The Source

The late august blackberries grew heavy alongside the small creek making the trail impassible. He picked them into a canvas army rucksack as he waded upstream. Clear, cold curtains cascaded down small granite shelves into dark pools full of "natives." The forest service never stocked this far up. It was simply too inconvenient. These creatures were true natives - brook trout that cooked up pink like salmon. They never grew more than a foot in the small flowage and they tasted different, more wild because they had been eating mayflies and mosquitos all summer. He was climbing a thickly wooded box canyon. The sheer speckled grey walls grew immense as he climbed. A run of iron pipe held aloft by what looked like a minitature railroad track of ancient pine swayed precariously on the cliff above him every time a gust of warm summer wind pressed against the steep faces. Dry-rotted wooden slats hung broken from the track. He thought to himself, "The men that made this pipe are all dead." Water still flowed through the pipe. Thick droplets leaked from the seams of the pipe at regular intervals and landed on his baseball cap brim. Pit, Pat, pat. The pipe was once used for drinking water. Now people filled their radiators and wet their heads with it. The youth wondered if it was from the gold rush era. It was not. Some men from Sacramento had built it in the 1930s.

With the trees hemming in the course of the creek, there wasn't room to cast. In stead he floated a small grey, brown and black fly down into the pools. None was more that 20 feet across and despite the fact that he had just waded through them, the natives didn't hesitate to take the fly. The young man was far from the campsite. It was about three in the afternoon. He didn't load his creel because it was too hot and too far to take them back. He just slipped the natives gently back into their pools. All afternoon he climbed - occassionaly glancing at the pipe to make sure it was still there. He had stopped fishing and had broken down the rod and put the real in the canvas sack alongside the blackberries. The sunlight which passed through the canopy cast long shadows as he followed the watercourse. He would need to turn back soon. He hiked through the bouldery creek another half hour. The pipe was closer now but still stretched far up the side of the mountain. Orange-green light which usually brought a feeling of peace in him, incited a panic. And in this panic, he knew he had hiked too far seeking the source. He had lost himself. And it would be dark soon. He still hadn't found the end of the pipe. His canteen was as empty. He hurriedly stumbled down the cobbled creekbed - the rucksack bouncing on his back with each stride. He ran through the dark - because of the dark. Blackberry vines gashed his bare legs as he clumsily ran. He twisted his right ankle but just kept running on it because to stop would be worse. The wildness of the canyon became more wild as darkness ensued, pursued. At last, he made it to the outpost. He collapased into a patch of dry late summer grass next to the ancient gas pumps and the wooden carved indian. The smell of motor oil announced to his senses that he was safe. A few feet away, he heard a trickle. It was the end of the pipe. Bleeding and exhausted, his panic gave way to thirst. And he took a long drink from the pipe not knowing its source.