’s slow dance with Vietnam or the start of the dance.

He came back today and gave the movie a thumbs up. “I’ve been deployed five times in the last ten years,” he said. “I used to be a truly believer and now…I think we are here so contractors can get rich.”

Ten years means you can start to feel the pension. “I think I am getting out,” he said.

Where are they?

In December we had three or four rocket attacks in one week.  This was up from the year before.  We went to the bunkers and looked up at the sky as if we could interpret meaning.  We played it cool.  Rocket attacks are like lightening storms.  When you see the lightening and hear the thunder in the distance you're fine.  When it cracks right next to you then you become something else.

January has come and gone and so have the attacks on Bagram.  I would be in my B-Hut after dinner waiting for the Big Voice to broadcast "Incoming, Incoming" and now nothing. The Big Voice will come on in the afternoon letting us know there will be a controlled detonation. Eventually, you hear a boom and maybe the room will shake. 

Now I wait in my B-hut wondering what are they doing out there.  They don't take vacations.

reflections at night

My admiration for the Chinese Poet Li Po grows with each year.  I am reading this poem in a spartan 8x10 room.  Li Po wrote this 1400 years ago thinking of me.


Quiet Night Thoughts

Before my Bed
there is bright moonlight
so that is seems
like frost on the ground:

Lifting my head
I watch the moon,
Lowering my head
I dream that I am home.

Li Po

translations

When a soldier says, “Too easy” he is referring that there is a good chance your problem can be fixed. I first heard this at Ft. Benning and repeated all the time over here. It is always said with a clipped upbeat tempo. Underneath the radar, he is thanking God he caught a break with something that is solvable.



When a soldier says, “It is what it is” he is referring to his current situation as being hopelessly fucked.

Petareaus on Karsai – “It is what it is.”

General Stanley McCrystal on Rolling Stone – “It is what it is.”

Any soldier on his first, second, third deployment …, “It is what it is.”

winning the hearts and minds

Almos and his band of Afghan handy men still clean certain areas of Cherry-Beasley.  Almos wears a sports coat that looks like a K-Mart knock off.  He leads with a swagger, a little panache and a touch of verve.  Sinatra in his  lean years come to mind or Bobby Brown on a high.  Almos has discovered the American smoke break.  He now smokes a pack day while at work.  He and his henchman go to the designated gazebo for smokers, light up and pontificate.  Marvelous.

What's Goin On?

This is Afghanistan outside of the wire.  The Russians mined most of it.  Today, Afghans clear the mine fields.  The bad guys can get a little closer.  What's a bad guy?  Anyone that launches a rocket or fires a mortar in to your neighborhood. Keeping it simple.

   "What's Goin On?" the Marvin Gaye song that summed up the 60's for me still sings true.  "We have got to find a way to bring some lovin here today."  Then like now we have to find a way out of the madness.  And then like now I listen to music, read literature and gaze at art which gives me hope.  There is no hope in politics it is nothing more than a prescription for despair. You can put your faith in Mozart and know that he touches the sublime.  Or you can listen to Motown feeling the hope of gospel, the energy of jazz and the street poetry of Marvin Gaye.  Or like myself you can stake out a small piece of a trout stream where you can find an interior world of delicate mayflies and soft currents that beckon to thee.  Maybe, its just keeping the faith in the things that are true: art, the creation and a fly rod.

The Good Guys

The 1st Sgt. is a huge man. He has what used to be called a crew cut, a thick neck and a slight limp. There is kindness in his eyes that dart everywhere while he talking to you. When he is sitting down his legs are always moving you feel the nervous energy unbound and relentless. You would have to be half crazy to fuck with him. There is too much of him. This is his seventh deployment. He has done time in Iraq and Afghanistan. War is his profession.
Sgt. Sugar looks like Woody Strode in the movies. He is 6’3’’ and moves with both power and grace. I first saw him shooting baskets outside the Red Cross office. He shoots the ball a little above his head his wrist cocked releasing the ball with a high arc. The ball sails through the hoop and you hear the crisp sound of the net snapping.
Big events are the basketball games on the broken concrete court. When the Sgt plays it is a man with boys. He drinks coffee with his sugar. He has both a calm and an interior ferocity. He is always measuring you with his eyes after your released he will give you an easy that’s cool smile.
Sgt. First Class is tall, lengthy and country. He could be Gary Cooper. He never raises his voice and has a naturally warmth. Like most of the soldiers with Task Force Bastogne he has been deployed multiple times. Somehow he kept a quality of innocence about him. How you do that is beyond my imagination.
SSGT. Ladyday is from the Caribbean islands. She handles the Red Cross messages that can flood into to TF Bastogne. She knows where all of her soldiers are at all times. She never gets testy over the messages. At the gym with her headphones on she sings Oletta Adams songs and swings her wide hips with an insouciant freedom.

snap shots

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humorless men

Only a humorless man could look at Afghanistan and see hope.
Exhibit 1 – Karzai who has an affable smile and would be an excellent game show contestant is the leader of Afghanistan. He is whom we have pinned out hopes and treasure on. We go to bed each night praying that he is taking his medication for bi-polar episodes. God save us.
Exhibit 2 – Karzai’s brother makes Vito Corolene look like St. Francis of Assisi. When the U.S. money train arrived his brother bought a semi to haul the cash.
Exhibit 3 – The country has an illiteracy rate of 85%. We are sending over teams of lawyers to assist in writing new Afghani law which only 15% of the population can understand, maybe. We are also developing a police force which can’t read the laws they are supposed to enforce. Could it be that the only net gain in Afghanistan after we leave is the country will need more lawyers.