WYOMING
Glancing in the rearview, I see Sheep Mountain as I am driving east on highway 130 from Centennial to Laramie. The Snowy Range of the Rocky Mountains and Medicine Bow National Forest lie just beyond it in this little corner of Southeast Wyoming. Out the front window on either side of me are sprawling, wide-open ranges seeming to go on forever in every direction.
There are 500 miles of Nebraska interstate between here and home back in Iowa. 500 miles to relive the past few days of mountains, stars and trout streams. I had followed Kevin Hansen, owner of Rod & Rivet fly shop in Des Moines, as he traveled the area, fishing and mapping the best spots ahead of the arrival of three-weeks’ worth of fishing expeditions he would be guiding.
As we had driven along the backroads of cattle country guided by a trusty road atlas and Kevin’s equally trusty intuition, I learned about the area, witnessed the scars of the previous year’s wildfires and kept eyes open for wildlife. Hell, we witnessed a pronghorn giving birth mere yards from the car window on one particularly interesting morning.
It wasn’t until I was back in Iowa a few days later where I stumbled upon The Optimist by David Coggins as I sat in a coffee & book shop just outside of Iowa City. With the trip fresh in my mind, the subtitle “A case for the fly-fishing life” jumped out like (forgive me) a trout rising in a stream. As I read his story, the imagery from each passage began to align with the photographs I had taken out west. What stood out from both memory and page, was that the beauty in the journey is less about catching fish and more about the process and joy of the hunt.
The story I created pairs passages and images to tell the story of this journey.
“If there’s one thing I love about talking to anglers it’s this gleam in their eye, they can’t hide the childlike fact that they still believe.”
-David Coggins
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“...guides always drive trucks, usually with a crack snaking across the windshield.”
“I was lucky enough to know people who thought nothing of driving around for hours looking for a place to fish...”
“There are clues everywhere lightly hidden: which insects are appearing that a trout might eat, the speed of the current, shadows faintly moving under the water.”
“This time of preparation – assembling the rod, pulling on waders, lacing up boots, tying on flies – is one of my favorite parts of fishing.”
“Once the fish is gone, it’s just me on the bank. There are mountains in the distance. Nobody knows where I am. Sometimes you get lucky.”
