It was a quiet, cool fall day in Woody Creek. The valley was streaked with flaming yellow Aspen trees, the air hung with a crisp weight, holding hints of winter in the air. In Aspen, the tourists had packed up. The hotels were vacant. Everything felt perfectly still and empty.

Gaylord Guenin arrived at our house in Woody Creek, pulling up in his metal-clanging Suburban, dogs yelping in the back seat, their noses peeking out the windows.

I grabbed my fly-fishing rod, a vest, and we walked slowly down to the creek.

I was not older than 8 years old at the time, and had never fished before in my life.

When we arrived at the water, I plopped myself on a cold patch of grass, and began to listen patiently as he described how to cast, to tie a fly, to use my reel. I learned how to scan the water and how to carefully approach the fish.

I remember watching with a sense of child-like wonder as he cast his line into the water, placing the fly onto the creek with the precision of an archer; the delicate flick of the wrist, sending the line into the chilly air with a fluid motion. Nothing was strained or forced. The rod bent like a wind-blown branch, forming a soft arc, from which the fly floated downsteam, traveling easily with the current - over ripples, rapids, eddies.

He waited and waited, simply watching the fly being swept away like a leaf - eyes transfixed on the fly, the line passing through his fingers. Then, at just the right moment, he reached for the reel and began spinning and coiling the line back in, only to repeat the same breathless ritual again and again.

We caught nothing that day. But, as I learned, catching fish was not why we were out there.

Sixteen years later - last Thursday to be exact - I met Gaylord again in Woody Creek on a perfect July morning.

Besides the passing of time, nothing had changed. We hopped a few fences and bushwhacked our way through the dense vegetation, searching for the right spot.

"There is a reason they call this Woody Creek," he laughed, as we trudged through chest-high grass. "You don't fish this creek, you fight it."

Upon finding a clearing, I simply sat and watched, as if I was learning how to fish all over again.

"When I was young and growing up in Montana, all I cared about was catching the biggest fish," he said. "But that doesn't matter anymore. It's  just about being out here. There is something almost spiritual about it - about knowing that you are not in control. Nature always does what is pleases."

Living up in Lenado, Gaylord has fished the Woody Creek for more than 20 years, balancing his love for fishing with his love for writing. Since the 1960s, he has worked as the editor of the Mountain Gazette and the managing editor of Ski Racing Magazine, while contributing to Skiing Magazine as well as other local Aspen publications.

Most recently, Gaylord published a book on fly-fishing with George Stranahan, entitled, "It's Not All of Fishing to Fish."

In many ways, this title represents the philosophy that Gaylord carries to the river - one that I first witnessed many years ago.

This being said, it only makes sense that I now share a stage with the man who understands fly-fishing far better than I ever will. So please enjoy a selection of unpublished writings from Gaylord on what it really means to fish.

bastian@aspendailynews.com



'To fish is to fantasize, to conjure up in the imagination what our hearts want to experience in reality.'

By Gaylord Guenin


Selection 1

I can be transported to my father's or grandfather's side along some gentle trout stream or impressive river in Montana or Wyoming. With ease I can see my mother (who was also quite skilled with a fly rod) cooking pancakes in our small cabin outside of Red Lodge, Mont., or watch my Uncle Troy split wood at my grandfather's fishing camp high in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming.

Both my father and grandfather found their God and religion in fly-fishing - in going into the woods and marveling at what was there. I know that my father found more in the out-of-doors, in the wild woods if you like, than I do to this day. He saw his God! I have long believed that is one reason we seldom let a Sunday pass without going fishing. As with my father, I see more of God in nature than in many of my fellow men. But it seems unlikely very many pilgrims have come to angling in search of a spiritual savior. We come to this tranquil sport in search of fish and we may spend years in such a pursuit before the motto of the Flyfishers' Club, England: "Piscator no solum Piscatur" or "It is not all of fishing to fish," becomes clear to us.

Selection 3

For those of us who live in places such as Montana, Wyoming, or Colorado, Christmas can appear every day of the year because our trout season has no opening or closing dates, but that cannot reduce our excitement as we prepare for a day, or weekend, or maybe even a week of fly-fishing. We do intend to approach our fishing with a certain sense of wonder as a child might experience on Christmas Eve. In a small way that helps to explain why we are so quick to explain our angling memories.

Aside from the names of specific geographic locations, I can believe that many anglers can retrieve thousands of warm and fond memories of their own and, of course, in searching through those memories, it is absolutely acceptable (if not mandatory) to increase the size of any and all fish you remember catching.



Selection 2

I came to realize that fly-fishing is indeed a gentle sport and the devoted fly-fisherman quite naturally becomes a part of his surroundings. We all come to understand that too much sloshing in the stream will only frighten the fish we so desperately want to trap. We are and always will be intruders no matter where we fish and yet the very nature of our sport requires that we approach it with as much stealth as possible, and our furtive ways can produce delightful if not completely unexpected rewards.

Fishing Rock Creek outside of Missoula, Mont., in the late 1960s, hip-deep in the stream in my waders, completely lost in my intense focus and my attempts to somehow achieve a perfect form of concentration, I suddenly noticed something moving on the bank.

There, sitting and watching, were three fresh-water otters, apparently a bit puzzled by this upright creature standing in the their river. Otters are much like mountain lions in that they see a lot more human beings than human beings see them, so this was a moment to be treasured. I watched them while they watched me, and then made a few more casts upstream, movement that did not disturb this trio of otters in the least. Then I let out a low whistle and "poof" they were gone. The memory of them is not, however.