OUTDOOR TRAINING


    Last spring I was afforded the opportunity to teach my son a few lessons concerning trout fishing, hiking, and survival skills, which I believe every young person should have a basic knowledge of.  One evening while sitting at our kitchen table perusing a yellowing copy of a map, I invited my son over to take a gander.  “Do you see this lake?  That’s where we’re going in the morning, and I can assure you that humans haven’t laid eyes on it for years.  Native Americans, most likely, are the last to have seen this place.  There’s not even a road into it, but there is a way for us to get there,” I said excitedly, while tapping my finger on the map.  Ryan gave me a brief look of disbelief, and then rolled his eyes.  The eye rolling, which was getting more and more frequent, was beginning to get on my nerves.
     The map showed a state road which passed in the vicinity of the lake, and a little dotted line, meandering  from the road to the general area of the our new, secret fishing spot.  “It’s going to be a rough ride in, but it will be worth it to fish in a place that hasn’t been visited by human beings in years,” I said, while Ryan rolled his eyes once again.
    Early the next morning, we loaded all of our fishing gear into the bed of my old pickup truck and began our journey to the nearly uncharted waters, which according to the map,  was situated in a valley below towering mountains.  We arrived at the spot on the gravel road where I surmised that the dotted line would likely start, leading us to our destination.  “By my estimation, this should be the exact location that this dotted line begins,” I said, staring down at the map.  I steered my old truck off the road and through a cluster of thick brush and trees.  “Yep, you can see that no-one’s been this way for many years,” I continued as our heads bobbed up and down, “If ever.”
    “Maybe we should drive on the gravel road a little bit further and just look.  Maybe there’s a better way in, besides, those other vehicles are going that way,” Ryan replied as the truck began it’s decent down a steep ravine.  I didn’t even entertain the thought of giving a reply to such a juvenile suggestion.
    I am all for preserving the sanctity of natural beauty, but a few bridges would have come in handy in our attempt at traversing a couple of deep creek beds.  Once, we stared straight into the ground on the way down, and stared straight into the sky on the way out of one of the crevices I had managed to drive through.  The farther we went, the more convinced I was that humans had not set foot or tire for that matter, in that area for many years.  We continued on, mowing over saplings and laurel bushes along the way.  Finally, after a harrowing half hour ride, with my son praying to Jesus for salvation a few times, we crashed through a jungle of raspberry bushes and skidded to a stop at the edge of a crystal clear lake, which was teeming with life.  Sunbathers, lounging around on towels and group of cyclists stared at us in wonderment.  Mothers raced to round up their children while yelling something about a lunatic on the loose.  It only takes one person to screw things up for everybody, I thought.  I looked in all directions for the lunatic, but didn’t see one, so I assumed that maybe he had fled the area.  The smell of charcoal wafted through the air, as several families grilled under a pavilion made of logs.  Two men, who were attempting to load a canoe onto a trailer, stared at us and laughed.  I guessed  they’d never seen a truck with vines, leaves, and branches sticking out in every direction before.  Apparently, at some point, the Forest Service had constructed a road, which led to an expansive parking lot.  “You would think the cartographer would think to add the road to his map!”  I said, trying to impress my son with my large vocabulary, while thinking of how disgusted  I was with the government for drawing such a useless map. 
    We opened the doors and stood next to the truck, admiring  the beauty of the place, when I decided to sample one of the raspberries hanging from my door handle.  I leaned against the hood  while chewing the tasty morsel as the men loading the canoe continued to laugh hysterically.  What’s wrong with these people? I thought.  Haven’t they ever seen a man eat a raspberry?  “Native Americans, huh dad?  Did you know that this map was printed in 1956?”  Ryan said, standing beside the truck and studying the map.  The kid had way to many hang-ups with insignificant details.  “I’ll go ahead and grab my pole and creel, I’m ready to do some fishing!”  he said, reaching over the side of the bed and through a laurel bramble that was sticking out of the wheel well.  “Dad, I can’t get my pole out!  The line’s all tangled around the mirrors and the muffler is still hot!” the boy exclaimed as he flailed his scorched hand.  I had torn the mirrors off my truck earlier while trying to maneuver between two pine trees.  A stump, hidden by a honeysuckle thicket had laid waste to my muffler, causing my truck to sound like a dragster ready for the green light.  Each time we lost a part, I would have Ryan jump out and toss the lost article on the back of the truck.  I did handle the muffler with a pair of gloves though.
    “You go ahead and remove the foliage from under the truck, and I’ll get the poles,” I said, as Ryan knelt to the ground, tugging and pulling at the branches lodged beneath  my truck from our drive through the thicket.
    For some reason, Ryan had recently taken to fishing independently of me.  “I’m going on down a little further, you stay here,” the boy said, while never breaking stride.
    “Fine, just make sure to steer clear of any eddies or dangerous currents!” I yelled.  Dangerous currents were bad enough, but eddies were far worse.  They couldn’t be trusted.  Once, an eddie had most brazenly told me that the plug in my little pontoon boat wasn‘t necessary.  Later, after an untimely submergence and subsequent icy swim, my heart went out to those who had perished on the Titanic, so avoiding eddies had become paramount after that little episode.
    I found a nice little spot along the lakeside and perused my tackle box, trying to decide which lure would be best for trout.  I settled on a rooster tail, which I had been told, trout could not resist.  After attaching the little, fuzzy lure to my line, I leaned back and gave the rig a mighty heave.  Instantly, I felt as though my shoulders had been pulled from their sockets, and a disk in my back had been severely mangled.
