Interesting People

Noah:

Noah was a guy I met in Yellowstone. He was fly-fishing in the rain and didn't really know what he was doing, so I traded some tips with him. I told him how to roll-cast, so he could fish under a bridge, out of the weather, and he told me about where some semi-secret hot springs were in Yellowstone, so I could stop smelling like a road-trip. He lives out of his van; an old Volkswagen bus. He said he was from Southern California and that he kind of "bounced around" and that he was working for the Sierra Club on an anti-coal mining operation near Yellowstone. He said he like having the extra alone time to write music and read. Interesting guy. Very chill. Very SoCal.



Dick:

Dick is about 50. He called himself "Old Bones" on account of his need for serious padding when camping in a tent. We were both at the same campground outside of Yellowstone. He proudly showed me how he had individual plastic containers for each of the camping necessities. One bin for food, one for tent and blankets, etc. I think he was a drifter operating under the guise of an outdoorsman/camper. Decent guy, but a little nervous. (side note: there was a couple from England honey mooning there, they wanted to see the great American west, especially Custer Battlefield)



Dylan:

I encountered Dylan at a fishing spot just Northwest of Yellowstone. He was wrestling with his dad and drinking a beer at just before 8 a.m. He asked me what I was fishing with and it was a lewer I had acquired years ago from a patient; it was handmade out of glass and looked like a fish egg so I thought it might have a chance. It did. It got several bites, but it was too big for them to take, so it only went upriver for a a few feet before they spit it out.
It all started with him giving me a hard time about driving a mid-size car (Montana is all SUVs) for no reason at all. I made some comments about him passing judgement and being self-righteous and religion or something along those lines. We got along really well. He offered me a beer and I said no so we talked about fishing instead. It turns out he works for an organization that rebuilds rivers in order to have the ecosystem go back to semi-normal, a gig he landed after finishing school out east. This guy totally hooked me up. He told me the whole scoop on how to fish different rivers and even gave me several different flies and taught me how to tie a line for Montana trout streams- two flies of specific bulk and floating or sinking capacity at a certain distance apart.  Awesome. Caught even more after that.