Every August for several years, Judy and I spend at least a week camping at the fishing hole on the upper Rogue River in the southern Oregon cascades. The actual fishing hole is a log jam blocking the river located in the bottom of a pumice walled canyon which is a 3.5-mile hike from the nearest vehicle access. I was introduced to this spot while still in high school by a buddy who eventually would be the best man at my wedding. He was shown the spot by his father who was shown it by his father. I have fished that spot many times over the last fifty years and never failed to catch fish and usually a lot of fish. When I worked summers for the Forest Service while still an undergrad, I used to ride my motorcycle up the trail once a week to catch a couple of fat rainbows for dinner. That is the first place I took Judy fishing a year before we were married. I took Wesley there before he could talk, carrying him in on my shoulders. I took Marty there just before he deployed to the Middle East. It is my spot.
It is a spot where time is kept with a different clock, powered by the river; measured in centuries. The area was formed 7,000 years ago when Mt. Mazama imploded in an eruption forty-fold greater than that of Mt. Saint Helens. About a half a mile of mountain top either exploded into the stratosphere, collapsed into the caldera now filled with the ultra-clear waters of Crater Lake, or flowed down the mountain in massive pyroclastic flows of glowing avalanching pumice. These flows raced down what was left of the exploded mountain’s slope at freeway speed interning everything in the path in a layer of burning ash up to 250 feet deep. Nothing could stop it, nothing survived.
But pumice is soft. Over the last half dozen millennia, the Rogue River eroded this flow to bed rock and continues to this day to undercut the pumice cliffs above, widening and flattening the canyon floor into a landscape populated by groves of old growth fir, pine and cedar, with narrow grassy meadows of thigh high grass. It’s perfect habitat for deer, elk, and the bear and mountain lion that prey upon them.
Although there are organized campgrounds in the area, Judy and I “primitive camp”. That means that we find a place to boon dock without running water, electricity, sewer hook-up or TV cable. No paved or graveled sites, and no toilet or shower. There isn’t even one of those metal fire pits with the hinged grate that folds back as a trip hazard after two or three scotches. We really enjoy roughing it. We dig a pit toilet or better yet use one that hunters who use these sites in the fall, have built. Our latest camp spot has a really elaborate one with a plywood seat, floor and 2 X 2 wall studs which we put black plastic around for those with shy colons. The hunters also customized the toilet seat by artfully cutting the hole in the shape of a dick and balls. As we do not have enough fresh water or holding tank space, we wash our dishes in the water we take out of a near-by creek, heating it in a large aluminum pot over a propane burner which is supposed to be used to deep-fat fry a turkey, which Judy and I both view as a Thanksgiving sacrilege.
Our showers are also designed to save water. We pour hot water into five-gallon buckets, adding cold water to taste. Then Judy and I pour the water over each other’s naked body while standing under the stars in a kid’s plastic wading pool. We call it the “orgasmic shower” as when the hot water hits your skin on a cool Cascades evening, we oh and ah like porn stars. As Judy is a little shy, the wading pool is screened by shower curtains so that the nearest other primitive campers, a half mile off, cannot see her naked body in the moonlight, even though this would take a pair of night vision binoculars. At first the shower curtains were attached to a few trees, but now we have a full-blown bath house made from one of the three canopies we bring along for the campout.
As the campsite has no picnic table, we bring two large folding tables, two metal cooking tables, a couple of folding end tables, and four to seven folding camp chairs depending on how many of our family are joining us. Additional furniture includes a chaise lounge, two hammocks, a port-a-crib and playpen in case one our kids show up with a toddler or as a subtle reminder that we can never have enough grandchildren, so get busy. We also bring a beach umbrella with stand to shade the crib and a 9 X 12 area rug for the grand kids to play with their doll houses which we also supply. Although they could do the same thing on the two Astroturf rugs that we have under the RV awing, Judy feels that it would be too rough on their knees. We of course have the refrigerator filled to avalanche levels and two or three ice chests full of drinks, salad makings, and other items that Judy could not fit into the fridge. In addition we have bags of dog and cat food, plus cat litter, a generator with five gallons of gas, several buckets for water, a chain saw with gas, two table top tiki torches, two full sized tiki torches, a gallon of citronella lamp oil, several citronella candles, a hammer with nails, 100 yards of cloths line, two bags of clothes pins, a shot gun and a .22 rifle, two extra propane tanks, a barbeque, a two burner propane stove, propane lantern with extra mantels and glass, a half dozen or so disposable quart propane bottles, books, laptop, 100 DVD movies and about the same number of music CDs, Judy’s RV sewing machine, a spinning wheel with ten pounds of raw wool, and about a thousand other items that are too numerous and trivial to mention here. Next year we are going to bring two generator driven electric water pumps; one to pump the water up the hill from the creek and the other to power a shower head for those who do not have a naked partner to pour buckets of water on your back. All of this for communing with nature for a week. After we retired, we had planned to be going for months at a time. I considered renting a semi.
