Baker Creek

It was a late summer day; I could never have gotten in to the stream in spring or early summer. It was a stream that I had crossed several times on my way further up the mountain to the alpine lakes and meadows on the southeast side of Baker. It was beautiful out--not the boilerplate cloud cover that so often stacks up on the west slopes of the Cascades. There were no clouds in the sky, only a pale to dark blue that gave no reason to belie its depth and blended in to the sides of the mountains.

The road was dusty--it hadn't rained in a few weeks, and the warm weather quickly dried up the dampness left by the summer rain. On my way to Blue Lake one day, I decided to stop and look over the small single lane bridge that crossed the creek. It was about a forty foot drop to the creek but it flowed strong and was obviously not a seasonal stream, but rather a year-round, spring and runoff fed creek. I pulled my car forward to the side of the road just past the bridge. As I slipped on my waders and put together my pole, I listened to the sounds of summer in the mountains, the grasshoppers creaking in the heat, the robins and finches and camp robbers squeaking through the trees. Several small butterflies moved around me as I began to walk to the slope down to the stream. They landed on my waders and moved their wings up and down, pushing small pieces of air towards and away from me. I was enveloped by them, seeing the blue of their bodies disappear in to the blue of the sky, then reappear against the green of the firs.

I slid more than walked down the slope. I lost my footing more than once, and was forced to grab on to the bushes to keep from losing control. As I hit bottom, I looked up and saw what I had come down--a forty foot embankment. The bridge blackened the water to my left and downstream. Sun played off the rocks to my right. I decided to head upstream first. It was an easy stream to walk, with rocks placed regularly between the pools. But what incredible rocks they were--shaped into beautiful curves and bends by the years of spring floods and tumbling tree trunks ripped free from the bank. It was like walking in to a potter's workshop, seeing the ceramic bend and change in to innumerable shapes. The pools were plenty and emerald clear, but there were no fish. Nothing. The stream was large enough by far, and provided plenty of deep water and hiding for them. I kept moving upstream, hoping that I would find something profitable. After about a half hour, I had given up, and sat down on a log that pushed out in to the stream and rested on the water-carved rock figure of a reclining woman. The day was beautiful, the kind where clouds patched clumpily in the sky and the sun beamed in the rocks. Even without fish, it was a moment of beauty.

I began to head back to the car, but before I tried to scramble back up the bank, I decided to move in to the shadow under the bridge and try downstream. I crossed through the dark, where the stream bed disappeared in to blackness. Then I burst in to sunshine again. I could see that not far downstream, there was a log dam that had built up; but not any log dam was this. As I moved closer, I could see that ten or twelve large logs had piled upon each other near perfectly, creating an effective fifteen foot high waterfall which no fish could pass. I looked at the logs, then down to the pool below the spraying water. I could see several fish cruising the pool, working their way to the waterfall, then around one side to the tail end, then circling round again. As unobtrusively as possible, considering that I had to scale several large wet logs and slippery rocks, I moved to down to the pool.

As I looked, a group of three cutthroat trout became evident. They had just moved past the tail of the pool and were beginning to circle back across the far side of the pool towards the waterfall and me. Yet there, just as the pool narrowed and began to dribble down to a steep rapid, there was a solitary cutthroat facing the current, moving gently side to side looking for food. There was no room for me to properly cast to him, for he was only five or so feet away, and I was backed against a wall with my feet in the water. There was no room for me to do anything but stand there. As I prepared to cast, I looked down. The three cutts that were cruising the pool were moving closer. I stood dead still, and they came up to me, swam between my legs, and continued their way down the pool. I watched them move unhurriedly and unconcernedly on their way, never noticing me towering above them. I had never seen anything like this. Fish with no fear, no instinct to hide. No spooking.

I continued to look at the fish working the tail of the pool. He took no notice of me, yet I was in plain sight. I watched him work the current for a while, then held my rod above and in front of him and dipped my fly in the water about three feet upstream and let it drift down over him. He took immediately and I quickly pulled him in. He was about six inches and one of the most beautiful fish I had seen--brilliant red and orange sides like an ocean sunset or maple in fall. I admired him, his six inches barely spanning my hand, then released him. Instead of scattering to find a place of cover, he easily returned to his place at the tail of the pool and kept feeding as though I had never caught him.

I would like to day that I admired these virgin fish and went on my way, but I didn't. I tried another drift over the fish I had just caught. He saw my fly, approached it, then turned away. It was then that I turned and left. I knew in that moment that I had crossed the line. I had taken virgin, untouched fish--completely protected by the inaccessibility of their habitat, and made them skeptics. Very likely, they had never seen a predator--for so long that they had no need to fear.

Thus, the question must be asked: is it better to remain innocent, or does knowledge make us more whole? It is the Garden of Eden dilemma; Adam and Eve had the same choice. Innocent children do not remain so, nor do I wish them to. I want my children to grow and learn to understand the pain and beauty of life. However, the beauty of innocence can never be regained once it is lost. And that is what hurts so much.