Not So Bad
A retired wildlife officer fishes for steelhead the way he always has: alone, careful, and prepared for anything. He has spent a lifetime learning the river’s dangers, from shifting gravel and hidden logjams to currents that can swamp a boat in seconds. He has the right gear, the right knots, and decades of hard-won instinct.
​
But this is his first trip since knee surgery, and the river has changed. As the fish start biting and the day unfolds in sunlight and memory, he faces the deepest, most dangerous pool on the river, and the fish of a lifetime.
​
Quiet, suspenseful, and beautifully observed, Not So Bad is a meditation on solitude, aging, and the thin line between mastery and fate. Anyone who has ever loved wild water will feel every pull of the oars, and will not soon forget where the current leads.
Part I: The River's Edge
It looked like he might have the river to himself: not a rig in the lot. No trailers, no pickups, nothing. He was alone.
Which was just the way he liked it, he thought, as he backed the trailer down the ramp and loosened the straps on the old drift boat. No sleds roaring up and down the river, blasting him with their noise and wakes, no guide boats parked in hole after hole or bumping his anchor line as they tried to crowd him out of his spot.
Just him and the early morning river, a few fish, maybe a deer or two along the way. Not so bad.
Part 2: Treacherous Currents
The quarter mile went by swiftly, faster than he had expected, and he was surprised to see the first bend sweeping toward him. There was a slight fog along the river, thrown up by the temperature difference between water and air, and he weaved his head from side to side trying to improve his vision, the better to pick his way through the boil of submerged wood past the ripple of barely-concealed gravel bars. Making the right approach was critical to a smooth passage: the wrong angle could pile him on a gravel bar or snag him in a brushpile, both deadly in these winter flows. The last time he’d floated this bend there had been a pool just below, a pool he hoped to approach silently to avoid spooking any fish holding there.
Part 3: A Reflection on Life
Looking at the pool, he felt the adrenalin begin to tingle through his system. Channels like these were part of the challenge of drifting the river. A sled could power through the danger with no more finesse than a muscle car blasting around a speedway curve. A drift boat took nerve, skill, strength and timing. Let the eddy pile you against the brush and you’d high-side, the force of the river shoving the boat harder against the brush pile until the lower gunwale went under and the coffin-shaped hull swamped in seconds, tipping its contents into the current and the tangling arms of the sunken brush.
​
Cut too close to the gravel and the boat would drag, the sudden slowing of one side jerking the hull sideways, letting the current grip the stern and spin the boat out of control into the eddy.
​
There was one slot. He could see it shining in the sudden sunlight, eight feet of smoothly racing water, center lower than the sides, forty feet long. He knew that was his path, knew it was the only way off the river. That was the other thing about a drift boat: no going back. Once you committed, you were committed.