Simple pleasures on the Metolius

This is the title of an article in the August 2006 issue of Sunset magazine. Read it. If you’ve never been to central Oregon’s Metolius River, it’ll make you want to go. If you’re there already, like we are, it’ll help explain the smile on your face.

Not that smiles need explanation. And not that every moment on the Metolius is pleasurable.

Take, for example, simply standing in the 48 degree water. The air was 90 degrees when Laurel did that this afternoon, on a hike downriver from the Wizard Falls fish hatchery. Yet a few seconds after I took this photo, she wasn’t standing there anymore.

Serena enjoys the water a lot more. Might have something to do with being half-Lab. And being covered with fur.

You can fly fish from the banks. Most fisherpeople don’t. They wade right in. Not knowing much about fly fishing, I don’t know why. It’s sort of a mystery to me why people catch fish just to let them go. It’s not a mystery why they come to the Metolius.

A solitary discarded shoe. It could tell a story, I’m sure. But probably not a very interesting one.

Clear calm cold water. If I were a trout, I’d love this place. Which they do, I’m told.

On both sides of the river there’s a stretch of private property that the trail skirts, going up and away from the water. Some basic shelters face a meadow. Like the article says, simple pleasures.

On the “up and away” part of the hike we came to a tree threesome: one dead, two alive. I pictured one of the standing trees saying to the other, “Honey, for some reason I don’t feel as close to you anymore.”

I prefer to walk along the river. But there’s a forest charm to the detour around the private land.

The Metolius, meandering.

Here’s how a true Stoic stands in the Metolius. However, following in Laurel’s frigid footsteps, I have to admit that it wasn’t for long.