Never Cry Halibut. Bjorn Dihle
I traced my fish terrors back to a particular fly-fishing incident with my dad in the mountains above Bozeman. Trembling, I realized I would have likely become a lawyer, doctor, or politician if my life hadn’t been hijacked that day. Instead, I became a degenerate woodsman and a lousy fisherman. The history leading up to the incident is a bit foggy but begins in the summer of 1989 or 1990. My family had driven from our home in Alaska to Montana so my folks could go back to college. We arrived at Bozeman when Robert Redford was filming A River Runs Through It. At a summer camp, I met a boy who claimed his dad was a stunt man in the film.
“What sort of stunts?” I asked. I’d never fly-fished, but it didn’t seem like an activity involving too much danger.
“Fly-fishing stunts,” he said. As soon as Dad put a rod in my hands, I realized the kid was telling the truth. Fly-fishing was dangerous. There were beavers to contend with, crashing brush when I tried to free a fly from a tree, lightning storms, and tangles that couldn’t be untangled. Most of all, there were the consequences of losing a fish in front of my dad.
It was at Hyalite Creek in the mountains above town, while hunting for brook trout, where I credit the birth of my neurosis. After hours of following Dad through thick brush with an impossibly long fly rod snagging on everything possible and tangling my reel as I cried, Dad shoved me into a creek.
A spring king salmon. (Photo courtesy of MC Martin)
“That looks like a good spot for a fish,” he whispered, gesturing at a slow-moving section of the creek. “Cast over there.”
After hooking a tree once and splashing the water twice, I managed to get the fly near where Dad pointed. A few moments later, a fish sucked it down. I was so flattered, I didn’t think to set the hook. The fly floated free, and what sounded like a wounded grizzly bear made me realize that if I didn’t catch this fish, I’d likely be mauled. Awkwardly, I cast again.
“Now!” Dad roared. I pulled the fly out of the fish’s mouth with a violence more fitting for a mixed martial arts match. I was sure now: it was the fish or me. Sobbing and trying to make peace with death, I whipped my fly back into the creek and offered a pathetic prayer to the fish gods. The next moment, the fly was sucked down, my reel zinged out line, and my dad’s inner berserker came out as he yelled, thrashed the water, and howled. A minute or so later, I pulled in a fifteen-inch grayling, a fish I had never seen and had no idea existed in Montana. Its iridescent scales and giant, sail-shaped dorsal fin made me forget how close I came to dying. Dad, knowing how rare Arctic grayling were in Montana, helped me gently release the fish. Watching it swim away, I wasn’t sure if it was the fish or me that was more traumatized from the experience.
I admitted I had a problem and discovered where my neurosis originated. Now I needed to do something to end my fish terrors and become a better fisherman. But what? Should I fly to India, find an ashram, and meditate until fish no longer haunted my dreams? Perhaps there are doctors out there willing to medicate me antifishotics? Or a twelve-step program for fisherman suffering from TFOM?
“Hello, my name is Bjorn Dihle. I’ve not had fish terrors for a week now.”
But what would haunt my dreams in the place of fish? I doubted there was anything out there as satisfying to be haunted by. Nothing as simple and magical as their lives and stories shrouded beneath the water. The dirty truth of the matter was that I cherished my fish demons. I miss fishing in Hyalite Creek, and I think about that first grayling more than is healthy. Waking up screaming is a small price to pay for having been lucky enough to go fishing.
MOUNTAIN OF MEMORIES
THERE ARE MANY GREAT THINGS about civilization—reality television, french fries, and a seemingly infinite number of back-hair waxing products, for example. I try to appreciate the advantages of living in the twenty-first century, but sometimes it gets a little much. On a recent August day, while in a giant shopping mall, I was suddenly overcome with an intense feeling of hopelessness. Near the toddler’s clothing fashions, I fought the urge to crash a shopping cart into a pretentiously dressed mannequin. When did little kids begin caring about fashion? Whatever happened to the days when they were content wearing burlap sacks and chasing animals, rolling in mud and eating worms? And what was with all these skinny, anatomically correct mannequins with their chiseled abs and smug smiles? Give me realism; give me mannequins with beer guts, fat butts, crooked noses, lopsided skulls, varicose veins, crooked spines, and blemished skin. I had the feeling something other than me was trying to manufacture my reality. I was nearing the aisle dedicated solely to no-tears pet shampoo and conditioner when I had the sudden desire to flee into the wild.
“I have to go hunting,” I told my girlfriend, MC, as we put away groceries when I got home.
“You just got back yesterday. There’s still deer blood rotting in your hair!” she said. “And you’re leaving in a few days with your brothers to go sheep and caribou hunting.”
Everyone knows it’s bad luck to shower during hunting season, but MC is always busting my chops about it. It might be our biggest point of contention; well, that and she gets all weird and irrational at the beginning of each hunting season when I stage a few harmless pagan rituals and become the Wildermann—a furry man-beast with an insatiable appetite for blood—for a night. I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s just a chance to blow off a little steam, get dressed up in furs, and run around the neighborhood howling and chasing dogs, cats, and children with a torch and stone ax.
“You can take the jungle out of the tiger, but you can’t take the tiger out of the jungle,” I whispered, staring off into the distance.
“I think you mean you can take the tiger out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the tiger,” MC said.
“I’m a writer! I know what I’m saying!”
Whenever I get to feeling too domestic, I crack a beer, pick up a hammer, and start hitting two-by-fours. My pounding succeeded in annoying MC so much she kicked me out of the house. Soon, I was happily climbing through the rainforest, wading through devil’s club, and stuffing my face with marble-sized blueberries and huckleberries. A black merlin winged along the edge of a meadow, hunting songbirds. A sooty grouse flew up into a small hemlock tree then looked down just feet away. I followed a well-used deer trail into the subalpine of a mountain I’ve hunted for two decades.
Fifteen Augusts ago, when I was seventeen and my little brother, Reid, was thirteen, we followed the same deer trail along the edge of an alpine slope. I spied a deer through the maze of underbrush. Hearts hammering and skin tingling, we belly crawled to the edge of the bushes and peered up. A beautiful fork-horn grazed above three does. I passed Reid my rifle. He crawled a few feet forward. As if he’d done it a thousand times before, he chambered a round, took a rest, and shot his first buck.
The clouds dissipated, revealing ocean and the mountains of Admiralty Island and the Chilkoot Range stretching into the blue horizon. The vision never failed to remind me how lucky I was to live in Southeast Alaska. When I was thirteen, I first climbed the mountain with my dad and took in this haunting view. My dad patiently waited as I struggled up the slippery slopes with all the stealth and grace of an exhausted freight train. The following morning, after he tried to rouse me from my sleeping bag to brave the rain and fog, I heard a shot. I still remember the smell and touch of that young buck, the first deer I ever “helped” butcher and carry off a hill.
Reid in the alpine of Admiralty Island. (Photo courtesy Luke Dihle)
Climbing a steep, slippery slope, I spotted a deer in a stand of stunted trees. I froze, then slowly raised my rifle and looked through the scope. No antlers. I waited until it walked off, and I hiked to a bench my family had used as a camp spot. I dropped a small tent and sleeping bag before