Fishing the River of Time

by Tony Taylor

  I was beginning to understand all those years ago that isolation was a good thing. Living in a lonely cabin in the wilderness was turning out to be more instructive than teaching in a university in Australia. I had partially understood this some years earlier when I was in Greenland, but I had succumbed to temptation when I returned to King’s in London. I had technical toys to play with at the Australian National University. I had an electron microprobe analyser that was capable of counting the number of atoms in a thousandth of a square millimetre of anything and telling me what atoms they were. A fine tool—yet too much. Laboratories cause scientists to think about very small things. Here in Meade’s cabin I was doing the reverse. I was thinking about much bigger things and my tools were very simple: a pair of stout boots, a rifle and a fishing rod. True, I was meeting far fewer people, but the ones I did meet were down to earth, and I was running into lots more wild animals.

  The most common predator in the region was the cougar and one day, when fishing the Robertson River, which runs into the lake on the southern side, I met one. I was standing in the shallow river just upstream from an old logging trestle, a good place for cutthroat trout. I was working my fly back to me with a left-hand twist, when I saw a cougar that had been following the rail track and had walked on to the bridge. He saw me at the same instant and stopped, one paw poised in the air. I looked at the ten-metre spring that he would have to take to reach me and decided that he wouldn’t, and carried on fishing. He realised I was no threat and carried on walking. I discovered later that although these big cats are fine swimmers, they are sensible enough not to attack anything in the water. That was an experience I could never have had in a laboratory.

  Vancouver Island has the highest concentration of North and South America’s most widely distributed animal, the cougar. Once, so I was told, the professional cougar hunter Donny Palmer collected the bounty on two hundred cougars in one year just around Cowichan Lake. I’m not sure what the bounty was in the sixties, but Donny probably made quite a good living. Today, it costs several thousand dollars for a permit to hunt a single cougar and one must hunt with a guide and only in the three winter months after the young have left home.

  I was lucky enough to go on a cougar hunt with Donny in 1968. It was an accident and it happened like this. I had recently written a column on cougars called ‘The Timid Cat’. Also writing for the paper was a woman who told me these big cats were very dangerous and my article was nonsense. She wrote a gossip column and she had asked me to pick up her article when I was on the way to town with my own. As I arrived at her place she screamed that she hoped I had my gun as a cougar had just gone into the barn. I didn’t really pay much attention because her children were safely inside the house, but I walked disbelievingly over to the barn just in time to see a cougar slink out through the broken boards in the back. Because I hadn’t expected a cougar to be there, I had left my gun in the truck. The gossip columnist must have phoned Donny before my arrival because a few minutes later his yellow truck with the baying hounds in the back came hurtling into the yard.

  I grabbed my gun, and Donny and I went on a cougar hunt. But it was a hunt with a difference because Donny wanted to get the bounty on the animal and its skin, and I wanted the cougar to get away. In the long run it did because the hounds couldn’t find the trail; they were confused by all the different cat scents in the forest around the house. The woman who lived there didn’t like cougars, but she was always putting out food and saucers of milk for stray cats. Oddly, it was the strays that probably attracted the cougar in the first place; when deer are scarce the younger and less experienced of these big cats often prey on small domestic animals.

  Standing on top of Bald Mountain soon after I arrived on my first trip I’d had a good view of the lie of the land. As every river in this valley except the Cowichan flowed to the west, clearly there had been a major geological uplift of land which had blocked the flow of westward flowing rivers and caused the large lake to form. Later, the small eastward-flowing Cowichan had cut back and captured the waters of the South Arm and its flow had doubled or tripled in size.

  Ever since that day on the mountain my interest has been focussed on the wilder west. The loggers hadn’t reached these more remote rivers in 1968, and I got to know the original forest quite well. Mostly, I travelled alone and just talked to the trees, but there were two human sources that I have to acknowledge and couldn’t have done without: the shy, isolated Nitinat people and a wonderful wild character everybody called Big Arthur who was so skilled in the harvesting of wildlife he deserves his own book.

