MY MOM WORKED FIFTY-PLUS HOURS per week, and while she loved the mountains she rarely found time to see them. My dad, though he worked from home, preferred to spend his time locked in his studio. He told me that only in books did the woods house elves and the oceans krakens, and what did real life have on that?
So only my grandparents took me camping. My grandfather loved the quiet of the outdoors and my Grandmother liked to paint. The joy, for me, was fishing.
My grandparents frequented a peninsula on Sheep River—a small sliver of land that secreted away a campsite, surrounded on three sides by water.
While my grandfather stoked a fire to life and erected our tent, my Grandmother set up her easel facing the water. I was already digging through my tackle box, before I’d even rolled out my sleeping bag.
Even after setting half of my allowance aside every week for Sunday’s tithe, I had managed to save up enough to purchase myself a rod and reel. My grandfather, seeing my enthusiasm, gave me a spool of four-pound line to lace my reel with and a number of his spoon lures, jigs, and nymphs. A fly fisherman himself, he didn’t understand the appeal of my drift fishing, but he couldn’t argue with the results.
The pike were the largest fish in the river. Slimy and streamlined, these fish ate everything, no matter what lure I rigged my rod with. But they weren’t the prey I was after.
My prize had a much more refined palette—a taste for the colour chartreuse, and a plastic nymph bobbing on the swirling water. I watched my line slacken in the lazy river, waiting for it to snap taut as my prey clamped its jaws around my prize.
Rainbow trout.
While a four-pound line would snap when faced with a pike’s thrashing and dagger-like teeth, it was perfect for the smaller fish that swam those waters. To my twelve-year-old self, there was no finer-tasting fish in the world.
The fishing was easy, I simply had to set my line. Then it was a patience game—waiting to feel the line tug in my hand and see a splash of red and silver in the water.
Depending on my success, dinner was either trout or Alphagetti, because I threw the pike back, not being partial to their fishy taste. Then, my grandfather would wash the dishes while my Grandmother brewed coffee over the fire.
The moon swelled like a pumpkin, fat and orange in the sky. We ate pan-fried trout that night and spit the bones into the fire.
After dinner, my Grandmother told me that she would show me how to wash pots and pans without falling into the river. I knew how, I thought, but followed her anyway.
The white stars speckling the black sky overhead mirrored the dandelions that dotted the grass. The night was warm, so I kicked off my shoes for the walk. I could still feel the sun-baked earth cooling beneath my feet.
My Grandmother led the way with a flashlight, while I carried our three dishes and a pot smeared with canola oil and scales. She stopped me on the way to the water only once, to point out two pairs of glowing eyes on the far side of the river. Fawns out for a midnight stroll.
On the north side of the peninsula, where the water was shallow and calm, my Grandmother knelt low to the ground and set down the pots and pans. I held the flashlight over her head, while she began to rinse the utensils with river water.
But in her attempts to stay dry and avoid dipping her toes into the river water, she bent herself almost double and braced her feet on slime-slicked rocks. I watched her throw her arms out as she lost her balance, hoot like an owl, and then go splashing into the river.
My grandfather heard the splash and ensuing howls and came running. When he lofted the gas lantern and illuminated us on the river’s edge, he shook his head.
My Grandmother stood wringing river water from her hair, the flashlight clenched between her teeth. I sat on the ground beside her, roaring with laughter.
My Grandmother kicked me gently in the ribs. “Well, worked didn’t it? I led by example. Now you know how to wash dishes without falling in.”
My grandfather snorted. He led us back to camp and handed my Grandmother a towel. She stripped down to her underwear and rotated her sopping clothes like a rotisserie above the fire. Our fireside songs were accompanied by the sounds of her cursing and slapping away at mosquitoes.
When she’d warmed, my Grandmother brewed us all another cup of coffee. I drank it black to look grown up, though the taste was bitter and the caffeine strong. Long after my grandfather turned in for the night, my Grandmother and I stayed up to watch the stars, listen to the river, and laugh about old ladies falling in.