Given the dangers to both body and soul, it behooves us to recognize and celebrate those individuals who have, by their imagination and foresight, paved the way both backward and forward in the development of our sport. Many of us have, in fact, been inspired by strokes of genius to construct, tie, paint, design, wrap, cast, row, in some cases push or trick, or simply try one hair-brained idea or another. One of the most simple examples that comes to mind was the time the team of Hosfield and Carlson needed to cross the Deschutes river in one river crosser (later named a float tube). Their idea, which was truly revolutionary, was to tie the fly line to the tube, encourage one to cross, the other to feed line and then retrieve the tube for the second crossing. The fact that without fins one does not cross anything in a river crosser very fast, the Deschutes most specifically, that the fly line was only 90 feet long to begin with, and even with the extreme stretching only reached 150 feet, a length it forever after retained, that subject A was whisked immediately out of sight and out of spool, etc., all does not dim the true genius of the idea. It MIGHT have worked. That is the important thing. Come to think of it, as I shuffle through my own personal catalogue of brilliant and threatening ideas, Carlson's name keeps cycling up. Who else, for example, could have his name affixed to a unit of disaster: a Carlson, the equivalent difficulty of being stranded above four class four rapids, namely Moody, Rattlesnake, Colorado, and Gordon Ridge, in a large and bulky craft with no means of propulsion. But that, or those, are a whole 'nother story. The point is, each of us who actively pursues this chosen sport may be daily flirting with the makings of legend, like LeeWulff just stupidly jumping off the bridge just to see what would happen. To show you how close to brilliance one might come without really trying hard, consider...... This spring fully one third of the club fished the Lenice-Nunnally chain of lakes. As everyone knows, one of the saving realities of that fishery is that there is a hike in of between 3/4 and one full mile, up over a ridge, carrying waders, float tube, fins, rod, vest, and whatever food and drink might be needed for survival. In the sun and heat of a hike in that desert region weight often becomes a controlling issue. This past year Don Sampson and I limited ourselves to fishing only one lake because we really didn't want to have to carry the tubes and waders OUT once they were IN there any more than necessary, and in this case necessary was the first day IN and the last day OUT. Many have tried a number of solutions to this efficiency issue of just lugging the damn stuff in and out. Mountain bikes have been tried, as occasional tracks in the sand will attest. They also are clearly NOT the solution.
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