Think of it! Fish which had never seen an artificial fly nor had any family traditions of experiences with them. It is little wonder that they would jump at a brown hackle, a professor or even a gaudy salmon fly. Why they would jump at a chicken feather! They were ready and eager to bite at any sort of bunco game I saw fit to play upon them. They were veritable hayseeds of the trout family, but when they felt the hook in their lips, the wisest trout in the world could not show a craftier nor half as plucky a fight. They would leap from the water like small-mouthed bass and by shaking their heads, try to throw off the hateful hook.
The constant vigorous exercise of leaping water-falls and forging up boiling rapids had developed these sturdy mountaineer trout into prodigies of strength and endurance. Even now my nerves tingle to the tips of my toes as in fancy I hear my reel hum or see the tip of my five ounce split bamboo bend so as to almost form a circle.
I fished that stream with hands trembling with excitement and had filled my creel with the rare fish before I began to notice other objects of interest. Suddenly I became aware of the presence of two birds hovering over and diving under the cold water. They were evidently feeding on some aquatic creature which my duller senses could not discern.
Although they were the first of the kind that I had ever seen alive, I at once recognized the feathered visitors to be water ouzels. The birds preceded me on my way along the water course towards camp, and were never quiet a minute. They would hop on a rock in mid-stream and bob up and down in a most solemn but comical manner for a moment before plunging fearlessly into the cold white spray of the falls or the swift dashing current, where they would disappear below the surface only to reappear once more on another rock to bob again.
A ducking did not trouble the ouzels, for as they came out of the water the liquid rolled in crystal drops from their feathers and their plumage was as dry as if it had never been submerged. The wilder and swifter the cold glacier water ran the more the birds seemed to enjoy it.
The nearer I approached the edge of the precipitous walls, enclosing the valley comprising Big Pete’s park, the rougher grew the trail, and as I was picking my way I paused to gaze at the distant purple peaks and watch the sun set in that lonely land as if I was witnessing it for the first time. As my eyes roamed over the stupendous distance and unnamed mountains I felt my own puny insignificance, as who has not when confronted with the vastness of nature.
