Should the Tent Be Burning Like That?
Also by Bill Heavey
If You Didn’t Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat?
It’s Only Slow Food Until You Try to Eat It
You’re Not Lost if You Can Still See the Truck
Should the Tent
Be Burning
Like That?
A Professional Amateur’s Guide to the Outdoors
BILL HEAVEY
Copyright © 2017 by Bill Heavey
Cover illustration by John Cuneo
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or permissions@groveatlantic.com.
This book is published by arrangement with Field & Stream magazine. All of the pieces in this collection were originally published in Field & Stream, except for “The South’s Top Gun,” which first appeared in Garden & Gun (June/July 2015), and “Point Well Taken,” which first appeared in the Washington Post (June 1996).
FIRST EDITION
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: December 2017
ISBN 978-0-8021-2710-5
eISBN 978-0-8021-8927-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.
Atlantic Monthly Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
groveatlantic.com
17 18 19 20 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Emma
Fail. Fail again. Fail better.
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
Contents
Cover
Also by Bill Heavey
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
PART I
Chasing the Chrome
Adventures of a Deer Bum
Angler’s Paradise
No Pain, No Elk
The South’s Top Gun
Fifty Shades of Green
The Making of a Stand Hunter
My Gun Guru
Castaway in Deer Paradise
The Odd Couple
Deer, Lies, and Videotape
Father Knows Less
Some Home Truths
In the Face of Failure
The Stalk
PART II
The Stand
If Hunters Ruled the World
The Slam Man
Meat Matters
Not the Same
Boys Should Be Boys
Hands Off My Stuff
Cross-Country Skiing Among the Cree
Car Talk
Going to Pieces
The Rope Report
Inward Bound
The Bear Essentials
True Grit
PART III
Task Master
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Eye
Man Overboard
The Sky’s the Limit
Turkeys: Life on the Square
Grand Guns
Gee Whiz
Dyeing to Connect
Buddy Trip
Crash Course
Bass Land
Point Well Taken
Turf War
Wild Ride
Home Water
PART IV
Fishing on the Edge
Gear Good!
Bow Crazy
Feet First
The Backcountry Cure
How to Be a Winner
Flats Fever
Faced with an Anti
The Lake Effect
Out of Orbit
The Smallmouth Man
Tackle Underworld
What the Horse Saw
Bull’s Eye
Hoofing It for Caribou
Wishful Thinking
Acknowledgments
Back Cover
Introduction
The important things to know about this book are that it is crammed with the kind of practical advice* that you will never use and that it contains about sixty short works (most from Field & Stream, but also from the Washington Post and some magazines) that can be read in any order. These pieces have been known to make people laugh, cry, or curse, often in their bathrooms, since that is where many people prefer to read my stuff.
Once, asked to define my job as a writer, I replied with the following anecdote: I used to spend a lot of time at a friend’s farm, where I killed my first deer and caught my first big largemouth bass. My friend employed a number of locals to help manage the place. One, he said, was a fan of my writing in Field & Stream and wanted to meet me. I agreed immediately, feeling the warmth that comes from having your efforts appreciated. “I should probably tell you a few things about Doug,” my friend said. “Guy’s about seventy, has been divorced three times, and lives in a trailer. He’s broke, has a bad leg, but refuses to see a doctor about it.” I said that sounded rough but that I didn’t see how it mattered. I’ll take an admirer wherever I can find one. Just then, Doug came limping into the paddock. Introductions were made. We shook hands. “I really enjoy your stuff, Bill,” he said. “I really do.” I thanked him and told him I appreciated it. Then came silence. It stretched out for a good while. Doug’s features creased into a kind of perplexed and agitated state. He had something else to say but wasn’t sure whether he should. Finally, he plunged ahead. “I just gotta tell you this, man. Sometimes I read your stories and, well, I just feel so sorry for you.” I laughed and assured him it was fine. Which was true.
When I first started writing for Field & Stream, I saw that the expert end of its masthead was overpopulated. The other end—a place for amateurs with more passion than proficiency, for guys who fail more often than they succeed—was wide open. It was here that by inclination and experience I planted my flag. I confess that Doug’s remark captured what I do in a way I hadn’t heard before, but in time I came to see it as an affirmation and compliment. At its best, my writing makes people whom the world often judges as failures feel better about themselves. I think there’s a certain nobility in that.
