The Crackpot Mainstream and The Day Before Yesterday

The day before yesterday I went fishing with Hedderman, 60 degrees, no wind. He showed me his favorite secret spot on the Shoshone about a mile outside of town. We were alone on the river for 4 hours, keeping at least 200 yards apart for fishing purposes, a left-of-center progressive and a Trump conservative.

Yesterday, it rained snow and then snowed rain; when it was coming down it was very difficult to tell which, snow or rain. For a good hour, whatever it was—snow or rain—performed a blizzard dance that we, the audience, couldn’t see no matter how hard we looked. Whatever it was, rain or snow, it melted once it hit the ground. And when everything cleared a couple of hours later the snow-line had dropped at least a ew hundred feet down the mountain, coming closer and closer to the cabin, so I decided to call it snow.

This morning is crystal, sunny, and cold. The snow has stayed on the mountain. The high today will be 30, the low 12. 

 If and when you have a nice day at this time of year, you get out in it. It’s what you do in Wyoming, you take advantage of the weather since it so often takes advantage of you. Hedderman and I met at 1 pm the day before yesterday just off Cooper Lane not all that far from the road that connects Cody to Powell. Then a big steep climb down to the river, and the river all to ourselves.

Hedderman fishes’ wet flies with a spinning rod, an unconventional purist. He could catch fish in the Gobi Desert. Hedderman doesn’t move around much in the river, not nearly as much as I move around. He sees a couple of flat patches of water to his liking and casts to them; I roam, a restless fisherman. I was fishing lures, not a good choice as the river was shallow and there was lots of bottom moss to negotiate, but lures were all I had. 

Hedderman and I hardly said a word to each other for 4 hours. We fished while the light was turning from yellow to gold and from gold to orange, and then to purple. At dusk, a strange pinkish-blue spaceship of a cloud hovered over the river: I wondered if it contained space aliens or a small group of Oath Keepers. By then it was nearly dark, time to climb up the hill to head home. 

I thanked Hedderman for showing me his secret fishing sport and said goodbye, he going one way and I another. It had been a great day on the river, no question, and too long since I’d last gone fishing. Driving home I considered our extremes—Hedderman a country boy, me from the city; Hedderman a Trumper, me…? I don’t know what I am anymore, a liberal humanist, I suppose, who finds nearly nothing to cheer about in regard to the human condition.

 A 25-mile drive in the dark to the cabin, alone, only a few cars on the road, lots of time to think. Hedderman and I had come together of that warm late autumn day, out of doors, pulling on our waders to get into the great river, fishing the clear, rushing water. Maybe our extremes were holding us together, I thought, maybe it was the crackpots in the center who were causing all the problems.