Dry Flies on the Bighorn River in Winter?
November 25, 2013
Yep, this rainbow was so hungry it came right out of the water and tried to eat a rock by my foot! Had to take a picture. What else was I gonna do?
Very hungry rainbow!
Just returned from our biannual trip to the Bighorn river, me and 8 other guys. We have three drift boats and bring our own crowd. But the good thing is, due to the weather there are very few people.
15 degrees on the Bighorn. Caught the brown there on comparadun.
The fishing was pretty great, especially so with dry flies. The water temp was much higher than usual, around 47-50, and the big fish were taking dries in shallow water, 6-8 inches. Sometimes they preferred larger size 14-16 light body colored may flies to emergers. Pretty weird. Is it climate change? Whatever. I’ll take it. We did have one day of rotten weather: snowy, windy, cold around 20 degrees, which forced some of us less hearty souls in for homemade chicken soup and a bit of eyelid watching. There might have been some scotch. When the more hearty three came in before sundown, there was definitely some gin and tonics.
Heading into Last Chance Hole at dusk.
The rower’s view in the last mile at “Bighorn take-out”
Below is a dry fly no one should be caught without, and served me well on a 22″ brown. Why don’t I have a picture of the brown? A friend got the photo, and will soon send it to me, so you’ll just have to trust me. Fishermen don’t lie.
Comparadun.
Earth Day blues and smiles
April 22, 2013
Okay, so it’s Earth Day, again, and you have done nothing to sustain our wonderful blue and green marble.
You’ve got the blues because oil is still the dominant energy source, along with the other fossil fuel, coal, polluting the land, the air, the water, and you see no cure in the near future. You just bought a gun because, well, because. Now you might have found a use for it: thy own cranium. You have children whom you know will not be able to enjoy the wilderness as you have, a grandson who will likely be mining coal from someplace in the Yukon for a job, or fracking in the Arctic, once the polar ice cap melts a bit more. Plenty of energy jobs. Yup. But they might not be what you thought. Ask these girls in North Dakota.
http://www.onearth.org/article/growing-pains-scenes-from-the-north-dakota-drilling-boom
Hell, I was so down I wrote a book, you might have heard–or seen if you happen to look at other parts of the website–about how we can cure global warming by getting rid of all the oil; do it in two weeks and we have to go green. It’s actually pretty funny. Think it can’t be done? Well, think again. If nothing else, my twelve years of post-high school education and thirty years as a physician have taught me a few things about research. Yeah, there is someone out there who can likely pull it off if they have a little help.
Now for the bright spots. Time to turn that frown upside down. There are enough of the non-fossil fuels that if we started right now, developed the heck out of them, we would never have to raise the global temperature another two tenths Celcius in the next five years. Don’t believe me. Watch this video. It takes a little time, but well worth it. The other thing is to buy the book, Post Carbon Reader, or check it out of your library and you will be amazed. You will be able to take that gun back, throw out the Zoloft, actually sleep for eight hours and wake up happy you are alive. The Earth can be saved.
Now, go out and replace your lawn with rocks and a few low-water plants, or start biking to work or school a few days each week, or mow your lawn with a push mower, or make sure you never, ever get plastic bags at the supermarket, or … there are so many things, pick two or three and just do them. It’s not the big things. Everyone needs to do a few little things and a lot will happen. You’ll see. Please try.
Thanks.
Milt
Oil domination, the end of the USA.
March 22, 2013
Yup, you could say oil dominates our culture: cars, heating our houses, making roads, more cars, plastics, more plastics, more cars. And just like guns, we will not go peacefully into that cold night without oil. But there could be a way, maybe.
Come on, let’s stay with oil. I mean, COME ON, it’s worked for over a hundred years, right.
What is the definition of Sustainability?
According to Richard Heinberg of the post carbon institute (find him here http://richardheinberg.com/about ; he made the above video, by the way)
“That which can be maintained over time.”
According to the Iroquois Great Law of Peace–chiefs must consider the impact of their decision on the seventh generation to come. (From the Post Carbon Reader) Seven generations–that would be 30 years per generation on average, about 210 years. Do you think the oil will last until 2223?
How about this, from the 1987 definition at the United Nations’ World Commission on Environment and Development: “meets the needs of the present generation without compromising future generations to meet their needs.” Sure, we’re doing that with fracking, right? No problem with tearing up small town North Dakota.
http://www.onearth.org/article/growing-pains-scenes-from-the-north-dakota-drilling-boom
It’s coming to a town near you . . . Oh shit, it’s already here in Greeley, Colorado, in Weld County where farming and ranching used to be, now with 20,000 fracking wells in a small area of Eerie. And I work near there. I take my own water, though. This is a long article, but well worth a save and read.
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-03-06/a-must-read-account-of-fracking-colorado
It’s all to help us keep driving whatever the hell we want as far as we want. A-N-D we will not have to rely on those &^%$# OPEC turbanheads. After all, Muslims aren’t humans, right?
You know you can make a difference. All you have to do is care. Look around you and care. Because if you don’t . . . If you don’t, the great USA will die. Sooner than you think.
Milt
A pause in posts
March 4, 2013
I have been writing more fiction, trying to get a few more novels published. That is my passion. I hope those ten or twenty who actually read this blog will excuse my pause in posts. It may be a while. I need to rethink if I will blog. Thanks.
Milt
Beautiful people
January 21, 2013
Last weekend I watched the beautiful people, athletes of the NFL Playoffs vying against one another on a football field, and stars of the Golden Globes. The thing that hit me was most of them are not what they seem. The straight teeth, smooth skin, perfect bodies, eyes without glasses, it all gives us the illusion that they are real, perfect, and what we should all aspire to be. But really, do we all want to be those beautiful people on the outside? Or is it what’s inside that counts?
Every day there are people with crooked teeth, glasses, bad skin, built like pears who make businesses run, families flourish, lives grow, all because they care, they try. Sure, they worry about what others say, but they just keep going. They don’t get accolades from newspapers, million dollar contracts to play a game, or pretend to be someone else. They have to live in their own skin every day and they do it and keep doing it. Without them, our businesses, our military, our country, our families would be lost. In addition to the Golden Globes (for they will never go away) we should have a Golden Person award. But we don’t. So here are a few. If you get a chance, e-mail them and tell them how much they mean to you, to us, to the world.
I attended a charity party for the High Park Fire last summer and met Erin Mounsey. He’s a burn victim who turned his life around, and became leader of local Red Cross.
http://www.firesprinklerinitiative.org/resources/faces-of-fire/erin-mounsey.aspx
There are leaders in the world who have Asperger’s syndrome. Yes, you would be surprised. And they don’t shoot people, or dogs, or kids.
I have Asperger’s; I am just like you
John lost his son Sean to suicide, and ever since has campaigned tirelessly to promote both Pieta House and the idea of talking with and supporting those who feel suicidal. Pieta House is Ireland’s first community based centre for the prevention and intervention of suicide or self-harm.
http://www.bettertogether.ie/content/john-quinn
Mr. Kinsman, who is now in his eighties, helped establish a cultural exchange in the early 1970s between black children from Mississippi and white children from Wisconsin called Project Self-Help and Awareness (PSA)
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/10/11044/food-rights-network-interviews-food-farm-hero-john-kinsman
These are the opposite of perfect, the imperfect people of everyday life that make the world a place we are proud to call our own.
I’m sure you know people like this, or may actually be one of them. Give them a hug, pat yourself on the back and keep going. You are what makes this world a better place every day. Thanks.
Milt
PS. Next week I will come back to the gun theme. You might be surprised.
