Happy in Print, If Not on the River

The first week in March is no time for flyfishing in Vermont. Back in Montana, however, some of the year’s best hatches are just beginning, coinciding with the release of Big Sky Journal’s annual flyfishing issue. I have a work of fiction in it called “Happy Is The Man” but I am true-story happy to see my work in the same pool with many writers that I admire, including James Prosek, co-founder of the Yale Angler's Journal, and Yellowstone's Paul Schullery.

Spring Broken?

In the battle for a dwindling reservoir of tourists, Mexico has left the Caribbean high and dry. My family voted with our frequent-flyer miles and the winner was Cancun. (There were no seats available to any other destination.) We’ll rent a car in March and head south along the coast. With a group including one tween, one teen, and my walker-wielding mother, we wanted multiple rooms with at least one on the ground floor.

None of us has been there before, but the so-called Riviera Maya is second-home to rafts of expats, and hence numerous opportunities for villa rental. I contacted several online agents. One of them—Janice Spate—actually called me at home to talk potential properties. I could tell from her area code that she lives in British Columbia but I didn’t ask for her story.

There are many fine and expensive possibilities on the Yucatan coast but we did not choose any of them, opting instead for a three-bedroom Akumal condo through an outfit named Cancun Steve.

Steve’s website is goofily charming, one of those artifacts of the Internet that disarm and discomfort simultaneously, complete with mouse-over magic tricks. I was curious enough to request his story, and here are the answers I received.

Q: Are you a one-man operation?

A: we have a team. a girl up in New York. 4 of us here in Cancun.

Q: Is your name really Steve?

A: my name is Steve

Q: Do you live in Cancun, or somewhere else?

A: I reside in Cancun

Q: Has the economic downturn affected business as much as it has in the Caribbean, where flights were cut 15%?

A: the recession has effected us all friend

Catch and release in the home of the Khan

Many globetrotting anglers release all their fish as a matter of course. But acceptance of this conservation ethic varies significantly by country and culture. In Switzerland, for example, voluntarily releasing a legal-sized fish can leave you liable for prosecution. And in nearly all Asian nations (with the possible exception of Japan) catch-and-cook is the order of the day.

Thanks to an unusual coalition, however, catch-and-release has established its first stronghold in the land of Genghis Khan. Mongolia’s lakes and rivers provide habitat for many rare and unusual species, but the taimen, an extremely large and long-lived member of the salmon family, is the country’s most prized gamefish.



In April 2008, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) announced that local governments along a 200-mile stretch of an Amur River tributary have established the Asian continent’s first taimen sanctuary. Developed in cooperation with Montana-based Mongolia River Outfitters (my employer for the past three seasons), the agreement seeks not only to conserve taimen, but to protect an entire watershed. The new regulations allow international anglers to flyfish with single, barbless hooks, but restrict riverbank development and prohibit the use of motorboats.

Of Taimen and the River

Fly Rod and Reel’s Adventure issue (March 2009) includes my feature on Mongolia with photos from that country’s first taimen sanctuary. The piece hasn’t been posted to the magazine’s website yet, so look for a copy on the newsstand. Here’s how it opens:

If you’ve seen the pictures, then you might already be lost. The angler kneeling in bewildered devotion, smiling with an awkward joy, behind a fish so impossibly large that two hands provide an insufficient cradle. Because as soon as you can imagine it, the dream begins. Your boots in that unfettered river, your eyes blinking in the boreal sun, your hands reaching into cool water, your arms bearing that implausible weight. It’s a wonderful dream, infused with just the right blend of beauty and impracticality, and alternately enhanced and encumbered by facts. Because like Paris in the spring, a taimen’s heart-rending strike exists in a specific time and a far-off place, a location so remote that the experience requires (for most people) a week’s leave and a month’s salary.

Winter and Its Malcontents

Today’s New York Times included an editorial about snowmobiles in Yellowstone, a situation that, over the years, has devolved from a clash of interests into a cloud of exhaust. And yet, despite the years of wrangling (some legal, some illegitimate), Yellowstone remains one of the most beautiful and complicated places in the world. Here’s what I wrote about it in 2005 (originally published in Carve magazine, a supplement to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle).