Fifteen years ago, we had a particularly memorable campout. All my kids, their mates and off-spring were there. Wes’s best bud Dave, with his wife and two kids were also there, plus three dogs in addition to Hannah. Trent and Delda came all the way from South Dakota with the two kids Robert and Melissa. Marty and Nikki and their two daughters, Maddie and Jackie (aka Squishy Butt), flew in from New York, rented a class C in Eugene and came up as well. Wes, Gail, with Nicole, and Raymee (aka Demon) came in their beater trailer (since retired) that they had bought from Dave the previous summer. Also, there were LoriAnne, Paul, their son Colin, and Charity (in utero). Arriving later were Bobby and Jeff with their two dogs, and Mark and Jen with their son, their son’s friend, and their dog, Rocko. Somehow, we managed to put three motor homes, a trailer, a pickup camper, and three tents and all our camping accoutrements under the shade in the grove of trees in which the camp site is located.
As it was Maddie’s third birthday, we had a bit of a party one night. Wes roasted kid goat and pork tenderloin in a demi-glaze on battery powered spits over the campfire. For side dishes there was Moroccan rice, Gail’s special green beans, and focaccia bread which were individually cooked in foil. There were soft drinks for the kids, two kinds of wine for the adults and cans of Bud for Trent. We put all the folding tables end to end and covered it with a white fabric tablecloth, with taper candles for lighting, and white china which Judy had found for five bucks at a garage sale. Birthday cake was served on a rotating cake plate which sang happy birthday. After the party we all threw our plates into the fire pit like they used to do in the movies with their wine glasses. I suppose we could have thrown the wine glasses into the pit as well, but they had cost us ten bucks at the same garage sale and as Judy pointed out you never can have enough wine glasses in your RV. After dinner, the adults sat around the campfire into the wee hours of the morning listening to Paul play his guitar. Camping does not get much better than this unless I could figure out a way to bring a hot tub and have the Swedish bikini team camp next to us.
Fishing is always good at the fishing hole, especially if you use Potsky’s Balls-O-Fire. Occasionally I have caught one on worms or another brand of eggs, but the Balls-O-Fire never fail. Salmon eggs should be a stupid bait to use as salmon cannot make it this far up the river to spawn. At least that was the reasoning that Wes gave me for fly fishing. His argument was perfectly logical but lost on the fish. There is no doubt in my mind that Wes is a better technical fisherman than I will ever be. He is absolutely anal about it and I have only myself to blame. Thirty-five years ago, I carried him into this spot on my shoulders and caught a nice fat one right in front of him, letting it dangle all wet and wiggly a few inches from his face. He giggled and cried at the same time and this seemingly innocuous event has permanently warped him. Three decades later at the same spot, he is doing everything perfectly. His 9-foot fly rod is the state-of-the-art. He has also hiked in with a backup casting rod equipped with the perfect reel to which he had spooled on the right weight of line the night before. His tackle box is organized like a science lab. When he catches a fish, he knows the species and if it started its brief life in the wild or was hatchery reared.
But on this day, I am ahead four zip when he finally catches a barely legal rainbow. He pulls out his Swiss Army knife and with a practiced slit as professional as the autopsy guy on CSI he opens the stomach to determine what bugs the fish is eating so that he can “match the hatch” with the perfect fly from his stash organized by color and size in his plastic snap-lid fly box. What he finds in the fish gut is truly illuminating; a mass of black unrecognizable goo and two Potsky’s Balls-O-Fire, as I have been getting about ten bites for every fish I have landed. He mutely puts his fly pole aside, rigs his casting rod and borrows my second jar of Potsky’s. So it goes.
