Vinceland

I fished this week on the Owyhee river in eastern OR with Egge, Jess and Schroeder. Been waiting to fish with Egge for months, what a comedy trip. Anyhow, we were basically camping on Mars it seemed, with a cold river laden with large brown trout flowing right through camp. From camp we drove the truck to named fishing spots that I will not reveal, but there were big trout there. Walk down to the river and catch big trout. Bring beer. Sounds easy right?

Something was up, we did not catch trout we were supposed to, but two good things happened: Some great laughs and re-connecting with Egge, one of the funniest ex-pro snowboarders in existence. Also a friggin’ great fly fisherman.

The landscape down there reminded me of Mars. Red rocks, sand, mountains, sun. Pretty insane place, very BIG. I’ll definitely remember many details of that trip, but unfortunately I won’t remember the trout because I did not land any. I watched Jess catch a couple and I watched Egge work a feeding trout sitting right next to the bank. He crouched on his knees in the river, freaking out each time his fly passed over the nose of the big brown trout. He watched it feed on natural flies in between casts. He must have cast to that trout 3 dozen times before giving up. At one point, the fish hit his fly, missed it and eventually came back to feed in the same spot again.

I wanted to go on that trip for many reasons. One of them was that I knew it would be a memorable trip. I knew it would make for good memories. Those memories would include fish, beer, friends, good laughs, and a really cool place on a new river. I wanted to create new memories, in addition to catching some big ass browns. At least I got one of those out of the trip, and I have a new spot to fish with those dudes in the Fall.

In this picture is the neighborhood in which I grew up. In this picture are places where things happened with people. There’s skateboarding in this picture, skinned knees, hacky sacking, a first kiss, crying, laughing, early beers, school, family. This picture includes the places where I grew up and learned everything. Only memories live in this neighborhood now.

I learned from those memories and I keep learning. Those memories have helped create new friends, new jobs, new businesses, a future wife. My life is built on the memories created within the area of this image. My house lies in the middle somewhere. My school, the park, my best friend’s house, the street I learned to ollie on, the spot where I broke my leg, our dirt bike track, our back yard. I am one person, and my life is all over those streets and lawns. Imagine the power of all of the people I knew.

Imagine if memories could be created without living the experience. Not sure how good that would be. But maybe it’d be cool.

This is just a great damn photo of Scotty at Bromley shot by Shem. Has little to do with this post, but…