  When I talked about the uplift of land to the Nitinat who lived right on the coast at Clo-oose much further to the west they told me they knew of this event. It was the coming of the Thunderbird and they told me it happened a few hundred years before the arrival of the white men. There was a giant earthquake and huge tidal waves. They were too polite to say so but I could tell they thought the advent of European civilisation was far worse. To placate the great bird they honoured it with large symbols of a black and red bird at the top of their totem poles and on things like blankets.My more modern view was that two tectonic plates had collided probably less than a thousand years ago and the events dated from roughly that time. I could have written a scientific paper about it but I had much bigger fish to fry. I was fascinated by the tremendous wealth of the land. I wanted to understand why this very acid rock and soil could produce so many animals and fish and so many giant trees. While thinking about it, I went fishing. I had no idea then that forty years later I would be trying to teach this approach to thinking to an eight-year-old.

  6

  Big Arthur

  Big Arthur was completely different from the shy natives of Clo-oose near the far end of Nitinat Lake; he was an extrovert. He liked to explore, and he told me he knew of a place in the west where there were lots of fish but where no people had been before.

  ‘Not even the Nitinat?’ I asked.

  ‘Naw,’ he said scornfully, ‘they hardly ever come inland and they certainly don’t move around like I do. They stay put.’

  In another world Arthur would have been a star, but he was smart and content to remain in the small village at the head of the lake—the biggest fish in a small pool. Here he was El Supremo, top dog and number-one cat. He also claimed he was number one with the women, but that side of him I didn’t see. He was certainly the best pitcher and the top hitter in the baseball team. Most impressive for all of us he was the biggest catcher of fish, and for that he was the talk of the town. People would say, ‘Did you see what Big Arthur got today?’ Superficially he was an athlete but lurking underneath, hidden from the world, was an intellectual, which was perhaps the reason he and I became friends. He thought fly-fishing a bit silly, and I didn’t approve of many of the things he did on the river, for I had learned to fish in a more traditional place, but I remained content to learn from him.

  One day when performing some great feat of strength in the forest he casually likened himself to Paul Bunyan and I realised that Bunyan was Arthur’s role model. I didn’t ask if he never shaved the whiskers from off his horny hide but simply drove them through with a hammer and bit them off inside. I knew what the answer would be, so I just smiled.

  Big Arthur could be a pain in the arse to keep up with in the woods, but it was good exercise. The fact that I managed to stay with him perhaps endeared me to the big lug. In addition, I never tried to compete with him. Looking back now, I realise that he probably saw me as his Boswell. He never knew I was struggling to become a writer, but he was smart enough to know the direction I might be travelling in. Sometimes I imagined him in a place like Chelsea or Greenwich Village and I could see him there, no problem at all, except there’d be no fishing.

  I don’t remember how I met Arthur. It was probably on a Friday night in the village pub. And I don’t remember most of the trips we did. I just know he was the biggest fish catcher I ever came across, both in numbers and in size.
I have no idea if he is still alive, but I am recording his story here in the hope that someday this piece of paper will be found, because Big Arthur would like to be remembered by fishermen. Of that I am certain.

  A short time before Arthur and I met, John Diefenbaker, prime minister of Canada, visited the lake. He was a rather strange man: he used to wear a frock-coat and a deerstalker hat and seemed to be trying to look like Sherlock Holmes. He wasn’t the first or the last Canadian politician to dress up. Pierre Trudeau tried to look like Lawrence of Arabia (a man loved and respected by Henry Williamson, but disliked by me) and later the leader of a newer party modelled himself on Tom Cruise and campaigned on a jet ski. Why Canadian politicians feel the need to do this sort of thing is beyond me. Perhaps it has something to do with trying to impress the neighbours to the south, or perhaps they feel that alongside the English unless they dress up they lack sartorial elegance.