    The Sycamore tree is a very bothersome plant to be sure.  They seem to have the uncanny ability to grow in the most inconvenient places on Earth.  The first being my fishing spot.  I turned and stared at my lure, winding it’s way around a branch like whistle string on a basketball coach‘s finger.  I had two choices.  Number one was to simply tug at the lure, hoping the twig would snap and I could retrieve my lure, or two, I could tug and have the line snap and lose the lure.  I tugged and the line snapped, making the lure one with the tree for all eternity.
    Trout are a very arrogant species of fish, at least the ones I saw circling my bait, occasionally nudging it, but never biting.  There’s little doubt that fish do indeed have a very sophisticated aquatic language  which they utilize when I’m in the area.  “Hey guys, look who it is!  Let’s mess with him a little bit and just swim up and sit, staring at his bait.  He’ll get mad and throw the rest of it in the water and before long, it‘s open buffet!”  the lead trout says, while the others laugh.
    After a few hours of more lost lures, meltdowns concerning an unplanned swim (grass is also a very bothersome plant and can be very slippery when wet),  and surgically removing a hook from my thumb with pliers, I noticed  Ryan heading in my direction, with a wide smile upon his face.  “Well, how’d you do?” I asked, as he stood, looking into the tree above my head.
    “Is that your lure hanging there?” he asked, ignoring my question.
    “Naw, I guess the guy here before me didn’t know much about casting,” I answered, laughing slightly.
    “I caught a bunch, but only kept four.  I didn’t keep any under fifteen inches though,” he said, opening his creel, allowing me to peek in at the over sized rainbow trout.  After my outdoor training session concluded, I decided that the next lesson would be associated with his bragging.  Obviously, the trout in his area of the lake were very cordial and nice, unlike the scaley, arrogant slim balls that swam near my area, mocking me.  “Why are your pants and shoes wet?” he continued.
    His pointed observations were beginning to give me the sense that he was making fun of me. “Oh, for some reason, I began to feel feverish from the waist down and decided to try to cool myself a little,” I replied, to even more eye rolling.  Yeah, I was definitely going to have him examined by a doctor, I thought.  Something was clearly wrong with his eyes.  They’d spent most of the day rolling around in his head like marbles.
    “Let’s get out of here. I’m tired and besides, we need to clean these fish,” he said, as I began gathering my fishing gear.
    We began walking toward the truck, with my boots sloshing all the way, when I noticed a small trail leading up and over a ridge beside the lake.  “Say, I wonder where that trail goes?  Let’s hide our poles and take a little stroll up that ridge.”   We stood silently, staring at the ridge, which appeared to be nearly vertical.
    “Nah, let just go. Besides, I need to clean the fish before they go bad,” Ryan said.
    “Oh, come on.  You need some experience at hiking anyway,” I replied, hoping to have better luck with hiking training than I did at fishing training.
    After hiding our fishing gear in some tall weeds, we began the grueling climb to the top of the ridge.  I was considering giving the boy some training on how to deal with a heart attack victim, but luckily I didn’t need to.  Stepping out onto a rock precipice, we surveyed the beautiful lake below and took in all it’s beauty.  “This is great!  Let’s go even higher and see what it looks like from the very top,” I said, while trying desperately to catch my breath.  Lactic acid had begun to work its magic in my legs, but I was determined to show my son how to properly scale the side of a cliff.
    “Seriously dad, let’s go back down, besides it’s getting dark and we need to clean the fish,” he whined.  I wasn’t sure why he insisted on carrying his creel full of fish with us, but I guess he had his reasons.
    We headed even further up the mountain, finally reaching the top in the dark.  Suddenly, the trail and the surrounding forest seemed to have melded into one.  We weren’t even sure which way we had ascended the mountainside.  “Let’s just begin walking down, and surely we’ll come out in the vicinity of the lake,” I said, trying to calm the young man’s nerves.
    We slipped, tripped and fell and even momentarily walked down the side of the mountain, groping all the way.  Finally, we stopped after a rather painful slide through a wild thorn bush.  Wild thorn bushes rank right up there with Sycamore trees and grass, especially when they’re hiding under the cloak of darkness.  I used the light from my wristwatch to assess the damage, and to notice that we’d been bumbling around in the woods for over two hours.   “You know, raw fish are considered a delicacy in many Asian countries,“ I said, listening to our stomachs growl.  I stared at Ryan’s silhouette against the night sky, and was proud to have a son with such a finely shaped head, although I was sure that his eyes were rolling around again.  “Or, I could use my boot string and a couple pieces of dry wood to make a fire, if you’d like yours cooked.”
    “Dad, doesn’t the lake get it’s water from a stream flowing out of the mountains?” the boy asked, oblivious to the idea of eating the fish, and clearly a novice at survival skills.
    “Uh, maybe.”
    “I hear a stream over there.  Why don’t we just follow it down and hopefully we’ll come out close to the truck,”  he continued, as he plucked several ornery thorns from his forearm.
    We did as he suggested, against my better judgment, and sure enough we emerged from the thick brush near my truck.
    The sunbathers and families had long since traveled on, but the cyclists were now gathered around a campfire, in front of several tents, which looked like ant hills in the flickering light.  We retrieved our fishing gear from it’s hiding spot, with the aid of a flashlight loaned to me by one of the cyclists, and climbed into the truck.  We were sore, wet, and hungry as we drove away from the lake.
    “Dad, do you think mom’s worried?” Ryan said from the comfort of the passenger’s side of the truck.
    “Nah, she knows I’m well versed in handling myself in the great outdoors, and now you are too!” I answered proudly, as I steered the old truck back through the raspberry jungle.