When I first started I backpacked with the heaviest of packs. It wasn’t necessarily the pack’s weight, but rather the contents. I carried a lot of canvas items, several parts for a Sterno stove, and the Sterno cans. My food was usually fairly fresh and my sleeping bag was a family car camping sack of rocks. Strapped to the outside of my pack was a Garcia freshwater fishing pole. I used short, nylon cord strips to tie the pole to the pack and I had two socks tied to ‘D’ rings near the pole. In one sack I had a small Mitchell spinning reel and in the other I had tackle that included a bottle of Pautzke’s green lidded salmon eggs. I carried a small can of Crisco cooking oil and a small frying pan for the fish I would eat.

After 2 years I started noticing what other backpackers carried and used as a pack. With my part time job money I bought a new White Stag, down sleeping bag. I also found that packs could be lighter and nylon was a magical new material. My first externally framed pack was a Himalayan. The pack had slick brochures attached to it that had smiling people bounding over hills in the Big Sur area. The campaign slogan that still sticks out is: “Our packs will turn your dead weight into live weight”. I fell for the whole slick sales package. I pictured myself floating over the trail with a lighter than air pack full of modern wilderness tools.

The one thing that I lusted after (and needed) was a compact stove. Pico’s Sporting goods in downtown Lompoc had a small corner of their store dedicated to backpacking. In that corner was a Svea stove. This beautiful, exotic, foreign device was calling my name. My 16th birthday was coming up and I left many hints around that the stove would be perfect for a young man that was into wilderness travel. Every time we went downtown I forced a side trip to Pico’s. The people that ran the store became quite familiar with me and my family. My brothers were sick of my obsession. I was the odd brother. Why didn’t I hang out in the baseball area of the store? Was I deranged? Was I a Communist? No, I just enjoyed backpacking and fishing for those funny little trout in those funny little streams. And I couldn’t imagine doing all that without a compact, white gas burning stove.

My birthday finally arrived. The small pile of presents did not show any promise, by shape or size, of being a stove. My dreams were as close to being shattered as any mountain man’s could be shattered. My Dad was almost apologetic as he handed me a flat, semi-soft package. He said that he had gotten it while on a trip to San Francisco earlier in the year. I tried to be enthused as I ripped the wrapping off of the strangely shaped offering.

It was a brown case that contained a backpackers fishing pole. The side of the case said, in gold letters, South Bend. I unzipped the case and slid the 6 pieces of fiberglass fishing rod out and onto the table. A new world was opening up and I was having trouble comprehending. It had never crossed my mind that I needed another fishing ‘pole’. This one was completely different than anything I had ever seen. It was dark gold/orange with brown wrapping around the ferrules. The handle was the strangest part. My Dad said that it was set up so that I could put a spinning reel on one part of the handle and a fly reel (“Whatever that was”) on the other part. My mind was spinning with the possibilities of this small set up that could actually break down and fit into my pack. I had forgotten about the stove and my hidden bitterness of not getting the dream machine. I started talking a million miles an hour to anyone that would listen. I knew just how to make this whole thing work. My beat up Herter’s catalogue had fly fishing equipment. The stuff that looked light and, compared to what I had been using, looked exotic.

After a couple of minutes of my exuberance my brothers started making noise about not opening their gift to me. Without showing it, I irritably diverted my attention from the new fishing stuff to the gift that they stuck in front of me. They were grinning and from the size and shape of the crudely (but with love) wrapped boxed I just knew that I was getting a couple of baseballs for my birthday. With the thought that they were in a conspiracy to normalize their older brother bothering me I ripped the bright red paper off of the gift. Appearing out of the wrapping carnage was my stove. Now I was grinning and, to the disgust of both the younger boys, they got a bear hug each.

Within a couple of weeks I was in possession of, thanks to Grandma’s birthday money, a brand new Pfleuger Medalist fly reel. With the addition of fly line, leaders, tippet material and a few store–bought flies, I was set. I could fill my new pack with food, sleeping bag and fishing gear and be self sufficient for weeks at a time in the Sierra Nevada wilderness areas.