  Despite the prime minister’s odd garb, the logging companies decided to take Dief the Chief (as he loved to be called) fishing. They took him to an unnamed creek a few kilometres to the south-west of Meade’s cabin. They needed a helicopter to get there. To the ordinary guy in the village, the place where Dief the Chief had fished became a legend and it was henceforth, the Chief’s Hole. It was the local equivalent of Everest—many of us locals simply wanted to reach it because it was there.

  I was interested therefore when Big Arthur said he knew how to get to the Chief’s Hole, and would I like to go fishing. There was a hitch, of course; we didn’t have a helicopter and there was a hell of a hike and some serious climbing to do before we could get at the fish. Arthur had selected me as his partner because I had a lot of rock-climbing gear and a fair bit of climbing experience. He said the only way to get into the canyon without a helicopter was by climbing down an overhanging cliff. He said that if we could get in on that side of the river the fishing would be even better than the place a fair bit lower down on the other bank where the helicopter had taken the Chief.

  I was cautious because, although we were both experienced in the bush, when climbing with another person you put your life in his or her hands. Climbing partners have to be chosen very carefully indeed.

  Arthur was impatient with me. ‘Don’t you climbing guys have some special way of going down cliffs?’

  ‘Yes, it’s called abseiling, or roping down.’

  ‘Could I do it?’

  I smiled to myself. Arthur was built like a sasquatch and was fitter than a marathon runner. ‘I imagine so—all you do is put a rope through a carabiner and walk backwards down the cliff.’

  ‘How about getting back up again?’

  At this point I had to think. I imagined we would be able to escape by letting the water carry us downstream, a method we called frogging it: half wading and half swimming. But Arthur said no, the water was too fierce and we’d be smashed to pieces. The whole point of getting to this inaccessible spot was that it was a resting place for fish below the falls. To get out we’d have to climb up the cliff again. Jumars hadn’t been invented then, or if they had they were yet to reach our neck of the woods, so I had to come up with something else.

  ‘How steep is this cliff?’

  ‘It’s vertical for maybe a hundred feet but then it overhangs for quite a bit at the bottom.’

  ‘Hmm, maybe we could climb out like one does out of a crevasse using Prusik loops.’

  It was by no means certain that we would be able to, but the die was cast—we would have to try.

  Two days later we set out for the legendary hole.

  ‘It’s a good time,’ said Arthur. ‘Those big hook-nose western coho are running.’

  After a lot of driving in my battered old pick-up truck we came to a blaze on a tree. Arthur had left this mark on his exploratory trip, but with my dislike of advertising I would have preferred a signpost that was a little more discreet. We geared up like we were set to scale the North Wall of the Eiger—hundreds of metres of abseil line, slings, carabiners, even a piton or two—but we were also carrying my big bamboo salmon rod and Arthur’s bloody great gaff as we set off to walk through the forest. The firs were big, incredibly tall and with huge girths that would need several people arms outstretched to encircle them. Today, because of active logging, many of these trees are gone and lesser species are taking their place.

  After a while, through the silence of the forest we could hear the rush of water. Then there was a small clearing and a sudden cliff. We peered over, and there was the river. We could see the falls and the ledge we were making for below. We skirted the cliff, found a convenient place to belay, and dropped the abseil line down to the river.

  It was not easy, but we made it. I had my doubts about climbing out again, but meanwhile there were the fish. The pool was full of huge salmon; I had never seen so many fish in my life. I cast into the main part of the pool, while Arthur followed the ledge around the corner where the current was slacker and the fish were resting. I realised that there it was easier to gaff fish, so that was why he hadn’t brought a rod.

