“When will you be back?” my wife asked. Fair question,
“When the Viking runs out of baked beans” I said. Fair answer. I think.
There was a warning light shining on the dash of my bakkie, and the bank account was a tad empty, but dammit, we hadn’t seen the sun in 3 weeks, the sun was shining and autumn was about to disappear on us. Disappear like the Viking did on the river. Snuck past me he did, and wandered up a river gorge, with the milk for the coffee stashed in his pack.
I had caught enough Browns on dries by then, that all I wanted was to sit on a rock, make coffee, and stare at the mountain.
Instead I had to bundu bash through thick woody growth in search of the wayward bean-eater.
When I found him, he had a trouty smile on his face and a strange guest upon his hat.
I told him about the snake that swam past my leg. I’m not sure that he believed me. He just carried on catching Trout. I eventually managed to get him off the water and persuade him to share his milk. I needed to put my feet up. I had been battling with sciatica, and we still had a long walk out. A walk made just that much longer by someone who galloped up a river gorge with the milk for my coffee.
We sat in the grass and compared notes. Cute little Trout which had come for the hopper, then changed their minds and swam back down. Others had shot out and clobbered the imitation as though it were a sworn enemy. Others had come off. One I got, arched over the fly against the late afternoon silver water, momentarily silhouetted and imprinted in my memory forever.
We discussed sciatica cures. The Viking said that thrusting was apparently the thing, but that what was he to know about that. I kept quiet. I had already heard of that one. When he had done his disappearing act, I had checked the river banks to make sure there weren’t any onlookers, and in light of the discomfort I was suffering, I had engaged in some enthusiastic curing. What is a man to do when he is standing in a river?
“Come on”, I said. “We have a hike to do”.
By the time blackness had swallowed The Giant, we were back at the bakkie, and like Oprah, I suggested the Viking look under the seat while I text my wife to tell her we were on our way. The ice cold beer accompanied the chatter on the way home. We spoke of Heaven, and what that might be, and I tried to convey that the Trout stream we had just fished, “is a place on earth”. The fishing had been so engaging that the Viking hadn’t even mentioned beans.