Adventure: New Mexico Fly

I got out to fish for the first time in a year. It wasn’t pretty. A rush job you might say. When you rush getting to nature you typically suffer from impact. Human impact. The closer you are, the easier the location, the more humanity you will encounter, and the madness that humanity can bring. Motor homes, massive trailers, dirt bikes, 4×4’s, grills, tents, stereos and least but not least….trash and noise. This type of impact can be traumatic. When city dwellers engage with nature they typically try to make nature just like their living room, and it’s not pretty. So, the harder you work to get away the better the nature will be. We didn’t have time to work.

These trips offer glimpses of the most profound things. A fish dancing in the shallows as sun filters through the trees. A strike on a dry fly. Mixed with piles of garbage left behind by other “sportsmen.” Noise. Families of twelve with twelve cellphones who turn the river into a selfie session at Disneyland, documenting themselves becoming the actual purpose of their trip, oblivious to all around them including the actual nature they have sealed themselves away from with nylon, metal, wood, glass and television.(Yes, TV.)

I will try to avoid this from here on out. I find it harder and harder to be around most people in most nature, even when the fishing is good. I will now look for the impossible places. The long hikes through elevation gain and return, anything to find the quiet and the peace. It wasn’t as if this was a bad day, not by a long shot, and the drive back just might have been the most beautiful moment I’ve ever seen in New Mexico, but I realize how fragile The West is, and know that before long it will all be dust through our fingertips. There are VERY few wild places left, and finding this is now a priority.