fishing on bible lane

todd and i have decided to fish the river through town at least three days a week. fish to the conditions, try to observe what's happening, what changes. seems like an opportunity for a real relationship to a place.

that place just happens to be right off of bible lane. yippee! bible-y!

we'll be meditating on the river and attending to its changes. already it has swollen and receeded; the banks are occassionally mucky mush after a rain. and this is only over a couple of weeks. imagine what cjanges happen over a few seasons; runoff and irrigation and drought. imagine changes over centuries; the face of the mountain across from town, shorn sheer by, we speculate, the force of glacial lake missoula's undamming 15000 years ago.

another, more modern undamming is underway in missoula now -- the removal of the milltown dam, at the confluence of the blackfoot and clark fork rivers. sediment and toxins built up over a century come tumbling downstream, as well. we've seen a fish cage near our fishing spot -- a place the fwp keeps some small tester fish. they monitor the fish, to see if the sediment or toxins get very high, and kill them. i admit to an impulse to release them, so they can run up some nearby tributary and escape the influx of badthingies. they are the canaries in the mine; their presence may help save other, wild fishies in the river. i don't free them. but i do acknowledge them when i go by, and feel gratitude.

anyway, our in-town fishing jaunts, complete with nearby roaring interstate (note headlights reflected in river) and woodfire smoke bank, may seem a little too peopled to be a very fulfilling wilderness experience. weirdly, though, we've actually had all kinds of interesting encounters, even beyond the trout we're almost single-mindedly seeking...

for instance, while i was scanning the water for signs of rising fish, i saw a romp of otter twirl past. (other collective nouns for otters: bevy of otter, raft of otter.) they are so great! they are constantly, curiously swooping over and under one another like a pile of puppies. i got a not-so-great shot of them as they wriggled past: i waded out as deep as my leaky-in-the-ass waders would allow, and i talked to them. "where are you going? will you come here?" they were moving with but faster-than the current, and they actually slowed and moved towards me just a little. not enough to get any close-ups, of course, but i felt a moment of contact.

we also fished near a beaver dam. the beaver swam far out in the current and thwopp-ed his tail onto the water to express himself:

after i sat still for awhile, he came back to his dam...

and we left him to his fishing, which was clearly superior to ours.