A Quiet Weekend in Yellowstone: Old Faithful Without Snowmobiles

If I’d known that the shutter was frozen, then I wouldn’t have bothered with the camera. But there was my 7-year-old daughter, Marina, in a bright pink parka, skiing beneath a brilliant blue sky, while Old Faithful boiled and billowed, white steam over white snow. And I wouldn’t have bothered occluding my eyes with any sort of lens—telephoto or not—as two gray wolves sidestepped a shaggy herd of bison, moving with an uncanny blend of speed, grace, and nonchalance.

But I didn’t know, so I kept framing and focusing and shooting. Pictures—or, at least, what I thought then were pictures—of my wife Sarah gliding through a forest of lodgepole pines, the powder breaking around her knees. Of my son Dave watching a pair of elk feed along the Little Firehole River, the water gone gold in the dusk. Of a flock of Canada geese silhouetted against a geyser plume. Of a svelte coyote sitting expectantly before our cabin, attracted by the aroma of leftover prime rib.

I have visited Old Faithful, the ersatz metropolis of Yellowstone National Park, many dozens of times over the past four decades—but never in winter, when the venerable Inn is silent and shuttered, the asphalt parking lots shrouded in snow. And though I generally dislike cameras, everything looked so different on this occasion that I didn’t resent the strap around my neck. Too bad I was still using film.

Twenty-five years ago—back when electronic cameras stored their images on floppy disks—you might have found Sarah and me strolling the boardwalks under an August moon, sharing champagne from a bottle. In these more sober times, you’d be more likely to spot us escorting nieces and nephews from the soda fountain to the now-faded Morning Glory Pool, our smiles wilting under the August heat and the relentless crush of vacationers. We are still having fun, still in awe of the geysers’ gush and rumble, but it’s a sweltering sort of pleasure.

On an average summer day, Old Faithful plays host to 20,000 people, qualifying it as the fourth-largest city in the state of Wyoming. In winter, that daily average plummets to a small fraction of the fair-weather horde. There are, after all, only 100 rooms and 34 cabins at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, the only available accommodations. And since the roads are closed to ordinary vehicles, every other would-be geyser gazer must arrive by snowcoach—think of a passenger van with tank treads—or by snowmobile.

During our visit, a few days before Christmas, the number of snowmobiles entering the park was far below the current season’s daily limit of 720. We had heard horror stories of smog and bedlam from past winters, but saw little evidence of either. (We did, however, overhear a hotel employee delivering a stern admonishment to one wayward rider: “Excuse me, sir. Nearly flipping your machine is not funny.”)

The conventional wisdom contends that uncertainty keeps many would-be sled-jockeys away. One federal judge banned unguided snowmobiles, while another overturned the ban. Since a new (and temporary) winter-use plan is the target of at least two competing lawsuits, uncertainty is likely to dominate this season as well.

For skiers like us, any decline in the swarm of snowmobiles is an unmitigated blessing. Dave and Marina skied from our cabin—the one farthest from the main lodge—to breakfast. They skied from breakfast to Geyser Hill. And on our most ambitious day, they skied from the Divide trailhead, along Spring Creek, to the Lone Star Geyser Trail, past the Kepler Cascades, and back to the lodge—more than 8 miles—all without the background roar of internal combustion engines.

Of course, we would have done this trip anyway, even without a judge’s ruling. I understand the appeal and the utility of both two- and four-stroke motors. And I have no illusions of Old Faithful as wilderness, unsullied by human presence. That coyote, for example, pleading for prime rib, did not perfect its shtick in solitude. Since feeding park animals is expressly banned, it had help from a parade of innocents and scofflaws. (The next day, another guest observed the beast astride a snowmobile’s luggage rack, tearing into a lunch cooler.)

