The Unforeseen Perks of Being a Teacher (Part II)

So there I was: wet-wading a trout stream in New Mexico, 14 students and a teacher colleague behind me, all of them likely shouting for me to come back to the cars because they were getting hungry. Well, I was hungry, too, just in a different way.  

It didn't take me long to realize that I was treading nearly fishless water. I had my inklings as to why, but I kept them at arm's length. Sometimes it's best to ignore reason and go with the off-chance. There's always at least one of those in fly fishing; the small and precious opportunity for a break in the doldrums, the rise of a creature you didn't expect, a wriggle of life amidst the lifeless. 

On a gravel bar a little ways upstream I run into another angler. Older guy, fifties maybe, a fly rod like mine in his hand. A kindred spirit. His face is leathery, his shadow crisp as though chiseled. 

"Gilas?" he asks. One word, five letters. Encapsulates everything. 

"Yep."

With a sweep of his hand across the country, he confirms my tickling fear. "Wildfire," he says. 

Just a few years ago, almost 18,000 acres of this place was swallowed by an inferno. Trees died, insects with them, and toxic ash trickled down into the stream systems. Wildfires are a natural part of the life cycle -- critical, in fact, to the long term health of ecosystems -- but for a guy who'd come all this way for a fish, this one and its effects were a major bummer. 

"I know where you'll find the Gilas.." he says next, and off he goes with a pile of directions that even Google couldn't sort out. Something about a mountain road and six miles in and a Forest Service track and a hike down into a canyon purportedly riddled with rattlesnakes. A death march out. 

The whole time he was talking my heart climbed higher and higher, only to slap back down when the reality hit me: I had 14 students in my care. They weren't hiking down an ankle-cracking gorge in the dark or braving the possibility of rattlesnakes behind every boulder. This wasn't a Joe fishing expedition -- this was a school trip. 

I thanked the kind stranger and we parted ways. Back at our rented Suburbans, the students were hot, tired, and past the point of impatience. We migrated back to camp and, while lunch was being readied, I did some quick map research. More importantly, I wandered about, pitching my case, and gathering a handful of -- how should I say it? -- the more piscatorially-inclined students to pledge their loyalty to a 3 a.m. hiking and fishing mission the following morning. I figured they'd all tell me to pack sand, but you know. Off-chances.

The stranger's "death march" became a "neat hike" in my version. The three-hour drive to the trailhead became "an easy two-and-a-half." I did keep it honest with regards to the rattlesnakes -- I wanted anyone coming with me to have their guard up -- but I neglected to consider that half of my students, one of them in particular, wanted more than anything just to see one. Before I knew it, I had seven students committed to the quest for Gila trout. 

Check Out Part I of the Series Here!

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3:30 AM. Phone alarm blasting as though the nuclear reactor just had a meltdown. I'm up in the obsidian darkness. Everything worthwhile was packed the night before, so all that's left to do is make the coffee and, one by one, wake my crew. 

Never has a student hated a teacher as much as those enduring my 3:30 wakeup calls. A quick shake of the tent, a harsh whisper, then -- if I get no response -- a more violent treatment of the tent along with a shout. We're all loaded in the car and ready to go by 4:00. The headlights split open the dark and we make the twisting drive through the mountains. 

In Silver City, gas. No time for snacks, that's why you've packed them. Students take turns playing DJ, and most of them come to the pleasant realization that they can play practically anything they want because, for all intents and purposes, I'm practically ignorant of everything besides the trout on my mind. One of the kids might have wandered off at the gas station, now that I think of it. 

(I'm just kidding. I'm proud to report that I didn't lose any students.) 

In the waning darkness we see ghostly herds of elk. Mountains like bent spines rising in the distance. We chase the rind of the moon. At last, we reach the mountain road. The stranger's voice echoes in my head and I'm locked into the curves and only when I see a dirt road heading southbound, more or less, do I stop. 

"Woah," the students might've said over the blast of Katy Perry. 

"Woah," I may have echoed. 

We're looking at a four-wheeler trail. Narrow, rutted, plunging into the unknowns of the Gila Wilderness. Not something I especially want to bring a thousand-dollar car rental over, but also not something I'm going to let stand in our way. I've spent plenty of time coaxing vehicles over roads that you might categorize as "less than ideal." Yes, I've spent a lot of my disposable income on tires over the years and, yes, I've done my share of "puckering the upholstery," as they say, but I'm still alive and I've yet to bend an axle. So off we went and -- whadda ya know -- we made it to the trailhead. Hey-alright. We got all of our fly rods rigged up, saddled ourselves with backpacks and water, and headed down into the canyon. ​

Check out the final installment in the Gila trout series here!