Darwin's Drabbles

Meadows of Gold

Okay one last fiction piece about cool places  in California!  This one is based on our family's visits to Yosemite as well as our heavy leanings on fly fishing as our primary fishing method in recent decades!  If you've ever been to Yosemite, I hope you've taken the opportunity to visit Tuolumne Meadows!  It really is quite gorgeous and VERY different from the Valley Floor!

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"Danielle, are you ready to go yet?" I hear my Dad's voice call from down the hall. Here we go; his infamous "Nose-pointitus" has already kicked into gear. It's barely five thirty in the morning and already he's barking to be on the road.

I can understand it; our destination isn't exactly close. However, I've never been a morning person, and getting into gear isn't as easy for me as it seems to be for him. I guess we should feel privileged to have such beautiful National Parks such as Yosemite and Sequoia within two hours of our house. Not a whole lot of people can claim that.

I've been "enjoying" the great outdoors since I was little. We took our first camping trip as a family when I was a mere six months old.

By three, I was baiting my own hooks and catching my own fish. Bass, crappie, and even trout were standard fare each weekend of every summer. It runs in my family, both mom and dad are outdoorsmen, as were their parents.

It was inevitable – it was unavoidable.

Nearly four years ago, my dad became interested in the art of fly fishing. And like all of his hobbies, he went for it with gusto, immersing himself in the lore, the look, and the tackle. And what he got into, he wanted us to be interested in too. Those were our family outings. The better part of the past four years, fly fishing has been our primary fishing enjoyment.

Dad is an accomplished fisherperson, and he was bored with how easily he could go to a body of water and get a fish on the line. He was looking for a greater challenge than the average bait chucker. Face it, bait hook, throw hook in water – wait... not exactly rocket science.

His quest for a greater challenge was satisfied when he discovered this, the oldest fishing method in existence. With fly fishing there is technique, proper presentation of the fly, and proper fly selection for the time of day and the hatch occurring on a particular river, creek, or stream. There is a greater sense of accomplishment when you catch a fish on a fly – even more so to catch consistently.

I've now been to portions of California's Sierra Nevada mountain range that most people wouldn't recognize: Rock Creek, Troy Meadows, and the Kern River above and below LakeIsabella. Each body of water presents its own challenges to even an experienced angler. And each place I've been able to come up with fish. I never seem to catch the biggest for the day, Mom or Dad take those honors, but I do hook, land, and release my share of nice rainbows, browns, and golden trout.

My dad's friend recently recommended a new venue for fly fishing – a section of YosemiteNational Park called Tuolumne Meadows. I overheard him as he convinced my dad with, "The creeks and streams are teeming with hungry trout just waiting for your fly."

Yosemite has the distinct claim of being both the first State Park and the first National Park in the United States. Its beauty and majesty began attracting visitors as far back as 1855. Abraham Lincoln himself signed the Yosemite Valley Grant in 1864, making the natural wonder into the first State Park anywhere in the United States. John Muir, philosopher and naturalist, first visited the park in 1868 and fell in love with its beauty. Appalled by the destruction caused by "fair usage," including logging and sheep grazing, Muir lobbied congress to save the majestic gathering of natural wonders. With the help of Robert Underwood Johnson, Yosemite was officially made a National Park in 1892.