In a few hours the old year ends and a new one begins. Do you do anything special for New Year’s Eve? Back in my youth I participated in the usual New Year’s wild celebrations at bars but there was a problem. I have never been a big one for staying out late. We had a joke in my family that I would just be getting home from a night out just as my brothers were heading out to begin theirs. What can I say? I’m boring.
When it came to New Year’s Eve, however, a girlfriend was a good reason to stay out past midnight. She wanted to dress up and see all our friends. There was dancing and food at the bars, not to mention some excellent bands. NRBQ was a good one, but Linda and the Love Letters were my favorite. They did 1950s and 60s rock and roll. Fun to dance to and everyone knew all the words.
One year I didn’t have a girlfriend (Actually there were a lot of years I didn’t have one now that I think about it) so I spent my New Year’s celebration with a friend from work and his wife at my apartment. I made a fancy dinner, and we sat around just talking and listening to music on the stereo. At one point we all looked at each other and commented on how wonderful this was. We didn’t have to shout over the music. There was no cigarette smoke. (It was a thing back then) No drunken morons trying to start fights. My friends went home before midnight to beat the drunk drivers home. I will always remember that night and the fun we had.
After that particular party, New Year’s was something I did with friends each year. No more bars. Instead we had some very nice dinner parties. The guys did all the cooking including hors d’oeuvres. The girls would dress up, us guys wore jackets and ties. We started something called the Blue Blazer Club because apparently a blue blazer was all we had to wear! One year we traveled to a friend’s cabin and tobogganed at midnight by the light of the moon and cooked a prime rib on a spit in front of his giant stone fireplace. What a blast.
After Kerry and I met we realized neither of us was interested in going out for New Year’s Eve. We would watch a college football game. I would make some egg rolls and do a stir fry and we were in bed long before midnight. Lucky she is boring too!
This has gotten me thinking. What is this societal obsession with New Year’s Eve? Watching the ball drop on the roof of the One Times Square building for instance. Ever been to Times Square? As much as I enjoy The City, I can tell you for a fact that it can be extremely cold and crowded. I can’t figure out why anyone would stand out on the sidewalk and streets for hours, taking the chance their wallet will get stolen, to watch a glowing orb descend signaling the start of a new year. Watching it on television seems even more strange. What’s the point?
It’s not just us in the United States by the way. In all the major cities of Europe, they do the same sort of party thing. Fireworks and concerts are popular. You can get free whiskey in Scotland. Vin chaud (hot wine) in Paris.
But what are we all celebrating exactly? The end of the last year? The beginning of a new year with a clean slate? Both?
People love new things, especially new things that herald something good for the future. The first snowfall of winter, the first daffodil of spring, the first kiss, babies. (Yes, I listed them that way on purpose. Don’t worry. You’ll get used to me.)
Of course, celebrating the end of onerous things makes us happy as well. We often ceremonially burn the mortgage paperwork once it’s paid off at a party. There was VE Day and VJ Day celebrating the end of the two theatres of war as WW2 ended. Those were some wild parties judging by the photos and video.
Many times, we have a toned-down party after a funeral with food, drink, and tell fun stories about the deceased.
I once attended a big bash for the removal of a friend’s full leg cast. Someone got a hold of one of those special saws doctors use to cut off casts and performed the operation out on the patio. It smelled bad and almost immediately the patient toppled over as he stood up from his chair. Not because his leg was weak. He had too many whiskeys getting up the courage to let an amateur cut off the cast. Still, it was a fun party.
The reason for the celebration is probably just individual in nature and the motivation can certainly change from year to year but here at the house we still like to make egg rolls and watch football. Maybe with a couple Mai Tais thrown in to be wild.
Under The Big Sky
I know I promised some more cowboy stories a couple blogs back but I’m a bad planner. Last week Kerry’s article about Christmas in Montana during WW2 needed to come out on Christmas. Now this week I read an op-ed about Montana’s stream access law and the fear that the legislature, led by our governor, a game law violator himself, may want to change that law so private landowners, like him, can lock up access to rivers.