Although we always catch plenty of fish, they sometimes quit biting for a few days for no apparent reason. Such was the case with the birthday campout. Judy and I had arrived a few days early to ensure that we got our spot which would accommodate all the family and extended family. I had gone on to a couple of aerial photo web sites to find out if there were any other log jams on the river as I did not feel like hiking into the fishing hole proper more than once. In the days prior to the gang showing up we checked out several of these spots and caught enough for a meal for Judy and me. Although these alternative spots were not as hot as the hike-in fishing hole, it was apparent that there were plenty of fish to go around this year. However, when everybody showed up, nothing seemed to work. We tried in the morning, in the evening, and during the heat of the day. Wes tried every lure and fly, and even broke down and drove to nearest store to pick up a couple of jars of grossly over-priced Potsky’s. Still zip, nada, except for the day the Department of Fish and Wildlife planted the creek next to camp. But these planters by unspoken agreement are reserved for the little kids to catch. Wes was so desperate he took Raymee’s Barbie pole away from her on the pretext of hooking her a big one. Marty, trying to keep his weight down for an upcoming Navy physical took to running the trail next to river looking for additional spots which might work better. He came back from one of those after noon runs all excited as he had found the spot. It was a good two mile hike up the trail into the wilderness, far from any road access so that it was likely that no one other than the most intrepid and obsessed fishermen had been there for a while. We made plans right then and there to get up before dawn and hike the two miles in with Marty as our guide. That night we played poker and drank till the wee hour of the morning, which for me was 11 PM. But the rest kept going till God knows when.
I woke up about 4AM smelling smoke. They must have been so wasted that they had forgotten to douse the fire. Muttering under my breath I stumbled out of the RV only to find Marty sitting next to the fire. He had stayed up all night, knowing that if he went to sleep drunk that no one would be able to wake him up and the fishing excursion would have to be postponed. Also, it was likely that if he had crawled into his RV and woke either of his two daughters at 2 AM, Nikki would have killed him, and the fishing trip would have to be called off permanently. I suppose I could have stayed up and kept him company, but I knew that he would make it and be just fine. Marty is one of those rare individuals who can function for days on end with little or no sleep, while I need at least 6 hours. I crawled back into the sack only to be woken about an hour and a half later by Marty, Wes, and Trent all geared up and ready to go. We drove the mile or so to the trail head and began the hike into Marty’s discovery, moving at a brisk pace to arrive there before the sun was on the water. Arriving at the “spot” we fanned out to several likely holes which had to have fish in them. After about an hour without a bite we started to work our way back to the pickup. Marty crossed the river deciding to fish his way back on the opposite side, like that was going to be better. The rest of us started back down the trail the way we had come.
As the sun light filtered through the old growth, I sensed that I had been there before, perhaps in a dream. A quick detour off the trail to the south confirmed it was no dream. About 50 yards away was a road and a couple of primitive camp sites that Judy and I had scoped out the year before, rejecting them as the mosquitoes were truly awful. So much for the spot’s isolation. Our guide had failed us. We had a two-mile hike back to the pickup, we were hungover, hungry, being eaten alive by mosquitoes. I had not had my morning cup of coffee and the fish were laughing at us. Although no one said a word, we all hoped that Marty, who was hiking back on the opposite side of the river, would be raped by a bear. When we finally made it back to camp, the women had a good laugh at our expense, but had saved some breakfast for us. After a few cups of coffee, a hearty breakfast, and an afternoon nap, we all forgave Marty, but I could see that we needed to catch fish soon or Wes was going to take Raymee “fishing” and embarrass himself with the Barbie pole again.
Late that afternoon, Wes, Trent, and Marty decided to hike into the fishing hole proper. Wes knew the way as he had been into it the previous year, and Wes never forgets a place where he catches fish. The trail head is only about five miles from where we camp. We used to camp at the trail head itself, but about five years previously the forest service in their wisdom bulldozed a berm so that you could not drive into that camping spot. The berm lasted about a year or two as people drove their 4 X 4 over it untill it was just about as accessible as before. After parking near the trail, you have ford about 20 yards of ankle-deep ice-cold creek water to get to the trail, the entrance to which is hidden in the brush on the opposite side. Next is a quarter mile hike though a grassy meadow that runs along the river before turning into the forest at the mouth of a little rocky creek. This creek is famous in Boese family lore as this is the spot where the vodka fly fishing affair began.
On one of our earlier campouts, Judy and I had tried our hand at fly fishing. Being total novices we had stopped at a fly fishing shop between Roseburg and Diamond Lake on Oregon State Highway 138. The owner of the shop had set up our fly rods for us, showing us how to do it and even tying flies on our lines that might work for where we were planning on fishing.
