During my teaching years several of my teaching friends and I went on “adventures”. Most were not well thought out. We got an idea and put it into play without considering the consequences of our actions and the difficulties that might present themselves. One adventure involved two poker friends and the reading of a short story by Earnest Hemingway, The Big Two-Hearted River.
Jeff, Al, and I were members of a larger group of poker players. We were all teachers but not members of the same staff. I taught at the Plainwell Middle School and Jeff taught English at the high school. Al was the husband of a fellow teacher who taught for a Catholic school in Kalamazoo. Jeff was a wanna be hippy. Al, among other things, was an avid fisherman. We were all about twenty-six looking for a new adventure.
One evening, during our regular game, Jeff offered up a proposal. Let’s go trout fishing like Nick Adams in The Big Two-Hearted River. Several players were unfamiliar with the story. Jeff explained that it was a short story by Earnest Hemmingway about trout fishing in the U.P. “We’ll do everything just like him.”
Al and I agreed to go. There was one condition. We all had to read the story before the trip. Upon reading Hemingway’s tale, we learned that trout fishing was just the backdrop for a more complicated story. We simply focused on the fishing.
We set a date about a month out, got the OK from our wives, and met to plan our trip. Jeff was prepared. We’d make the drive north in his mansard roofed hippy van. I’d bring a tent and camping gear. We’d each bring our own fishing pole and sleeping bag. We’d share all expenses and purchase our supplies in a local store. Our supplies were to be just like Nick’s. We’d make a pot of coffee over an open fire and cook flapjacks with apple butter for breakfast. We’d make sure we had leftovers. We’d smear the leftovers with apple butter, roll them in waxed paper, and put them in our flannel shirt pocket for lunch. We added some “just in case we don’t catch anything” hotdogs to our shopping list.
Our drive north was uneventful. We arrived in the early afternoon, bought our supplies, scouted out the area for a place to camp, and made a visit to the river to determine how best to enter the next morning. The campsite we chose was much like the entire U.P. It was in the middle of nowhere. We followed a dirt road to a secluded meadow in the midst of the pine forest. We could see for several hundred yards in each direction. We pitched our tent, gathered firewood, and discussed plans for the next day. We ate dinner in town that evening.
While making breakfast the next morning, a jeep with two men about ten years older that us, pulled into the meadow. They stopped and we spoke for a while. We explained that we were reenacting the story of Nick Adams in Earnest Hemingway’s story. We were trout fishing for the first time.
They were experienced fishermen. They explained, “We come here about three times a year. The fishing is great and we love it.”
I noted that each man was packing a pistol. “Why the guns?”, I asked.
“They’re for the bear. We run into bear on most of our trips.”
We learned they were .44 Magnum revolvers similar to those used by Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry movies. Over the past few years, they shot one bear. Jeff, Al, and I were unarmed and totally unprepared for an encounter with a bear. We simply wanted to go fishing. There were no bear mentioned in Hemingway’s story. Nick fished. That’s it.
They offered a piece of advice. “If you see one, work your way upwind.” I kept my thought to myself, but knew if I saw a bear in the river I’d crap my pants. After our exchange they offered up a final, “Good luck!” and were off.
The three of us, gathered our fishing gear and drove to the site we scouted the prior day. We agreed to spread out on the river and meet back at the van later that afternoon. We were on our own for about four hours.
A couple hours into the fishing, I reached into my shirt pocket to retrieve my lunch. The flapjacks with apple butter I rolled in wax paper that morning were a big wet ball of dough. Nick’s were perfect when he retrieved his. Mine were not. The ball of mush tasted OK. I prayed privately the bears in the area didn’t smell the apple butter.
During the two hours prior to lunch, I caught nothing. I had a couple bites, but didn’t land a fish. After lunch I caught two puny rainbows. I removed them from the hook and gently returned them to the river. That’s one takeaway from the story I kept.
When we reassembled I learned that I was the only one who caught anything. Jeff and Al were completely shut out. We were having “just in case” hotdogs for dinner. We stopped in a bar for a couple of beers before heading back to camp. Once we arrived, we built a fire, shared our stories of the day, and celebrated the fact that we avoided any contact with bear. We hit the sack as soon as it got dark, so we could get an early start back to Kalamazoo.
We’d been in the tent about ten minutes when headlights hit us. We looked out and saw the Jeep from the morning. My initial thought was, they’ve come back to kill us. They hadn’t. They’d come to find out how we did. “Terrible. How about you?”
“We’ll show you.” They went to the back of the Jeep and pulled out a large cooler. It was filled to the top with dozens of trout packed in ice. They definitely exceeded their limit. They followed the display with “Let’s eat.” We stirred the fading fire and roasted trout like we did our hot dogs a couple of hours earlier. We added a pinch of salt and pulled the flesh away from the skin until we had eaten our fill. It’s the best fish I ever tasted.
We talked as we ate and learned that our two new friends were from Kalamazoo just like us. They worked in the post office not far from Al’s house. Small world. After we ate the three of us took turns shooting their pistols into the night. That’s the only time I ever shot one.
On the ride home the next day we agreed our adventure had been memorable, but next time we set out to reenact a story, we had more homework to do.