The Dead of Winter
It was a remarkably beautiful end-of-season jump shoot where the Madison, Jefferson and Gallatin merge into one.
We were floating this stretch of water in my friends Grumman Sports Canoe. It's a classic boat, whose gunwales have a lifetime of stories etched into the skin. Lewis and Clark would have given their eye teeth for this vessel. Maybe more. My visions of it holding an enormous bull elk at the end of a Missouri Breaks hunt are hoping to be realized in the near future. The clock is ticking.
But on this particular day it was just the two of us (three if you count a shivering yellow lab). The skeins of geese that crossed our journey, as well as the mallards that we pushed up while drifting through the side channels along this historic stretch, made for a memorable morning.
Hell, we were only halfway to our take-out when I came to the realization that this float was all about posterity as it was "colder than a gut-shot bitch wolf dog draggin’ nine suckin' pups and a number 4 trap up a hill in the dead of winter with a mouth full of porcupine quills.” - Tom Waits
And that my friend, is cold.