RAMBLIN' AND AMBLIN'
The Fishin’ Trip
By Sally S. King
Out there in the canyon there’s quite a few good fishin’ holes and one in particular with trout as long as your arm that me and old Jim used to visit but it was hard to get to…was a mighty hard walk down the rim along one of them old Cherokee trails. Nobody had traveled some of them in years and you had to wind your way through thick brambles; sometimes the goin’ was even harder comin’ up.
But one morning in the fall, we made up our minds over a pot of coffee that we were going to pack us a lunch and go down there that day. The air was so crisp and the leaves all red and gold, it was a good day for trout.
So, at the head of the trail we set off with a bottle of corn whisky, our fly rods and lunch and didn’t see another living soul the whole way. Now, it’s not often a man will see another down on Little River lessen’ he’s fishin’ too or raftin’ the river when it’s high enough but that day, we didn’t see no one else.
Little River Canyon is just as amazing as any canyon you would see further
west with the exception of the Grand Canyon. But this canyon is unusual
because it’s nestled slap dab on top of Lookout Mountain in Alabama.
Now most folk don’t think of Alabama as wild territory but I’ll be the
first to tell you, there are places back in these hills and hollers a
human being has never set foot on. And sometimes, you’ll hear sounds
down in that place that’ll make the hair on the back of your neck stand
up!
That day, there was the sound of the river, the wind and a lone red tailed
hawk circled above us as Jim tied his first fly and cast out from the
shallows into the current and I did the same and no sooner than he could
say “lickety split” did a big ol’ speckled trout snatch it and put up
a fight!
And that’s the way the day went on up until about mid afternoon just after we finished our lunch and stored the remains back in the pail. I had just cast and was waiting for a fish when I noticed that the birds had stopped chirping and singing and it seemed even Little River had quieted down.
Jim noticed it too and looked up past me toward a sandbar a few hundred feet away and stood stock still, line frozen in hand. I slowly turned my head to see the She Bear, digging in the warm sand and eyeing us with a little suspicion. “Don’t move” I whispered and Jim winked that he understood and we stood stock still in the water.
Then, the bear froze in her digging and turned her head up toward the canyon wall and sniffed the air and stood then on her haunches as stock still as we were. It was then that I became afraid. I could smell the smell she was smelling, a rank, musky odor that made you hold your breath! I could see that Jim smelled it too and he gave me a look of pure fear.
The She Bear was back on all fours now but had turned as if to back
away from whatever she was watching. I had no doubt what was hiding just
beyond our view.
If the bear was afraid, we damn sure should be and a million thoughts raced through my head as I watched her. That odor. I had smelled it once before in this canyon…I had felt his eyes upon me and felt as helpless as a baby in its presence. And that smell took me back to a day when I was a boy with my friends and we were down here in the canyon to swim and I had stepped off into the bushes to do my business when I smelled that smell and the hair on the back of my neck and arms stood up like there was lightening in the air and slowly, when I turned my head, and there behind the trunk of a Shag Bark Hickory he stood…
I found myself gazing into the animal’s eyes…almost human eyes surrounded by a thick matt of reddish fur that covered it’s face, chest, arms and hands…yes hands… and my brain tried to register what I was seein’…like a gorilla I’d seen once at the Circus in Fort Payne but different….
I didn’t remember passing out, but when I came to, He was gone and my friends were trying to wake me up and I didn’t tell them what I had seen. I just told them I felt bad and I wanted to go home.
Up toward a rock outcrop a sprig of bush moved independent of the wind that was blowing and I could see that the bear was watching that very spot. “Jim…you see that?” I whispered. “uh huh…” he managed to reply as the bear suddenly charged away past us and across the river while we stood frozen. He was moving up the canyon now. We could follow his progress by the movement of the bushes, and soon the odor relented and he was gone.
Jim and I grabbed up our things and quickly moved back out of the river and up the trail. In the hour it took us to reach the top, I thought I was going to die with every snap of a twig above or below us and once during our ascent, a rock came crashing out of nowhere toward us and I could see that Jim was just as afraid as me.
Finally we made it to the top and raced back toward the road and the safety of our cabin. Once inside, we bolted the door and lit the fire. We were both silent for most of the night. Neither one wanted to talk about it. Jim just put the fish on to fry in silence.
We never did go back to the Canyon after that day. We found other, more populated places to fish and until the day Jim died, we never did talk about that afternoon in Little River Canyon.LV
