Seated beside the woodstove as rain and hail ping against the windows, I’ve been thinking about a line often attributed to Henry David Thoreau: “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”
Whether the author of “The Maine Woods” actually said it matters less than the truth behind it. Anglers may head to the water in search of trout but it is often something else they find.
It is that something that draws me back, season after season, to the brooks and rivers of western Maine. The trout are there, certainly, rising in riffles and tucked beneath cutbanks. Along those same banks live other residents, and over the years they have made my days afield more memorable than any fish.
Last August I was wading down South Bog Brook, one of countless rivulets slipping quietly through the North Woods, when I heard the high grass rustle along the far bank. I stopped midstream, expecting a deer or perhaps a moose to break into the open.
Instead a young coyote lifted its head above a clump of Joe-Pye weed no more than 10 feet away. The inquisitive animal rose onto its hind legs, front paws suspended, testing the air for my scent. When I took a cautious step in its direction, the canine yipped twice and disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared.
On an afternoon in early July a few seasons ago, I was working my way up Wiggle Brook, a mountain stream tumbling off the western slopes of the Boundary Mountains. Native brook trout were rising freely to a pheasant tail dry fly, darting from plunge pools to intercept the drifting imitation.
After hours of casting through sun-dappled riffles bordered by balsam, spruce and arborvitae, I sat on the trunk of a fallen spruce to rest my arm. A splash below a midstream boulder drew my attention.
A red squirrel surfaced, paddling furiously in water that must have felt far colder than I imagined. I considered wading out to help but the little swimmer managed well enough on its own, reaching a submerged limb and hauling itself onto the branch. There it shook violently, sending droplets in every direction before slipping back into the current to complete the final leg of its crossing.
Not long before that, while casting tiny Blue-winged Olive emergers to a single stubborn brown trout, I shared a quiet stretch of river with a muskrat. The animal swam back and forth with a mouthful of reeds, ferrying construction materials to a lodge built beneath a fallen willow limb. It ignored me completely, intent on its work while I focused on mine.
Another morning on the West Branch of the Delaware River in New York, I noticed a small form struggling in a long, slow run below me. At first I assumed it was another muskrat. Drawing closer, I saw instead a tiny cottontail that must have slipped from the steep bank.
The rabbit had already gone under more than once and was losing what little strength it had. I eased downstream and worked my way below it, then slipped a hand beneath the exhausted creature as it pressed against my thigh. Together we made for shore.
Seated beside it on a grassy knoll, I watched its sides heave and its heart thrum beneath soaked fur. After several minutes it gathered itself, shook off the remaining water and began grooming as though the ordeal had been nothing more than a passing inconvenience. When I rose it hopped off toward the lodge’s vegetable garden.
More than a dozen years ago on a rainy afternoon in June near our seasonal cabin in western Maine, I bent to release a brook trout taken on a Gold-ribbed Hare’s Ear. When I straightened up, a deer mouse sat no more than a foot away in a shallow indentation along the bank, trying to stay dry. With eyes like black beads it stared at me as if to say, “move on, nothing to see here.”
There were others over the years.
A flying squirrel once wedged itself halfway into a cedar tree cavity only to discover its backside would not follow. Three adolescent otters spent an afternoon sliding down a muddy bank into Little Kennebago Lake, scrambling up and repeating the performance like children at recess. After a flash flood subsided near our home, I found a wood turtle dozing in the branches of an alder ten feet above the stream, carried there by the high water.
Then there was the bear.
On a warm afternoon in early August I was wading the headwaters of a well-known western Maine river, casting a bushy black ant pattern that landed with a distinct plop against the glassy surface. The sun stood high and the scent of balsam lifted from the surrounding forest whenever a breeze crossed the water. Though the temperature hovered in the 80s, the riffles moving past my calves carried the coolness of shaded springs upstream.
Rounding a bend, I paused to wet a neckerchief and drape it over my head. As the water trickled down the back of my neck, my eye caught movement in a dense thicket of brambles along the far bank. Through the tangle I made out the dark shape of a black bear seated on the trunk of a fallen tree, no differently than if it were resting on a park bench. With its back toward me, the bruin leaned forward and delicately plucked raspberries from between the thorns.
While the bear continued to munch on berries, I debated whether to advance up the stream. After a moment of indecision, I slowly backed away to find my own patch of raspberries to snack on.