ESSAY
I WOULD HAZARD TO SAY THERE AREN’T MANY world-class writers who spent their last days hanging off the back of a garbage truck, smelling of “piss and green mayonnaise.” Harry Middleton did. And Middleton, who wrote principally about his life among mountain streams, was a world-class writer. Because he has been nearly forgotten, I want to say that right up front.
I first heard of Harry Middleton from my cousin Tye. Our fathers were brothers, but only my uncle Jerry was a fisherman. He and Tye actually named one of their cats after a famous fly, the Rat Faced McDougall. Uncle Jerry tried to teach me and Tye fly fishing on a Rocky Mountain stream when we were eight. When one of my backcasts set its hook in my uncle’s neck, however, he let out a shriek so unnerving it scared me off the sport for thirty years. But approaching middle age, I decided my life, or at least my leisure, needed a new trajectory. To make up for those lost decades, I took long trips to the Flathead River in Montana, where cutthroat trout are very forgiving to beginners, and I read everything I could about fly fishing.