* On second thought, there are occasions when the knowledge in these pages could prove invaluable. This book will show you why it is sometimes necessary to shoot a hunting arrow into your motel room’s phone book. Why you’ll never be a good bird hunter if you aim your shotgun and why—if you absolutely cannot stop yourself from aiming—you will never hit anything unless you aim at empty air. You will learn why putting a boy on his first bluegill is as high an honor as a man can aspire to in this life and that the secret to success in this is—contrary to everything you’ve been told—to forget about using a bobber. Why William Faulkner’s “The Bear” may be the best thing ever written about hunting. Why, when your heart has been crushed in love or by the death of a friend, the proper response is to go fishing. Why, when it comes to exacting revenge, the mafia have nothing on your teenage daughter. Why, if you are riding a horse for five hours up into the mountains on a weeklong trout expedition, pantyhose is essential. (And, if you are male, not to let the lady at the lingerie counter jerk you around. What you want is size XL, taupe, opaque rather than sheer, and regular rather than control top. Be firm about this. Otherwise, you’ll look unmanly.) Finally, never shy away from having your picture taken because you don’t like how you look at this age. Right now you look better than you ever will again.
I
Chasing the Chrome
When the steelhead are running, nothing else matters to Mikey Dvorak. Not money, not manners, not even where he’s going to sleep at night. What matters is finding a biting steelie somewhere, anywhere, on the West Coast. We went along for the ride.
The first time I met Mikey Dvorak, he asked if he could borrow fifty bucks.
At the time I thought he was a bum. I still think he’s a bum, but in the same way that an itinerant Buddhist monk is a bum. Except Mikey’s spiritual path was chasing steelhead.
I met Mikey through Kirk Lombard, a hard-core angler in San Francisco, who told me that if I really wanted to meet a “true fishing nomad” I should meet Mikey, a steelhead addict who had no fixed address and never seemed to have more than a few bucks on him. But it didn’t seem to bother him. “All he cares about is being where the fish are,” Kirk said. That’s why Mikey often slept in his truck—not on a pad in the back so he could stretch out, but upright in the driver’s seat because the rest of the truck was too full of gear. “And he’s such a maniac that he sleeps on the ramp.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“When Mikey’s steelhead fishing, he wants to be the first guy on the river. So, the night before, he backs his drift boat down the ramp, puts the truck in park, and conks out. The next morning, the first gu
y at the ramp finds Mikey there. The guy is pissed and bangs on Mikey’s window to wake him up. At which point Mikey wakes, apologizes, and launches. So he’s on the river ahead of anybody else.”
I had to meet this guy.
A few days later the three of us headed down the California coast to chase white sea bass, a highly mobile fish that migrates up from Baja, California, as the ocean warms in spring. We hoped to intercept some around Monterey. I dug myself a hole in the backseat of Mikey’s truck, which was crammed to the roof with fishing and camping gear, as well as a great deal of stuff that should have been in a landfill. Mikey said that the police had recently stopped him on this very stretch of road because his truck fit the profile of a meth user’s vehicle. The cops had searched it thoroughly. Actually, Mikey said, the stop had been a good thing. The cops turned up tackle that he’d given up for lost.
I was already captivated by the guy. He named every bird we saw at surprising distances, and when I asked how, he explained that he was doing it by the birds’ flight characteristics, which were generally more distinctive than markings. He talked about all kinds of fish, their life cycles, what biologists knew and what they still hadn’t figured out.
It was just outside Monterey that he asked for the fifty bucks. I gave him the money, but I also pointed out that I was leaving in three days and asked how he proposed to pay me back. “No problem,” he said. “I just need a battery for the boat.”
“You’re losing me, Mikey.”
“Oh, right,” he said, as if the connection were so obvious that he hadn’t bothered to explain. “We need the battery. So we buy one, fish for two days, and then return it for the refund.” In my world, owning a motorboat implied that you also owned the battery needed to start the motor. In Mikey’s world, I soon realized, only the present mattered. The past was done, the future abstract. If you live in the moment and care about fishing, there are only two important questions. Where are the fish? What do I need to go fishing for them right now?
In a way, I admired that Mikey had freed himself from the unproductive worries that so often kept me, like most people, from being fully present in the moment. Mikey, Kirk had said, was a barely legal walking disaster in the real world. He had a cell phone only because his sister, frustrated at never knowing where he was, bought him one. He forgot things, lost things, routinely showed up late or not at all, and failed to follow through on promises. But put him around a fish and he became focused, intent, and tireless.
For the next two days, the three of us and our new battery bobbed around on six-foot swells in the Pacific in a fourteen-foot skiff, jigging our brains out. The only other boats we saw were tankers and container ships on the horizon. Just half a mile away, waves that had traveled thousands of miles across the ocean hurtled against the coastal cliffs with thunderous claps. At some point I realized that we had nothing but life jackets if anything were to happen. And no safe beach to swim to. I didn’t want to think about this too hard, so I asked Mikey what it was about steelhead for him. He shrugged, as if to say that the answer was ineffable, but he gave it a try. “They’re the most mysterious, smartest, toughest fish I’ve ever seen.