My Dad gave me the Sierras and my Mom taught me how to appreciate them.

When I was about 12 years old my Dad retired from the military and took a job in California’s growing electronic defense industry. The proximity of wilderness and fishing areas created a basis for family camping trips during the summers of my youth. Dad was always coming home with plans for great fishing places that he had heard about. His knowledge always included tid-bits on how to specifically catch certain types of trout. “If we want to catch these lake trout”, he would say, “we will have to use Pautzke’s Green Labeled salmon eggs”. “Ya see…ya hafta keep the jar upside down until you’re ready to put an egg on your hook”. “That way the eggs stay moist and plump”.

This went on for a couple of years until long lost Uncle Leo, who lived in Bishop visited us while we were camping at Rock Creek Lake. ‘Fly and a bubble’ fishing was introduced to us and life changed. Uncle Leo had turned me onto pure flyfishing without knowing what he had done. So the transition from fly and bubble fishing sent me down the path of evil. It was no great leap, then, to get a multi-piece rod and never use the spin portion of the handle. It only took me 1 season to figure out that I could cut the bands off that held the spin reel on and then have a smooth, unencumbered cork grip.

The quality of my trips improved. Without being noticed, I spent a lot of time watching other feather flingers. I would then try and copy their style and motions. I remember sitting high on the cliffs above Mono Hot Springs Creek watching a woman work a set of riffles. I waited a good 20 seconds after she went around the corner before crashing down the cliff and imitating her casting. As a reward for learning I caught 2 really nice trout. I slowly figured out what ‘bugs’ to carry and how to match what was hatching.

I would spend one to three weeks every summer through high school packing and fishing somewhere in the Sierras. I would return home by bus or a ride from Dad with stories of mountains, trails, people and fish. Mom would quiz me differently than Dad. Dad always wanted to know daily trail mileages, fish counts, and number of people on the trail. I think the engineer in him needed those things. Mom would ask what color the sky was when I would mention how late the sun went down. She wanted to know what the night sky was like. Could I see a lot of stars? Was it a nice way to fall asleep? Were there flowers at high altitude and what colors where they? All of those questions made me think of these things and then start to look for answers before the questions.

My last summer trip while living at home was right after graduation from high school. I spent 6 weeks in the Sierras between Lake Mary and the Kern Gorge. I fished everything that I thought could or should have fish. My fishing IQ exploded from trial, error and practice to knowledgeable journeyman. Three times I had to re-supply food and white gas. The first time for re-supply I left the wilderness and met Dad in South Lake. When I got to the road he was there as planned. He always managed to sneak away and support my trips. He also always managed to bring along a rig of some sort to catch fish. We spent a glorious night having real food from a restaurant and sleeping on a mattress very near a shower in a motel.

I was quizzed about the trip so far and answered with statistics and ‘color’ commentary. I described techniques and flies and water structures when talking about the fishing. I also described the color of the fish and how they fought and how they seemed appreciative when returned to the water. I told him how I had found wild onions along some of the banks of my creeks that I fished and how they added spice to my ration of food.

Years later I was in the upper Kern gorge fishing. Even though there had been many advances in fly rods, I was still using the old South Bend rod with a new Pfleuger reel. The sun, the trees, the water and my rod brought a flood of memories back to me that day. I remembered my roots and my supporters. After I returned home from that trip I called my Dad. By that time he was too old to be wandering around fishing the way we used to. I made a point from there on to tell him, in detail, what I did on each trip. He seems to live in the backcountry with me this way. He is 91 now and I still call and tell him about my trips. I have added a digital camera to my pack rig and he gets first shot at the photos. Mom on the other hand wants to hear me describe the backcountry in my own words without ‘devices’ interfering.

I have since retired the South Bend rod. It was repaired a few times from normal wear and a dog once chewed enough of the cork that I replaced it with a cigar shaped grip. The dog is long gone but the rod is hanging next to all my other gear. The stove made it through years of abuse. It was loud and barely adjustable, but it always fired and never made me eat cold food. It too sits where I can see it when I’m loading up for another trip to one of my funny little creeks.