Your Reason for the Season
A photo of our editor from days gone by, fishing in Yellowstone National Park.
I’ll be the first to admit that, traditionally, summers have been hard for me to enjoy. As a kid in North Carolina, they were brutal. Once the temperatures hit the high 80’s I spent most of my time indoors, and for good reason. Piled on top of all that heat was a humidity level that made spending time outside borderline unbearable after a certain point in the day. I spent 21 years of my life tolerating southern summers until I finally had the chance to move out west. Even then, I found it hard to find anything that gave me good enough reason to stay outside too long during summer months. It wasn’t until a chance event provided me with my first-ever fly fishing rod that I realized what sorts of opportunities I was missing.
When I was living in Colorado, I traded a recently-purchased compound bow to a man for a fly rod. I had lost all the arrows I bought for it in a field, and so, dreading the drive to Denver to pick up more, I made the decision to instead put it up for trade on Craigslist. As it turned out, a mechanic had backed over one of his customer’s rods and purchased a new one for him which he never returned to claim. His son wanted a bow, and I wanted a rod. It was an easy trade, and one that would have a lasting impact on the course of my life.
I spent just about every day on the Blue River, in the town of Dillon, learning to fish with a fly rod after that. And, as I started fishing more, I began to find a way to enjoy summer in a way I hadn’t before. I learned that, generally speaking, during the summer one of the best times to fish is in the morning before water temperatures get too high. In the past, waking up early was usually a task reserved for days when I would help my family mow the grass along acres of land. These were long, hot days that didn’t usually end until the late evening. Because of this, waking up in the morning had turned into something I was not particularly fond of as a young adult. But soon, I was doing it voluntarily to try and catch trout during one of their most active times of the day. The cool air of a summer morning quickly became one of my favorite things, whether I was in Colorado, Montana, or even back in North Carolina, where I lived at home for a year before I moved to the Pacific Northwest.
These days I spend many of my summer mornings along the North Fork of the Middle Fork in Westfir. It’s been quite a few years since I picked up my first fly rod now, but waking up, making coffee, and throwing my gear in the car to drive into the mountains in search of summertime trout has become one of my favorite things in the world. I play my favorite tunes on the drive, stop by the Westfir Lodge for a pick-me-up, and cruise down the Aufderheide enjoying the warmth of the sun peeking through the trees.
Fly fishing is my warm weather activity, and now I love the season because of it. It has become a piece of me, and I know that I wouldn’t be the same person I am today had I not picked up that rod in Colorado. Now, even when there’s smoke in the sky, you’ll probably find me somewhere along the North Fork. And some days, if I’m lucky, a buddy with a boat will get us down the McKenzie searching for red band trout. No matter where I am, there aren’t many summer days that have me hung up on the heat anymore because I found a way to enjoy it. It’s easy to get stuck on the things that you don’t like about something, and it’s even easier to dig into old habits that keep you from enjoying yourself. Instead of doing that, I encourage you, the reader, to instead find “your reason for the season,” and find something that makes you happy no matter the time of year. We only get so many rotations around the sun; there’s no use not enjoying all of it.