Al Kyte's Life Take-Aways

I decided to take a break and go fishing for a few moments.  So as my companions continued down the trail, I waded out into the lake up to mid thigh, casting my fly into the deeper water ahead as I moved.  We were on a hundred-mile backpacking trek through the mountainous Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness in north-eastern Idaho, covering about 10 miles a day.  After catching a few trout, I turned back to leave and was startled to see a cow moose that had moved into the water eating in the very place I wanted to go—the shallowest and safest wade back.  I knew how ill-tempered and dangerous a moose could be, so tried wading parallel to the shoreline away from it in the hope of finding another way back.  The farther I waded, however, the deeper the water was.  When it reached my armpits, I turned back toward shore, not as far from that moose as I wanted to be.  I was hoping there were no deep holes ahead and that that large animal would come no closer.  After a few more anxious moments I made it back to shore, starting down the trail at a fast pace to help dry off in the warm sun.

I believe my most unusual 10-mile walk was a meandering wade through channels of water within the coral atoll of Christmas Island.  As we started that wade scanning for bonefish, our guide pointed to an island we could barely see on the horizon and told us that was where we would stop for lunch.  This was going to be a long walk.  The moment that left the deepest impression on me came when our guide tied a small fish to a line and wiggled it enticingly above a hole in the shallow, gravelly bottom.  Almost immediately there was a violent subsurface clash as something shot out of that hole to grab the fish.  Our guide carefully lifted a writhing, foot-long creature out of the water—a mantis shrimp.  Eventually he caught a few more, handling each one with extreme care.  He showed us their razor-sharp claws and told us that these aggressive little animals were known to inflict deep cuts on unwary anglers.  I was thankful not to be wading barefoot.  And those small predators made a delicious appetizer that evening.

One day in Belize we traveled our 10 miles by boat, seeing howler monkeys, various parrots and even an occasional crocodile along the river.  It was like a Disneyland jungle cruise only real.  While enjoying fishing for snook and 10- to 20-pound tarpon, I spotted a wood stork flying overhead and asked our guide if he had ever seen the even larger, endangered jabiru—at almost five feet tall among the largest birds in the Americas.  He answered by asking, “Would you like to see one now?”  My “yes” came without hesitation.  So a little farther up river we tied our boat to a wharf.  Our guide’s cousin appeared, a slender, dark-skinned man with a big smile and shirt half-open, holding a large machete that we were relieved to find he was using to cut sugar cane.  Without thinking, I told him he looked like Rambo with that knife.  He laughed heartily because he had seen a Rambo movie.  There were no roads into his jungle home, so to do that he had boated some miles down the river and picked up a ride into Belize City.  He seemed to enjoy showing us the tree and the huge nest with an adult and three young jabiru storks.  He was proud to be protecting those magnificent birds.

In previous blogs I spoke of my encounters with bears, sharks, and snakes, but I have also seen lynx in Canada, a wolf in Alaska, a badger up close in Wyoming, flying fish off of Christmas island, a scorpion in my room in Mexico, a feisty martin in the Sierra, and tarantulas closer to home. I’ve seen many unusual birds and fish and barely missed seeing both mountain lion and wolverine. Coming across animals I’ve seldom or never seen has always delighted me.