  Within seconds I had a fish on. I could not believe the awesome power and sheer brutishness of this big male coho. I don’t remember how long I fought him, but I do remember becoming very tired. I understood that I was not going to land this fish, and right at that moment the heavy five-metre salmon rod, built of carefully glued triangular pieces of the best quality Tonkin cane, snapped in two. I had never heard of a split cane rod breaking. This is not supposed to happen, but it did. Lots of line was taken from the reel, which was screaming so much I thought it too would break. And then, even though the rushing and roaring noise of the water continued, it seemed there was silence.

  I sat down on the sloping rock platform and almost began to weep. After a few minutes of reflection, in which I cursed myself for being an idiot, I laid the broken rod and the now-still reel on the rock and went to look for Big Arthur. The heavy silk line streamed out into the river. Why I didn’t wind it in I do not know.

  Around the corner Arthur was down on his knees, gaff held high, poised over the water. At that moment he struck. Leaping to his feet, he hauled in the big gaff. The giant hook was embedded in the side of a huge fish. And stuck in the corner of its mouth was my fly, still attached to my line. I couldn’t believe my eyes; I thought that fish had gone forever.

  Because the rod had broken and I had lost the fish, there was an ethical question about the way the fish had been caught. Arthur never bothered with finer points and settled it by entering the fish in that year’s Field & Stream competition, saying that he caught the fish with a fly. This was partially correct—a fly had been used, but not by Arthur.

  The fly was an unusual one sent to me from Scotland by my friend Rob Wilson. So the fly Rob considered ideal for big predatory fish, and had called the tiger fly, got the publicity it deserved. I don’t remember the exact weight of the fish but it was the second-largest coho ever recorded and the largest caught in fresh water. The world record, only a few grams heavier, came out of salt water.

  Ever after in my mind, it was the fish that had behaved the more creditably, compared with us two. I can understand the big male coho deciding to rest after our battle; he just didn’t reckon on the streamside smartness of the smartest river man I ever knew: my partner in crime, Big Arthur.

  We climbed back up the cliff using nylon slings attached to the abseil line with Prusik knots. It was a laborious climb, what climbers call a proper throtch, but we made it.

  Many more years have passed and I am still writing about things the human species has difficulty with. I have never claimed to know any of the answers, but I think I am getting better at asking the right questions. If we want our planet and our species to survive, doesn’t it make sense for all of us to use less of everything and consider more carefully the way we behave?

  7

  The Secret Coast

  One of the attractions of living in Meade’s cabin in the sixties was the easy access to Vancouver Island’s wil
d west coast. As the logging progressed so rapidly west of Cowichan Lake it became possible to reach the Nitinat River on logging roads, and possession of a canoe opened up all sorts of wonderful country.

  Even today, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, there is still no road along the west coast of Vancouver Island and this wildness continues northwards beyond the island for thousands of kilometres. True, a road now runs from Victoria at the southern tip of the island towards the town of Port Renfrew, but that road was not cheap to construct because it crosses numerous rivers that were difficult to bridge. North of there on the west coast there is no road at all to the top of the island. Fortunately Vancouver Island, like most of British Columbia, still has one of the wildest and most unspoilt coasts in the world, and even in the increasingly populous south there are still many lonely lakes and wild rivers to explore.

  Today, part of this beautiful coast can be accessed at Long Beach. Wolves and bears are common here. To give you an idea how wild it is, recently a university student asleep in his sleeping-bag on the sand was rudely awoken early one morning by a she-wolf dragging the bag with him in it towards her two hungry cubs. When he wriggled out of the bag the three wolves quickly vanished. They were obviously used to investigating flotsam that ended up on the lonely beach.

  Not far from that point there is an isolated luxury hotel where my wife and I were treated to a stay a few years ago. It has to be one of the world’s most spectacularly situated hotels. Recently, I read an essay by Tim Flannery describing his visit to this wild coast and how he was awestruck by the sheer abundance of life. He used the word titanic to describe it, and said it was almost beyond his reckoning. It is indeed a giant world. Go there if you like unspoilt beauty but take only photographs and leave nothing behind.