I promise the cowboy stories will get written. This one is timelier, I think.
Our very progressive stream access laws in Montana are unique when compared to the rest of the nation. Basically, if you can gain legal access to a river, say from a fishing access or right of way, and then stay below the high water mark you can recreate anywhere you want on the river. This of course irritates some private landowners who believe the rivers belong to them because they own river frontage.
I have had experience with these legalities because these same rules applied back where I’m from in Connecticut when it came to the shoreline on Long Island Sound where we fished for Striped Bass and Bluefish. However, the access laws did not apply to the rivers and streams. If you were fishing in a river surrounded by private land no matter how you got access, you were trespassing. Someone told me it had to do with tax law and paying property tax on the river bottom which meant that technically you could float on the river ‘s surface but you couldn’t touch the bottom. Dumb sounding? You bet! Maybe they have changed the laws back there, but I wouldn’t count on it.
The shoreline rule, however, upset Connecticut beach front landowners who believed they paid property tax to the water line, which meant they owned the beach the seaward boundary of which changed every six hours with the tide. I know this because I had a late-night encounter with such a landowner. Dumb? You bet! A cop had to come and tell the landowner to go to bed or get cited for obstruction. Not the first time this had happened, the cop told me. It’s a stupid game they play hoping to keep the riffraff out of their ocean view.
What many folks in Montana don’t think about is that while you may be perfectly within your rights to be fishing in a river you will still be harassed by the landowners or their minions. Now, it’s illegal to harass hunters and fishermen in Montana who are recreating within the law, but most harassers hope you don’t know that. They want to ruin your day just enough that you will never come back.
I know what you’re thinking. The harassers are the new people who moved here. That’s true but there are just as many “Real Montanans” who play the same stupid games landowners played on the shore in Connecticut. I remember my first introduction to the Montana Game.
It must be 15 or 20 years ago that I was invited by a friend to check out the fishing on his new ranch. He had a mile or two of frontage on a wonderful trout stream. The best part was, I would have it all to myself. All he wanted was a report on my success and a little intel on productive runs and pools. I rarely could afford a day off to go fishing and almost never got to go on private land, so I jumped at the chance.
I drove down the ranch road towards the river on a beautiful summer day when the high water from snow melt had calmed down leaving the stream crystal clear and wadable for a crippled horseshoer. Mayflies and caddis were hatching, the birds were swooping around snatching the bugs in midair and trout were rising everywhere I looked. And I was all alone. I was entranced. This is why we came here in the first darn place. I wished Kerry didn’t have to work because she would have loved this scene.
I’ve learned over the years to not go rushing in and start casting even when confronted by an ideal situation like this one. I sat quietly on my pickup’s tailgate, eating a sandwich, and drinking coffee from my battered thermos, watching the water carefully with binoculars. Big fish rise to floating insects and were often quite close to the bank unlike their smaller brethren. Little fish splash a lot and hang farther out in the river in general.
I spotted a good fish upstream as I finished lunch. This was going to be tricky, but it also was a situation I live for. The trout was sipping little yellow mayflies, Pale Morning Duns we call them. This fish was right next to an undercut bank that had young willow saplings growing on it that bent over the water, effectively forming a roof over his head. The willows provided great protection from ospreys and fishermen, but presented a casting issue for me. How do I present a fly without spooking him?
The good news was that I never saw a bug get past him, so he wasn’t being fussy. If I could sneak up behind him in the knee-deep water and cast across my body and left shoulder, I should be able to get just the fly and a little tippet around and upstream of the willows. That would allow the fly to float down to the trout’s lair without spooking him and maybe I would get lucky.
It had been a while since I cast a fly rod, so I made a few practice casts well downstream from the big fish. Satisfied with my cast I crept into position. I couldn’t believe my hands were shaking a little. It had been too long since I last stalked a big trout apparently. I stood there in the rushing water taking deep breathes trying to calm myself.
