( In the opening story, Will Fischer returned alone to the river he’d known as a young man. The old cabin was worn with age, but still standing....and the river? On the first day it gave him a beautiful trout and he returned to the cabin feeling at ease. . .)

That night the rain came. It came in a drenching downpour and in sheets carried on the wind. It pelted through the hemlock canopy and struck heavily on the cedar shake roof, and Fischer heard not a bit of it, not until early daylight woke him. He arose stiffly from his long day on the river and went to the door. Looking up the lake he could barely see the far shore and the lake surface was throwing something of a tantrum. He looked for several minutes, trying to take in the change he hadn’t expected. A wayward gust swept a veil of cold dampness into the doorway and he backed off, shook himself awake, closed the door and went back to bed. It was not that he would go back to sleep; he hadn’t wanted that anyway. He just needed a few minutes to prepare for a more conventional meeting of the day.

‘A man needs to warm up for a day like this,’ Fischer thought out loud as he started the naphtha stove and set the small pot of water on to heat. There’s no warranty on weather in this country. No use fretting or feeling unjustly done by. Outdoor work on days like this had been routine in his logging days, so ‘I can damn well play in them too.’

‘Play’ -- his brow knit -- not exactly an accurate description. Finishing his breakfast and the dishes and securing his food from the deprivation of any tailed visitors, Fischer donned waders and his waxed cotton jacket and hat and, with rod in hand, started down river. At the bottom of the first rapids he stopped, rain streaming off his hat brim. It was the thought of that good two-pound rainbow that held him but, no, his goal for today was on the river far downstream. He walked on beneath the dripping hemlocks, seeing the pools and runs he had fished the day before, noticing the signs of elk, the piles of chocolate marbles looking fresh with the rain on them. The elk had wintered along the river; they would be on their way into the high country now.

And then he reached the place where the bench dropped down. Here the hemlocks thinned out and the low bottomland took on a more sinister aspect. It was the edge of the slash that Fischer’s crew had left some years ago. There were alder copses with bowed or broken limbs from past winter snowfalls and thickets of salmonberry and wild rose and bracken fern, all cut through with deserted river channels filled now with rainwater and bordered by the tangled sprays of nine-bark. Sapling cedars and hemlock struggled in the competition for light. In time they would be the winners, and the loggers would come again.

Fischer had a choice to make: crash through the dense overgrown slash or take to the river. He chose the latter. The bench fell rather sharply and the trail, what there was of it, ended abruptly. At the river he waded out three or four feet and looked down a long straight run and felt the wind sweeping upstream.

The river was up several inches with the heavy rain and was running fast, though the run was flat and only broken where infrequent boulders loomed below the surface. He had tied a fresh Invicta to his leader back in the cabin and with the wind cold on his hands he was glad he had. He payed it out and let the current carry it away, and then with 30 or 35 feet of line off the reel he roll cast the fly into midstream. The river took it as if it were hungry and devoured it straight below him. He tried again, followed by several quick steps downstream to give the fly a chance to sink and drift for seconds before the current snatched it inshore. Again and again he made the effort, finding himself well down the run. There was no chance for a proper backcast with the wild bankside shrubbery pressing out into the river and not much hope either of crashing through it to get ashore. The thought of bucking the current to retreat was too much, too, so Fischer pressed on.

Well along the run he rolled the fly out behind one of the large submerged rocks and almost as soon as it lit there was a flash near the surface. He felt the sharp take and then it was gone. Even the rain and gusting wind seemed to let up a little to allow a moment of encouragement and Fischer’s roll casts seemed for a time to sail more easily out over the river, but they went for naught. At the bottom of the run a grassy glade beneath a stand of alder allowed him to leave the river, and that’s when he discovered he had been fishing without a fly, probably since that confidence-lifting strike. There was a lesson here not to be forgotten, though quite possibly to repeat.

How cold and red the fingers as he wrestled with another Invicta and the unwilling end of the leader. How intricately and exacting the train of loops and tucks when the fingers refuse their usual dexterity. And when the knot is drawn hard against the eye of the hook, how unsure that slippage is impossible. But such concerns lingered only until Fischer turned to start through the alders.Undulations hidden beneath the dense fronds of sword fern; spreading canes of salmonberry with tiny infectious spines; black boggy depressions over which devil’s club spins its menacing limbs -- all laid out as if to keep one walking in anything but a straight line.

And the river, within sight and sound, offering temptations to fish even in its swifter pace and Fischer, knowing it had to be crossed, wondered where?

Weaving in and out, now at riverside, now back in the bush, forced into a serpentine route, he arrives at a wide, shallow stretch over loose gravel. In the bankside shrubbery he finds a stout, springy hemlock limb, debarked by the forces of the river; a wading staff, and Fischer starts the crossing. The river pulls hard on his legs and the gravel slides underfoot and when he feels the tiring aches he sets the hemlock staff hard into the bottom and presses his weight against it, gaining a minute’s rest. He wonders if this is such a wise move, yet knowing it is important to get to the far bank, to find his way down to The Long Bend, that great sweeping crescent of past memories -- memories both poignant and melancholy.