For me, the astounding thing about Yellowstone—summer or winter—is the relatively easygoing interplay between the human and the wild. On Geyser Hill, four bison graze within a ski-pole’s length of the boardwalk. Our children watch respectfully, then remove their skis to cross a stretch of bare pavement. Safely past, Marina races from one thermal feature to the next, renaming them with her own fancies—Elephant Head Pool, Bubblegum Creek, Little Frodo Geyser. Just in front of the General Store, closed until June, we spy a wolf track, the paw bigger than my palm.

Back in the cozy lobby of the Snow Lodge, we drink hot chocolate, write postcards, play rummy and cribbage, knowing that the elk and bison and wolves are still out there, that the hot springs continue to bubble and boil. It’s a comfort to know that all of these wonders are just a short ski from our upholstered chairs, that we can enjoy them any time we want, without crowds or congestion.

A few days later, after receiving the condolences of our local photo processor—two full rolls of Fuji Velvia, completely blank—we all agree that winter is the best time to visit Old Faithful. And that we would like to repeat the experience, to begin stockpiling the same store of memories that we have for other seasons in Yellowstone. And that, maybe, just maybe, we might try to capture some of those images—but not on film. In this new year, I resolve to go digital at last.

Goodbye, My Absentee

I’ve been home from Mongolia for a month now, enough time to cut some firewood, find a new job at the University Press of New England, and vote in a gratifying presidential election—the most gratifying, by far, of the eight in which I’ve had the hard luck to vote.

Here’s Barack Obama back in January of 2008, standing a short block from the Press’s Lebanon office, speaking intelligently and in full paragraphs before losing the New Hampshire primary to Hillary Clinton.



We spent the previous two debacles abroad—in Japan, then China—feeling disconnected if not actually disenfranchised, so it was hard to shake off that uncertain sense of doom, the fear of going to bed whole and waking up in fractions, unrecountably diminished.

The Melting Pot, on Vacation

Last week’s New York Times contained an interesting story by Vivian Toy about the Chinese fascination with mixed-race children. Or perhaps it was more about the protectiveness of American parents in foreign lands. After reading the piece several times, I’m still not sure. The writing is thoughtful and its judgments hidden in plain view.

Our family has encountered similar situations over the years—Chinese tourists who ask for their picture with us, Nepalese porters who can’t resist patting our daughter on the head—but I’d never attributed this attraction to the mix in races.

On the one occasion when race came to mind, the attention we received was hardly benign. The incident occurred in Tagbilaran, the so-called “city of peace and friendship” on the Philippine island of Bohol. This is what I wrote about it at the time:

I didn’t see what happened next, nor did I see it coming. I heard Sarah cry out, and I followed her shocked gaze to her attacker. The woman was not much more than five feet tall, with streaks of gray in her black hair, and tanned skin nearly the same color as my own. She had used her clenched fist to deliver a low blow, and now she stood glaring at us. There was a challenge in her expression, along with something like hate, or defiance.

“What was that about?” I asked inanely, but the woman did not respond.

Meanwhile, Sarah grabbed Dave by the hand and started across the street.

“Come on,” Sarah said. “Don’t confront her.”

I picked up Marina and followed.

We fled several blocks in the general direction of our hotel, before slipping into the friendly confines of a Chinese restaurant. One wall displayed a banner congratulating local students, and several celebratory dinners were already in progress. Over roast duck and pan-fried shrimp, Sarah and I tried to decipher what this incident meant. But we could not. There was no identifiable provocation—or motivation. The woman did not have the unfettered look of a lunatic, yet she had acted purposefully, with malice aforethought.

The explanation that I did not want to consider was racial hatred. Had the woman looked first at my black hair, then at Sarah’s white skin? Had she contemplated our children’s features before striking at the offending womb?

I don’t know. After all, such a reaction would not have been impossible here in North America, at least within our parents’ memories. As recently as 1950, fifteen states, including Montana, Maryland, and California, prohibited marriage between whites and Asians.

From this perspective, communal affection for mixed-race children seems like a good thing.