Then carefully measuring out line I began to false cast. I didn’t want too many false casts because he might see the movement and bolt under the bank. Two quick ones, sidearm and low, was all it took to get enough line, and I let it fly. Short and left! I just let everything float past the trout and began again. This one was perfect. It drifted right down the seam that he was holding in. He sees it! He slowly started to rise…
“Do you have to do that right there?”
The shouting voice came out of nowhere, startling me so badly I jerked my fly out of the water and got it stuck on one straggly willow. The trout bolted under the bank of course. Who the hell is yelling at me?
I looked behind me to where my truck sat. No one was there.
“I said, do you have to do that right there?”
It came from the other side of the river. An unimpressive looking man in tan clothing and aviator sunglasses was standing on the bank with his hands on his hips. He was obviously annoyed with me.
“I’m sorry “I said. “Who are you?”
“I own the property over here and the house up there.” he replied pointing behind him.
I looked where he was pointing, and I didn’t see a house. I wasn’t even on his side of the river. This situation was weird and vaguely familiar.
“My friend Bob gave me permission to fish on his place…” I started to explain but the little man interrupted.
“That may be, but we can see you from our deck. I would like you to fish somewhere else.”
(Something you should know about me is that orders and threats, especially when given to me by self-important bullies, never end in the intended result.)
“No, I cannot fish somewhere else.” I replied in a less than friendly manner.
“What do you mean you cannot?” said the now confused little man.
The vaguely familiar situation crystallized in my mind. This was just like Connecticut, and I used the same line I had used then.
“Call a cop.” I said. “I’ll wait.”
“What?” he asked incredulously. Obviously, he was not used to being disobeyed.
“Call…A…COP” I yelled. “I… WILL… WAIT!”
The man turned and disappeared into the trees. I looked again for his house on the opposite hillside. Maybe a house was up there but all I saw was trees.
I went back to fishing and caught a few but I couldn’t concentrate. The magic was gone. I was mad and couldn’t calm down. I waited a full hour for a cop or game warden to show up but no one came. Me being me, I started to second guess myself. Had I done something wrong? Was this some kind of misunderstanding? Maybe I should have just moved.
I finally went home, my day ruined by a jackass in aviator sunglasses.
Once home, I called my friend immediately. I figured the jerk was going to call and I wanted to warn him. My friend answered the phone laughing. He had seen me on his caller ID.
“Hey John. You had an interesting day!”
“He must have called you. I’m so sorry but he just set me off.”
“What exactly did you say?”
“I told him I had permission to fish and to call a cop, I would wait,” I said to uproarious laughter on the other end of the phone.
“Yeah, that took him off guard! Pay no attention to him. I explained the law to him, he is a lawyer by the way, and I told him if seeing you was so offensive, he needed to put up screens on his deck. You have my permission to go there anytime you want. You don’t even need to call. There is plenty of river there for everyone.”
We chatted for a while about the fishing and he made me promise I would go back and not let the idiot ruin it for me. Several weeks later I did go back and brought my brother who was visiting. We went a mile upstream from the spot where I was yelled at and we did very well. Then I saw the little man’s house. One mile from where he yelled at me. If they could see me from there through the leaves of the trees, they would have had a telescope. I realized he was just trying to buffalo me into going away just like the guy in Connecticut.
The brief episode with the little man across the river was a wakeup call. Back then I was relatively new to the area and people in general were welcoming and kind. That proved to me that my preconceived notions of Montana were right. Montanans would be far more agreeable and open compared to standoffish, clannish, nouvelle riche Connecticut. In reality, what I was proven to be was naïve.
I’m thankful for our river access laws. People are people no matter where you go, and while many are decent human beings with generous hearts there are also many that are self-interested, greedy, and mercenary blights on humanity. I’m a small government kind of guy but the former need laws to protect them from the latter, yet I’m concerned the latter rules us in Montana. We all need to keep an eye on Helena. There are too many there that do not have our best interest at heart especially when it comes to hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation in general. There is constant talk on social media, in coffee shops, and in bars about how good things used to be in Montana. If we want them to be good again, we need to speak up, show up and vote until it happens.
