Closer Than You Think

With my dry fly season ended, and the mixed messages on the weather front, I have gotten an early start on my winter reading. The early October passing of writer John Gierach has been on my mind, as I am sure it has for any of his readers of a certain age, so I have been re-reading his volumes these past few weeks. Though I didn’t start in a strictly chronological progression, I have been working toward the present in a haphazard fashion. I found a story this morning that was very enlightening, in an eerie sort of way.

In his next to last book, 2017’s “A Fly Rod Of Your Own”, Gierach wrote of the major flood that devastated Lyons, Colorado and his home St. Vrain Creek. Perhaps due to my own mindset, the story triggered a realization, one I never experienced upon my first reading of the book in 2017.

Just over a decade ago I had become highly enthused about the late Goodwin Granger and his legacy of Colorado made bamboo fly rods. The rod in the photo is my first “real” Granger, one of their ubiquitous 8642 Victory models from the later Wright & McGill era. I was fishing that very rod more than any during that time and devouring any information I could find about Granger fly rods.

I had learned many years before that of Colorado rodmaker Mike Clark, largely through John Gierach’s books and magazine columns, and I became familiar with Mike’s South Creek Ltd. brand and website. There I viewed photos of previous gatherings that Clark hosted along the St. Vrain, largely thought of as Granger gatherings, which he called the Colorado Cane Conclave. I began to work out early plans to attend his Conclave in the summer of 2014. It was when I finally contacted Mike Clark directly that I learned of the devastating flood the previous September. There would be no 2014 Conclave he told me, but there was hope for one to be held in 2015.

During that next year I acquired two more Granger rods, one each of the shorter 7633 and 8040 models with my Conclave trip in mind. These seven-and-a-half and eight-foot three-piece rods would hopefully be carry-on compatible for my flight to Colorado, as well as being perfect for fishing the Rocky Mountain streams. I found an LL. Bean combination fly vest and day pack and added it to my selection of gear, along with a special Wheatley fly box I dutifully filled, tying the dry flies I would need for August in Colorado Each piece heightened my excitement, and I had no doubt that this would be the trip of a lifetime!

The dream vanished in March of 2015.

I remember fishing my 8642 Granger Victory on Pennsylvania’s Big Spring late in February of 2015. There is a photo somewhere, taken by my freind Andy of me holding a twenty-inch rainbow I had landed on a size 20 BWO. I remember that I didn’t feel particularly good that day, hadn’t in fact for a week or more. There was this little bubbly, burning sensation next to my Adam’s Apple that I did not yet know was called angina.

In late March I underwent successful quadruple bypass surgery and began the long road to recovery and the adoption of a significant change in lifestyle. Prior to the end of February, I never had a clue.

My realization this morning was startling – the aftermath of that tragic St. Vrain flood very likely saved my life months before I had any idea there was a deadly problem lurking in my chest. Had I attended the Conclave in 2014, I would have been climbing through the high country with nothing save one of my Granger fly rods for company. Chances are the altitude and exertion of my dream trip would have triggered what would have been reported as an unexpected cardiac event, at least assuming some other angler stumbled across my body.

It is rapidly approaching a decade since my own mortality slapped me in the face, and I have fully enjoyed being alive and spending the past half-dozen years here, immersed in the bright waters of these Catskill rivers; the rivers of my heart. I never have managed to get out to Colorado and Mike Clark’s Conclave, though I have purchased a couple of lovely used bamboo rods from him.

It’s strange to suddenly realize that someone else’s tragic event more than 1,500 miles away may just have been one of the most pivotal points in your own life, even though you weren’t anywhere near that place or even aware of that tragedy at the time. It may take some time for me to put that into perspective. I am really glad to have that time…