Friday, August 14, 2015

Beautiful Backpack in Sight

I couldn't convey how delighted Asher and I were to see my backpack lying exactly where I had left it on the final morning of the Rebel Trout Trek.

Our plan that day included a couple of hours of fishing in the Snowy Range before we got on the road, with the primary destination being a small stream that was maybe 5 miles from where we had camped. However, we'd started the morning with a few casts into the lake that was closest to our campsite and then had driven to the nearest town, where I had a cell signal and could send my previous day's blog and photos. It wasn't until we got to the creek and began getting ready that I realized I'd left my backpack beside the other lake, which was right by the parking lot for a popular recreation area. By that time it had been at least an hour, and the morning was progressing, so the area would be getting busy. I feared the pack might be gone, but we got back in the car and hurried back to the other lake.

From a practical standpoint, of course I wanted my backpack back. It's a good fishing pack that I've had for many years, and it contained three boxes of lures and my multi-tool and had very nice Cabela's net attached to it. It also had my Wyoming fishing license in it, and there was no time to get a replacement copy. So if the pack had been gone, I'd have been done fishing.

Far beyond the practical reasons, though, I was delighted to find my pack right where I had forgotten it simply because I was glad that people had left someone else's stuff alone. Almost certainly a few people saw it and suspected it had been left but chose to not take it, and I'm thankful for that.

By then, our time window had narrowed, and we weren't able to fish the little creek. Instead, we just fished a while in the little lake that was right there. That wasn't all bad, though. Asher caught two brook trout to cap off our fishing before we got on the road. And before we drove away, I made sure the backpack was in the car, not on the bank of the lake!

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