It's A Dog’s Life
Upland game and waterfowl seasons are basically over in Montana on January 1st each year. If you read outdoor magazines, you will inevitably find a story about how it is now time to clean, repair and store your equipment. You need to tie flies for fishing season with all your newly acquired feathers. It’s time to sit down at your reloading bench and load shotgun shells for your club’s trap and skeet leagues along with devising new secret loads for bird hunting next year. You should keep your dogs tuned by keeping up with your training schedule. You might even want to think about doing some of those household chores that have been neglected because of hunting and fishing seasons. Your wife would approve. (Unless you get her involved with hunting and fishing with you like I did! It’s a genius move. She will gladly ignore chores in favor of hunting, fishing, and dog work.)
While those articles dispense some good advice about offseason activity, the header of the article is often a drawing or photo of gun dogs peacefully sleeping in front of a roaring fireplace. There is a window in the background where you can see snow swirling while a man in a flannel shirt, khaki pants and slippers sits in an easy chair smoking a pipe with a glass of amber-colored liquid on the table next to him. He is daydreaming of hunting pheasants while benevolently smiling at the sleeping dogs. Everything is peaceful, serene, and low energy.
What a crock!
At our house the dogs zoom around the house, leaping over easy chairs in a single bound. They try and drink the amber-colored liquid and demand a snack to go with it. They bark at people outside the window. They bark at dogs outside the window. They bark at the wind. It’s true! The wind gusts and the last few leaves that have been hanging on the flowering crab blow away. The dogs believe we need warning barks about it.
They run downstairs then upstairs then down again. They wrestle on the stairs. Literally on the stairs, precariously balancing on two hind feet while pawing at each other with their fronts and biting collars and ears. Bella sounds like a grizzly bear mauling someone. Maggie yipes and barks in a high-pitched excited way.
You have given up writing because you can’t hear yourself think, and have made a nice cup of tea for the two of you. The dogs approach at a high rate of speed and slam into our legs causing some tea to spill.
“We are bored!” the GSPs exclaim. “Bored, bored, bored! We want to run and play!”
“I know.” the long-suffering Chief Dog Trainer says.” You can go outside…”
The GSPs roar off at the word “outside” skidding to a halt on the kitchen tiles in front of the sliding door leading to the back yard. They look back at us with happy excited eyes stumpy tails a wagging.
“You didn’t let me finish. You can go outside but its 35 below zero and your feet will freeze just like this morning, and you will run right back inside complaining about the cold.”
“Never. “Cry the two very brave dogs. “That never happened. Bored, bored, bored!”
The Chief Dog Trainer trudges to the door.
“Ok but don’t say I didn’t warn you!” and she slides it open.
Bella and Maggie leap over the stairs landing on the ice- and snow-covered patio and dash approximately 20 feet into the yard.
“OH MY GOD!” they shout. “COLD, COLD, COLD!!!
Ever see a dog pee while only standing on one foot? Me neither but these two did their best.
They ran back to the door. It’s a strange sort of gait. They try to run without putting their front feet down in the bitter, cold snow.
“Let us in! Let us in! We aren’t bored anymore.” They scream.
The Trainer lets them in. The whining and complaining goes on for a while. Then they look for a sunbeam to warm themselves in. If that’s not available Bella curls up on her bed while Maggie sits on top of her using Bella’s body heat to thaw her paws. They then fall asleep.
We humans race off to try and write before we do this whole scene over again.
Here is a little secret. At night when the Christmas tree lights are glowing in our darkened living room and Kerry and I are on the couch with amber-colored liquid, Maggie curled up in between us, Bella sprawled across our feet, and Molly snoring somewhere behind us, it feels like those magazine photos. Peaceful and serene. Sometimes I even wear a flannel shirt.
Have a Happy New Year and I hope it’s a healthy, peaceful, and serene one for you.