SUN AND ICE IN NOVEMBER

• BY HAYDEN MELLSOP

Sun and Ice in November

Following a fifteen-degree night in a twenty-degree sleeping bag, I wake to a frozen five-gallon water jug, and the realization that I may have chosen the coldest place to camp in the entire valley. Positioned close to the creek, the camper also sits in the shade of the low ground, in the lee of snow-covered slopes with a northerly aspect. Kicking my water jug frees up enough liquid to brew a cup of tea. Like my dog on the living room rug on a winter’s day, I position myself in anticipation of where the sun will first reach, watching as the golden light fingers slowly toward me.

After a breakfast burrito that leaves rivulets of congealed bacon grease on my fingers, I take to the trail downstream. The creek bears all the hallmarks of a low water year—threadbare save for the occasional deeper pool; a layer of reddish silt covers the bed, swept clean only where seams of current are concentrated. Where not iced along its shallow reaches, the water flows gin-clear, and I stop from time to time to spot fish, to reassure myself they haven’t retreated for the season into the deep pools and cut banks. They seem few and far between, but seeing one or two gives me hope that my day may be fruitful. The fish I do see hold station under thin ice shelves that have formed overnight. My hope is that, as the sun rises higher and the day warms, the ice will disappear.

The canyon narrows the further down I hike, and trees grow heavy to the water’s edge. Although the trail shows ample sign of being well-used—ATV and bike tracks, boot and hoof prints—I encounter nobody. From the south a small stream, little more than a trickle, is frozen in place, the boulders over which it flows cased in ice.

Many places down here will not see direct sunlight for the next several months.

I come upon a clearing where a small meadow opens out, and the transition from dark to bright, the sharp reflection of light off one boulder in particular brings with it the onset of a migraine. The angry amoeba behind my eyeballs grows bigger and brighter and more jagged, morphing its shape and color. I lie down next to the stream. Using my pack as a pillow, I slip into a half-doze as the amoeba does its thing. Van Gogh drove himself crazy, not to mention half blind, trying to paint the sun, and I wonder at the effect on my state of mind if I made it my life’s mission to try and accurately paint in words the sound and soothing of gently running water.

The worst of the headache passes, and I begin to fish my way back upstream. I catch a couple of lovely brook trout, including one, large for the stream, with a gaping mouth black as night on the inside of its jaws. I work one pool for a good half hour, trying to tempt a couple of sighted fish with a variety of flies. The closest I come is when one half-heartedly follows a hopper for a few feet, then turns back to its station. I wave the white flag after losing two flies into the same overhanging branch in consecutive casts. I catch the day’s last fish in the aerated pool in a pour over at the base of some kind of old dam or diversion, a small cutthroat that, quick as a flash, darts from the depths, engulfs the fly, and dives deep again, hooking itself.

Shadows already lengthening upon my return, I decide to relocate camp to higher ground, further from the sound of the creek, but to a place where I calculate the sun will reach me earlier, and linger longer. The effort is worth it; my fly rod miraculously survives being shut in the tailgate of my truck, and I sit in the last of the day’s light among the watchful eyes of a small glade of aspens, long since stripped bare for the coming winter.

Whiskey warms me, and I reflect that November might mean cold nights and frozen water jugs, but also deserted campsites, and solitary streams.

Hayden Mellsop

Fly fishing guide. Real Estate guide.

About The Author

Hayden Mellsop is an expat New Zealander living in the mountain town of Salida, Colorado, on the banks of the Arkansas River. As well as being a semiretired fly fishing guide, he juggles helping his wife raise two teenage daughters, along with a career in real estate.

Recreation, residential, retirement, investment.