Where that little rocky creek enters the Rogue was a perfect spot. The fish were jumping at for- real flies just offshore. That almost dry creek must have quite a volume during the spring run off as it had washed out all the brush in the area, leaving a wide fan of gravel and baseball size rocks that extended from the shore several yards back from the riverbank. Because of this, we beginner fly fishers would not have to worry about catching our lines on trees and shrubs on the back cast. What we should have worried about was catching ourselves as after about five minutes of fishing, Judy buried a “Blue Morning Dun” into the thumb of her left hand. As all our first aid supplies were back at the RV, she opted to keep on fishing, which she managed to do for about another half hour. It must have hurt like hell. Finally, she could take the pain no longer and we hiked back to camp. I tried to remove it, but she was having none of that, opting to remove it on her own. As we had no disinfectant she used vodka. A little on the thumb, a lot down the throat between attempts to remove the hook with a pair of needle nose pliers. After several disinfectant/anesthetic cycles, she eventually worried it out. Her first successful surgery was cause for celebration. We toasted the end of yet another adventure with the remains of the vodka bottle. I can’t remember what we ate for dinner that night, or even if we ate dinner at all. I can’t remember much about that evening at all, but we must have had a good time considering that most our clothing was found the next morning strewn around the outside of the RV. God, how I love primitive camping.
After the rocky creek, the trail goes up hill for a bit through a grove of old growth, it turns back toward the river following it from above. Below the trail are dark holes where the current of the river nearly stops. Getting to most of these holes is not possible due to the steepness of the slope. But there are a couple of places where you can get down to the water upstream of them. I have tried to fish by casting into the current and letting the eggs bounce along the stream bottom and hopefully into the hole. Never had any luck in doing this but it is fun to try new tactics to get my bait into the hole where the big ones must be lurking just out of the current.
I really enjoy this kind of fishing as it is the opposite of the kind of fishing that my father subjected me too. He preferred lake fishing while trolling a lure behind a Ford Fender. This device was invented during the great depression by one Luhr Jensen who made original flashy thingies using head light reflectors off Model A Fords. Mom, Dad, and I would go out into the middle of a lake in the old plywood boat of ours, with dad fishing straight back while running the 10-horsepower outboard, mom on the middle seat and me sitting on the plywood “poop deck” cover in the front, each with our own Ford Fender being trolled at various depths and distances behind the boat. Mom was always the deepest and farthest back as she was using the old bamboo pole that Grampa made in the 30’s which was equipped with one of the original Penn Open Reels and with about a mile of braided string line, half of which she had been spooling out behind the boat continuously for about 15 minutes. I think she used this pole just to piss dad off, for inevitably she would out-fish him using it. How she knew she had a fish on was beyond him as the pole had no flexibility to it being originally designed to catch 20-pound salmon as opposed to the six-inch trout she invariably hooked with it as soon as she stopped letting line out. Dad would get so pissed he refused to stop trolling till the sardine she hooked was on the surface next to the boat. Eventually dad solved the problem by getting up at dawn and taking just me out with him as mom liked to sleep in late. I also like to sleep in, but dad never gave me a choice. I still have that pole with the original reel which has not worked for the past 20 years. I just can’t bring myself to pitch it as it oozes memories. Occasionally, I take it down just to touch it to get the feel of the old girl. Takes the urge to buy a boat right out of me.
Back on the trail to the log jam the trail turns away from the river once again and into a grove of old growth fir that shades the forest floor such that only a few scattered and stunted ferns can grow. The trail, now a fir needle cushioned pathway, climbs up and descends several hills in a series of switch backs in the darkened forest, which could have served as an inspiration for Murk woods in the Lord of the Rings, if JRR Tolkien had been an Oregonian. I always hike this section of trail in silence, partly due to its beauty, but mainly because if I open my mouth a mosquito or three flies in. This whole area is mosquito hell which has various levels depending on the time of day, the volume of water in the immediate area, and the month of the year. At the bottom of one of the hills on the trail to the log jam the trail follows a slow-moving creek. This is hell’s ninth level where the child rapists and telemarketers go. No amount of repellant keeps them off you and even if it did, by the time you got the aerosol can out of the backpack you would have donated a quart of blood. At the bottom of the last hill the trail flattens and straightens. At this point the guide earns his pay for without the aid of any apparent landmark he turns into the woods and leads fishing party for about 200 yards through the woods to the jam.
