River Kin

I YELLED AND WHOOPED but no one returned my calls. I’d just landed the biggest trout of my life, and no one was there to honor its hook jaw, or to verify that, in order to land it, I swam across a deep pool with my rod held high. I was alone. More alone than I’d ever been. I worked the trout back and forth slowly, letting it regain its strength, letting it feel the current of its home after being pulled from a deep granite darkness. I’d been by myself for two weeks, deep in Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness.

A year earlier, I was selected as the Artist-in-Residence by a local foundation, which gave me access to a backcountry, off-the-grid cabin along the Middle Fork of the Flathead