fender and hood, ground squirrel extended upward and outward in it's talons, past the edge of the right windshield and gone, except for a single tail feather tumbling in the air. Surprise all around. Silence. Pictures playing over and over again in our minds. We topped out on the western edge of Magic Valley and I rushed the last 50 miles toward Silver Creek, trading one cloud shadow for another the whole way. When I turned off 20 onto the dirt road heading south to the Conservancy property, I still had no idea how I, we, were going to survive the next day, much less the whole trip. My urgency was to just to stop and get out of the car more than to fish. The Kilpatrick bridge, a low, guard rail-less one lane steel structure spanning the constant flow of Silver Creek by mere inches marks the lower end of the Nature Conservancy property and is a jump off point for float tubers to either fish locally and return or to float 2 miles down to the crossing of 20 again. Crossing the Creek, I noted the cloud shadow, and dark, wind riffled water. Mid afternoon. No hatch. I circled and parked on the wide downstream shoulder pointing back toward 20 and we got out and stretched. I began rummaging in the back of the van for our tubes and the battery operated pump. "It's COLD here," she said, rubbing her arms. "I don't want to fish." I looked up in total dismay. "You go ahead. I'll sit in the van and read a magazine. Fish for an hour and a half. That should be enough." Enough? We've just driven ten hours and ninety minutes is "enough"? Without a hatch on Silver Creek in ninety minutes I'll just be getting an idea of what I MIGHT get a rising fish, if I can find one, to come up and at least LOOK at. "Fine." As I inflated my tube I noticed she pulled on a sweater and settled uncomfortably in the front seat again, reading a Cosmo magazine. I imagined the article "Can this marriage be saved", score less than ten, call your lawyer. Goddamn clouds. Goddamn weather. It IS cold. It's not the fishing, I told myself. It's just being played out in the fishing. I sat on the bridge until I spotted a good fish make a few, half-hearted rises, then backed into the water and kicked over to a casting position, upstream and to the side. Typically he was holding in a
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