Episode 11 · 12 min
A few summers ago I shared a clearing with two guys I'd met that same afternoon. Dispersed site, forest service road, one flat spot and three parties who all wanted it. We were polite about it — nods, small talk, everybody on their own patch of dirt. Then somebody got a fire going and offered to share it, because building a second one six feet away would have been strange, and within an hour the three of us were talking like we'd known each other for years. One of them told a story about his father I don't think he'd told many people. I know I said things I don't usually say to strangers. In the morning we drove off in three directions and I never saw either of them again.
Episode 10 · 11 min
There's a thing I do at the end of every fish that I've never really explained to anyone. I hold it in the water, facing upstream, and I wait. Not for a photo. I wait because the fish is tired and needs a minute in the current before it can hold itself steady again, and I'm not going to let go until it can. Sometimes that's ten seconds. Sometimes my hands go numb in the cold while I crouch there waiting for a trout to decide it's ready. And then it just goes — one kick, back down into the green water, and I never see it again. That's the whole point.
Episode 9 · 12 min
This morning I woke up on a piece of land that belongs to me. It also belongs to you, and to a few hundred million other people, which is a strange kind of ownership but a real one. I was parked on a national forest road in the Cascades, a few miles up a gravel track, nobody around. I made coffee and watched the light come up through the trees. I didn't pay anyone for the privilege, and nobody could tell me to leave. I've woken up like that thousands of mornings now, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to understand what actually makes it possible. It isn't the van. The van is just the tool.
