1-fortunecookie.JPG (85.95 KiB) Viewed 1162 times
I realized in Rolla I'd made nearly the same trip almost fifteen years ago with my father and brother. My dad's cousin, the one who taught him to hunt and fish, invited us for a long weekend chasing smallmouth and squirrels. Beer. Fireworks. We never made it because my father chose to ford the main river instead of the smaller tributary, burying in midstream what may have been the world's only five-speed 1994 Plymouth Voyager minivan. At fifteen I was handed a clunky cellphone and dispatched in the bed of a stranger's red Ranger to find Shannon County's One-Armed Tow Truck Driver while dad and my eleven year old brother fished and swam with our obese chocolate lab. A year before my father's surgery, two years before his death from complications. He wasn't an asshole, just more easily understood in hindsight.
1-rv.JPG (162.45 KiB) Viewed 1162 times
1-train.JPG (184.83 KiB) Viewed 1162 times
I wanted to visit a month ago but it was closed, and in the meantime twelve inches of rain and twenty feet of water have reshaped the entire system. It was hot and I loafed and snorkeled until the evening, catching a couple sunfish and one smallmouth well after dark.
1-darters.JPG (145.6 KiB) Viewed 1162 times
crawdad.JPG (176.23 KiB) Viewed 1162 times
1-smb.JPG (192.68 KiB) Viewed 1162 times
I took night classes at the SOBF school of photography.
At 10:30 the stars were out and fireflies were flashing in the trees along the bluffs. At 2:30 it was muggy and mosquitoes were eating my face, gnats in my ears. Somewhere around 4:30 it had clouded over, with lightning flickering in the distance, so I hauled everything up the gravel bar behind a willow that'd been arced in the flood to create something like a roof. I stayed up.
1-2ndfire.JPG (152.45 KiB) Viewed 1162 times
1-longear.JPG (246.54 KiB) Viewed 1162 times
1-sandls.JPG (175.38 KiB) Viewed 1162 times
1-plastic.JPG (332.24 KiB) Viewed 1162 times
1-maidenhair.JPG (170.33 KiB) Viewed 1162 times
1-cliff.JPG (191.27 KiB) Viewed 1162 times
The fishing sucked even after it got nice out, I caught a couple over-eager longear and some dink smallmouth in the rain. At the access there were nineteen cars in a space built for ten- not so much parked, as stopped when and where the owner had lost interest in driving. “Loved to death” is an appellation commonly applied to this place, one of the most protected streams in the country making it one of the most protected streams on the planet. Sometimes the problem isn't a dam or a mine or a shopping mall, it's us. I cracked a beer and asked around for the owner of the White Ford that boxed me in, and scouted for another more desolate access without luck.
Another day, hopefully.
1-boxturtle.JPG (173.86 KiB) Viewed 1162 times
- By SLSS
- By Matoffisy
- By K_P