Remembering

Last night a scene from a movie we went to stirred some long-forgotten memories. In the movie one of the main characters gives a friend's kid his dad's lucky fishing hat.

As a child, my family would always go to Flathead Lake for summer vacation. I remember many mornings and afternoons in Grandpa's little boat fishing for koakanee salmon. Yummy. Most days we would bring home our catch and fry them up in a skillet and serve it with some form of potatoes and wine for dinner. After dinner we would walk down to the shore and light a bon-fire that sometimes grew to over 6 feet tall. We would sit around it until well after it got dark chatting about nothing at all, heading back up the hill to the cabin only after everyone was too tired to continue.

Most kids hate getting up early in the morning, especially on vacations, but I was more than willing knowing what awaited us out on the lake. The mornings on the lake were quiet and peaceful, the air was crisp, the wind gently blowing, and eagles soaring overhead. The views were spectacular of course - very little development on the shores at that time.

I recall one day watching an eagle soaring overhead and some seagulls dive bombing at the eagle as he dropped altitude for his catch from the lake. Naturally this pissed the eagle off and he started doing acrobatic moves in the air. It was amazing. He would swoop down out of the air, wait for the gulls to catch up to him and turn over to grab at them. I've never seen anything like it before or since.

Grandpa always wore his lucky hat fishing. He refused to go without it. I can't recall what color it was any longer, but I remember he had various hooks through the canvas and I'm sure he had a story for "the big one that got away" for each of those hooks. He taught me how to fish and often I would bring back my own catch for dinner that evening, even going so far as to gut my own catch. How I miss those days, and spending time with Grandpa.