When Fischer reaches the opposite shore, tired but relieved, he finds himself facing a 10-foot high bank. He can’t follow the river by wading for it picks up speed through a treacherous rock garden, heavily overboughered with sprays of nine-bark jutting nearly to river level. It is so dense there is no telling what he might be getting into below. Choosing the high ground is tough but not foolish. As he weaves his way among the naked alders and around scattered hemlocks and firs, stumbling at times through fern thickets and ambushed by trailing vines, the land gradually slides downward bringing the river ever nearer.

And then it is there at his feet, a deep pool with narrow shoots of current breaking out of the tail of the rock garden. Not his goal, it is still too much to ignore and a few casts into it finds a willing trout. It is a scrappy little fish, for all of ten seconds, and comes ashore as if it is disillusioned. Then finding itself upright facing into the current, supported by a mysterious and gentle touch, it sets itself into high gear and disappears in an instant.

The day was progressing rapidly and Fischer was impatient to get on to The Long Bend. He could wade the river now, staying out of the overgrown slash upriver, and there were runs and pools to tempt a cast, which he did. But his casting was little more than haphazard acknowledgements of the waters.

He pressed on until at last he was there, where the river began its broad ox-bow. A short rapids ended in a broad shallow flat. He remembered seeing salmon spawning here in the fall, in the wonderfully perfect gravel favored by coho and sockeye, the hens on their sides shifting the gravel with powerful flexing of their tails, the vicious encounters between males, the enervating expenditures of life’s valiant finale. His reveries were interrupted by crashing brush on the opposite bank and he saw the bushes trembling. Suddenly a black bear plunged into the river.

She seemed not to be going anywhere, not attempting to cross, just splashing in a playful manner and making a fuss with low grunts, and then a small black head thrust itself out of the riparian bush. This mother had a cub. Fischer stood dead still. He hadn’t been seen and he knew any movement on his part would frighten them off. Black bears had always been numerous in this country, thriving like deer in the logging slashes. This sow had brought her cub to the river to bathe and the cub was reluctant to make the dive of two or three feet into the river.

The sow continued her persuasions, splashing and grunting, and the cub finally joined her. They frolicked like kids for several minutes, standing and shaking and throwing water in all directions, and then submerging and repeating the act. After several performances the mother led her cubdownstream to where the bank was less steep and the two disappeared into the bush.

But Fischer remained engrossed, feeling privileged, his mind’s eye the two black lumps of fur bouncing about in a carefree exhibition of family play. Without knowing it he was smiling and ever more quiet as he continued his wade down river. He noticed that the rain had lightened up to little more than a mist, that the wind had calmed and its gusts came less frequently. Halfway along this great curvature of the river he could see ahead the top of an old dead cedar snag. It was the landmark he sought.

He began to hurry and the bears were forgotten and when he was opposite the snag he left the river.

Many years had come and gone since he was last here, but it wasn’t the dead cedar he had come to see. He searched the area near it, parting the bushes and kicking about the forest litter. He was nearly ready to quit when he saw the post. It was a weathered, rotting chunk of Douglas fir, askew and nicely camouflaged in the thick ground cover. And that was all. He looked hard and long at the old post and at the ground around it and then he turned and walked to the river.

The river here has a wide shingle beach and the flow along the far side is deep and dark and he wades out to make the cast. The fly begins its swim and Fischer takes several steps downstream to allow it to settle deeply. When the line suddenly begins to draw, he raises the rod and feels the fish.

The rod is arced and trembling and Fischer begins to play the fish in a trance. He is hooked up with a very good cutthroat and suddenly beside him is Benji, a young black labrador that seems as real as the trout, wading carefully forward, now concentrating on the straining line that cuts the water, now wildly eyeing the surface commotion as the trout fights for its freedom. Benji looks up at his master, then back to the action. The rod is no gun and whatever is raising a ruckus in the river is no blue grouse. Benji would know what that is all about, but this?

The trout is tiring and coming in on its side, not feebly but with quick thrusts and turns and sharp shakes of the head. In the crystal water bright flanks are tinged golden yellow on the bottom and there are brilliant, roseate slashes beneath the jaw. Then, possessed of a primeval force, Benji
springs upon the fish, grasps it in its jaws and turns to his master. Fischer is awestruck and seconds pass as he registers what he has seen. For Benji, the retriever, it is a first. He watches the cutthroat struggle to regain its balance, and sees Benji as if he were on point. And when the trout darts for deep water Fischer sees a dripping black retriever bringing the catch to his master.

A gust of misty wind strikes Fischer’s face, bringing him back to the present. He looks around and there is no Benji. He reels the line in, fastens the fly in the hookkeeper and wades ashore. He looks up at the cedar snag and at the thick bush all around. The post, so badly deteriorated, yet still nearly upright and in its place, is missing its cross-piece now. Fischer is on his hands and knees, parting the bushes and ferns and sweeping aside the layers of mulching leaves when his hand strikes the end of a metal bar, the cross-piece that the decaying post could no longer hold. He lifts it free and clears the wet litter off and reads again the brazed lettering on the black iron -- Benji, The Best Fishing Dog Ever.

Story by Van Egan with Photography by Nick Didlick

(Van Egan, a Canadian writer who lives on the banks of the Campbell River, was a frequent fishing companion of Roderick Haig-Brown’s. He is the author of Tyee, Waterside Reflections and Rivers on my Mind.) To read Part One of Fischer's River of Return click here.