Articles

“I bet that guy is staring at you because you’re pretty,” says my son.

Since I haven’t brushed my hair, I bet that guy isn’t staring because I’m pretty. He’s staring because we’re minorities. Woman with child. No man among us. There’s no way we know what we’re doing.

But we do.

I efficiently back in my truck with the only Idaho license plate on this dirt road. Locals lose the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River to tourists in the summer. I’m parked between Utah and Washington. Texas two rigs over.

I came so far for beauty,
I left so much behind.
—Leonard Cohen

I planned to make a night of it, fishing brookies on the sparkling upper river early in the evening then dropping down to a deeper, slower stretch after sunset in the hopes that Mr. Hex might appear—and that Mr. Big might join the party. I knew where the heavy brown lived and if anything could induce him to slide out from beneath his canopy of brush it was a hatch of Hexes, the biggest, juiciest mayflies on the continent.