Negatively Positive

I went ahead and did it -- exercised my positive freedom negatively by cancelling the third movement of my kayak sonata. Doing so went unusually smoothly, with a polite man in Bangalore easily changing my return flight to tomorrow with no charges or changes. I'd barely hung up before the giant sinking feeling arrived and made me my skin flush with an ominous near-panic: "did I just make a giant mistake?"

But no, it's a decision that will hold. I'll keep the maps and charts and dreams and look for another sucka or two who likes to paddle and fish. There are some likely suspects out there (Jim I think you are probably reading this, right?) and I will hunt them down for next time. Or, on the other hand, I now know that three weeks alone in the bush is about my limit. Must plan accordingly.

In the meantime, I've had some really nice fishing and paddling in the smaller way that the road system allows. After wading through a few million turistas and dodging bobbing flotillas of guided kayak tours, I put in twelve miles on Resurrection Bay and got some nice silvery pinks and cohos trolling. Stopped by Ptarmigan Creek and found beautiful little rainbows aggressive to dries on a very pretty stream, and later that night found the trip's biggest coho while fishing alone (very rare for the area) on Willow Creek.

However, fishing on the road system is not really the way to rest. It's too much of a letdown after being in the real backcountry, fishing storied waters full of fat trout. I did my trip in the reverse of what it should have been -- I mean, when the plane left me on Tikchik lake a month ago, it left me OUT there. After finding a good tent site I looked around for a likely food cache, and walked over to check it out . . . "what's this, a big pile of recently chewed caribou bones, with the joints still red with blood? Maybe I won't cache my food just exactly here after all . . . ." I went five days down that river without seeing a human form, and it was a good thing to do. The big grayling were all mine, the lake trout could only chase my flies, and the world was my oyster.

Next time online I should have some photos ready of grayling, lakers, and oysters. However, I have decided to exercise my positive freedom in another small way and post about the trip in completely unchronological order. Maybe.