Photo by Jeffrey Stutsman
I cultivate a fly tying lifestyle of carefully curated panic. Last year’s trip to Steamboat Springs, when I was supposed to be on the road at 5am? I was up at three, in a stone-cold panic, tying as many foam beetles as I could before I had to leave. Last minute trips to the fly shop for essential materials are a matter of course, and hot-blooded tying sessions the night before I leave, or in the pre-dawn gloom, are almost a requisite part of any trip.
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Photo by Jeffrey Stutsman
The pile of fleece on the floor stirs as Baxter begins to unfold himself from his blanket fort. I say, “My, what big teeth you have.” But he shakes himself awake in a manner that indicates he is a dog, and doesn’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.
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Sam tries out his 3-wt. Redington Butterstick on the St. Vrain.
Photo by Jeffrey Stutsman
The spillway of the Lake Estes dam is choked with chunks of blue-white ice. Up the valley and over the roofs of Estes Park proper, the Continental Divide is knife-sharp against the cloudless Colorado sky: stark, jagged, and cloaked in snow.
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Sam fails to catch any fish on the Arkansas tailwater and is mocked by ducks
Photo by Jeffrey Stutsman
It’s the ass-end of January, and I longingly remember the sequences I use to tie blood knots, davey knots, and surgeons knots, but when I look down at my hands, dry and cracked from the cold winter air, they feel useless and palsied. They feel old.
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