The jam itself is a jumble of fallen timber laying in a maze of angles like a game of Paul Bunion pickup sticks with small pebbles of pumice swirling on the water’s surface or piled up in substantial looking mounds between logs. This is a dangerous place. Walking out on the logs requires guts and balance, two qualities which I have a lot less of these days, so for the last few years I fish from the bank above the jam, letting my line drift underneath. The braver and more agile in the fishing party scramble onto the jam fishing the dark holes in the middle of it or the spots on the opposite bank where the fish are always more plentiful.
The time I took Wes when he was a toddler, I was a lot younger. I managed to carry him across to the opposite bank. On that trip Judy and I had hiked in with her father. Joe was a short, jovial man full of the Irish blarney from which his family had descended. Judy was a little concerned about his knees holding up to the hike as they were both wired together, the result of a Japanese grenade that should have crippled him for life. It was also supposed to have rendered him sterile as it had removed one of his testicles and damaged the other. His prognosis at the end of World War II was not good, but Judy’s mom married him anyway, had 35 years and six kids till his candle-at-both-ends life finally caught up with him. He once confided in me that I had better be careful in the bedroom as Judy had lots of the same genes as Fran and that he was pretty sure that he had gotten her pregnant one time from merely shaking out his pants and hanging them from a hook on the back of the bedroom door.
Regardless of his war wounds he had no problems on the hike to the jam and walked right out onto it. He was catching one fat rainbow after another and having a great time, then he fell, and it was all my fault. I was fishing on a sand bar that jutted out in front of the jam with Wes playing in the sand at my feet. I was casting into the middle of the river, letting the bait bounce along the bottom till it drifted under a single small six-inch diameter log that jutted out in front of the jam. Using technique this I had caught several average sized trout, then KABOOM I had a monster on. I let out a whoop as my rod bent nearly in a full circle and somehow managed to loosen the drag wheel so that my line would not break. The fish in its frenzy jumped out of the water and over the small leading log then dove for the bottom and back under the jam. My elation turned to consternation,
“Shit! He looped my line over a log!”
There was no way was I landing this monster. Joe a few yards away in the middle of the jam started to snicker at my distress. I slowly played the fish hoping that against all odds I could somehow manage to horse the fish over the log without breaking the line. Then to my shocked amazement the fish jumped back over the log unlooping itself. I was now yelling at full voice,
“Did you see that! Did you see that! The stupid fish just unlooped itself!”
Joe’s snickers were now full-throated belly laughs. I played the fish into the shallower water in a pool next to the bank. The fish looked up at me then opened his mouth letting go of the hook. With utter disdain he leisurely turned back into the deep water, slowly swimming back under the jam in snobbish contempt. The look on my face was too much for Joe, he totally lost it, throwing his head back in series of gasping guffaws that didn’t abate even when his feet slipped out from underneath resulting in a crotch crunching drop onto the log he was standing on. Even with one ball that had to hurt, but his howls of laughter just got louder with his whole body shaking so hard that I thought for a second that he was going to slip off the log and into the cold water below. Drowning under a log jam while laughing at his stupid son-in-law would not have been a fitting end for him. He had survived the jungles of New Guinea, the Philippine campaign, malaria, jungle rot, and wrath of a Maori princess’s family. Lucky for him he was AWOL at the time as by turning himself in he managed to escape death or worse yet, a quicky marriage. He never would finish telling how he escaped from the MPs and ended up a month later in Tasmania. To be honest I am not sure even he knew how he managed that one. They busted him to buck private, but he soon got his stripes back as a combat-wise sergeant and was a rare resource in those dark days. A few years after the crotch crunching incident, he died of cancer from too many cigarettes, beer, and working a pesticide/fertilizer plant for 20 years. That was not a fitting end to him either, but then it is not important how you die but how you lived your life and he certainly did that part well.
Thirty or so years later, Wes, Trent, and Marty finally made it to the jam, catching the descendants of that big one that got away so many years before. They hiked out an hour later with twenty-two, way over the legal limit. Back at camp that evening they were posing behind the stringer of fish for the obligatory photo to prove for posterity their fishing prowess and overarching manliness. Then Trent turned to me in his cowboy drawl and said,
“Why did you hike me over hell and back when you knew where the fish would be?”
I didn’t have an answer for him at the time. Perhaps I don’t just let just anybody know where it is. Perhaps you need to earn the right to go there. I really don’t have an answer, other than it is my spot. All I know is that when it is my time, just dump my ashes under that log with a hook on the urn baited with whole jar of Potsky’s. I would like just one more shot at him.
