A Pause For Breath

Twenty-one years ago, I was introduced to a very important, but extremely smelly man. 

I knew he was important, because he was being guided around the Florida branch of the Disney Animation Studio where I worked, on a special "behind the scenes" tour usually reserved for visiting dignitaries. Once in a while these VIP groups would wander through the office, and for some reason culminate their Disney experience with a tour around a tall freckled Englishman’s desk.

I knew someone was standing behind me even before I looked, because the fresh, clean air seemed to be sucked away, leaving only the most rancid, musty, barely breathable oxygen molecules to choke on. This was the unmistakable odor of a person unprepared for the intense Florida humidity.

“…and it takes about twenty-four separate animation drawings just to make ONE SECOND of a movie,” said the tour guide to his malodorous audience. Allowing a few seconds for this information to sink in, he paused for the customary moment when people usually said things like: “Wow, that’s a lot of work.”

“Wow, that’s amazing,” replied the man. “These artists must have a lot of patience.”

He turned to face me, and as he spoke my eyes were suddenly drawn to his large, loosely fitting toupee. As his head rotated, the black hairy mass seemed to spin independently, in a comic follow-through motion that any Disney animator would take years to duplicate. The distraction of sight and smell made it impossible to handle the situation with any of my usual British charm and dignity.

“Um... yes. It is a lot of work. Yes,” I said, before a renewed air fluctuation caused a second attack of odor to drift toward me, and my eyes began to water. I turned away in search of a fresher direction, which was good because otherwise I’d probably have stared inappropriately at the weird thing that continued to revolve and wobble on top of the man, smelling of something dead. Rubbing my eyes to stop the burning sensation also gave me a discreet opportunity to shelter my nose from the stench.

This memory came back to me today, because I just spent a couple of days camping with my teenage son. Having recently returned from a trip to the mountains with the rest of my family, (see last week's essay) the two of us drove back to the same area a few days later, armed with a couple of tents and some fishing rods.

The mission last week, was to wander around the great outdoors in Upstate New York, and to take in the sights and sounds of nature, before returning each evening to our rented home, with its convenient showers, air conditioning and wifi. 

This week, our aim was to immerse ourselves in the wilderness; to live in the forest, make fires to keep warm and cook, and to cast out a line in the water, in the hope of catching something kosher, to eat for dinner. That last part was a specific request from my teenage son, which triggered a paternal need to show my boy some survival skills, so we packed up the car and headed back to the Catskill mountains.

In the restricted travel imposed by the current Coronapocalypse, I was worried that the area would attract lots of New Yorkers on similar missions to get away from it all, and ironically find ourselves huddled together shoulder to shoulder around the lakes and mountains. 

Fortunately, if a thousand people followed us north, we didn't see them. As we entered the campground, the only person we met was a ranger warning us about some black bears that had been seen in the area. She told us not leave food in the tent or around camp, or even sleep in clothes that have been used while cooking. Since my son and I desperately wanted to see a bear, we took this advice with a dangerous degree of irresponsibility. We had a quick side discussion along the lines of: "So... I vote for leaving food around the camp and covering ourselves in hot dogs…"

Then I remembered that I am actually someone's father, and bears can kill people, and I don't actually know how to fight a bear, so we followed the ranger's instructions and took the correct precautions.

Meanwhile, the clouds gathered in the sky and covered the tops of mountains, but there is something about rainfall and fishing that go together well.

Drizzle and a day at the beach? Not so good. Bad weather and birthdays? Sad, and potentially ruinous. But the addition of some rainfall to our shoreline as we fished along the Ashokan Reservoir seemed to add something special to the experience. My son and I looked up at each other, and for a moment I thought that he was going to ask to find shelter, but instead he said five simple words that made me happy: "I like that it's raining."

The name "Ashokan" is actually Iroquois for "place of fish". Apparently, the water is stocked every year with over 16,000 trout to add to the smallmouth bass and white perch that are supposed to be abundant. However, on the day that we fished, I guess they were all hiding at the other end of the reservoir, because we barely got a nibble on the bait. So, we packed up and relocated from our position on an 8,315 acre reservoir, to a more modest 9.8 mile stream near our campsite called "Little Beaver Kill".

The word "Kill" sounds harsh in a name, but it actually comes from the Old Dutch word "kille", meaning "riverbed" or "water channel". In my experience, "Little Beaver Kill" should probably change names with "Ashokan", because this is the spot where my son and I finally found some adventure and action. Between us in the space of two hours, we caught eight fish, and if you insist on asking, and pressure me for an answer, then technically, yes, he caught seven fish, and I caught one, and yes, I only caught mine after he showed me what he was doing, but I am digressing here with too many technical details, so please stop with the annoying questions...

We caught eight fish.

This would have been more than enough for a meal, were it not for the fact that the fish really didn’t seem big enough to slaughter. So, my son and I agreed that whilst we COULD kill them to eat, it would be much better to let them go, and buy one LARGER whole trout from the local supermarket, and make that our dinner instead.

Which is what we did.

Notably, we found time to shower once during our three day trip, but essentially, we drove home smelling of rain, mud, wet shoes, sweat, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, campfire smoke, potato chips, and of course, fish.

I imagine that after we left our campsite, a family of black bears moved in to sniff the delicious aroma of humans.