“Think about it. A steelhead gets born in a particular patch of gravel in the river, spends a couple of years growing, and then decides to head down to the ocean. Which is not a safe place for a smolt. Everything out there wants to eat it. It spends a couple of years fattening up at sea, maybe swims halfway around the world. Then—if it’s the one or two fish in a hundred that make it—it’ll beat its brains out to return to the same patch of gravel. To the same square foot of gravel, you know? Amazing. And you don’t know when or if they’re gonna show up. They’re just really tough, smart fish.”
Over the years, he’d had steelhead strike so viciously that they yanked rods out of the holders on his drift boat. “Three times that’s happened. Right outta something designed to hold your rod no matter what. And they were good outfits—five-hundred-dollar ones, Loomis and Lamiglas rods with Shimano Calcutta reels. How can you not love a fish that wild, with that much heart?”
We fished hard for two whole days and never got a bite. By the time I left, however, I’d vowed that if I ever got the chance to go steelheading with Mikey Dvorak, I’d jump on it. The season along the California coast usually ran from late December or January through March, he said. It all hinged on getting enough rain to raise the rivers so the fish could get over the bar and swim up.
The call came two years later.
Hot Pursuit
It had been an unusually dry year, Mikey told me, but the rains had finally come in mid-February. The fishing was fantastic.
By the time I booked a flight, however, there had been too much of a good thing. The rivers were unfishable—high, fast, and muddy. I delayed my departure a week. As I was checking in at the airport, Mikey called again to ask if I could delay for two more days. I couldn’t.
“What the hell,” he said, “we’ll just have to do the best we can.”
I was standing outside baggage claim at the San Jose airport when he drove up. There’s something about guys like Mikey that threatens certain types of people. I could see every cop within sight eyeballing the truck, driver, and trailered drift boat as if all three might blow up. “Mikey,” I asked, sliding into the passenger seat, “what is it about you that freaks everybody out?”
“Beats me, man.” I got the feeling that Mikey was so accustomed to this phenomenon that it hardly registered anymore.
It was late. We’d sleep that night on the forty-four-foot boat he kept in a marina near Half Moon Bay, then drive north tomorrow, looking for whichever steelhead river would clear up first. Mikey said the boat was a 1949 naval rescue vessel that he’d bought at auction, along with the commercial ocean salmon fishing license attached to it. It had seemed like a way to make some money. In fact, he’d had a remarkably good first year, bringing in 23,000 pounds of salmon, worth more than $100,000.
Mikey’s boat was a floating version of his truck, the hands-down winner of any Most Derelict Vessel contest in the large marina. I suspected that Mikey was less than an authority on seamanship, and I damn sure knew the boat would have failed any inspection. And yet Mikey had somehow succeeded in a very competitive industry. As long as fish were involved, Mikey found a way.
I bunked that night on a narrow bench in the wheelhouse. Mikey bid me good night and disappeared into the hold. Presumably he had a bed down there somewhere. In a way, it was a shame the harbor police didn’t have a profile of a meth user’s boat. A good search was exactly what that boat needed.
The next morning we rolled north. “We’re chasing the chrome,” Mikey said, referring to the silvery appearance of a steelhead fresh from the ocean. The longer the fish stayed in the river, the more they reverted to rainbow trout colors. Fifty miles north of San Francisco was like being in another state. Everything changed. The towns were small, and each was smaller than the one before. It was redwood country; trees with tops you couldn’t see growing on steep, rugged mountains. Mikey started making phone calls to half a dozen guiding buddies. All the steelhead rivers—the Napa, Russian, Noyo, Eel, Van Duzen, Trinity, Mad, Klamath, and Smith—were blown out. “We’re probably screwed for the next two days wherever we go,” he said.
Which river would clear first depended on a multitude of factors: today’s level; how much rain had fallen and how much more might come; the extent to which degradation from lumbering, mining, and the cultivation of grapes and marijuana increased the river’s runoff; and the river’s record of recovery after rains in recent years. There were so many factors in play that it was impossible to take them all into account. Mikey sifted the data and decided to bet on the Smith, one of the most intact river systems in the state. It had received the least rain and had the most favorable forecast, at that moment anyway. It was also 350 miles north. Off we went. As we drove, I asked Mikey if this was the same Pathfinder we’d driven in two years ago to chase white sea bass. “No, this is the second I’ve had since then.” Mikey, I was to learn, bought Pathfinders exclusively, never paid more than a grand, and drove them until the wheels came off. “But only the first generation, ’85 to ’95. Those were tanks, man. After ’96, they got all round and fruity-looking. Stopped being a truck, you know?” This was his sixth. He’d bought it a year ago, with 200,000 miles on it. He’d put on 66,000 since then. I asked what he’d paid. “Seven hundred and twenty-two bucks,” he said. And smiled.