Winter solitude
in a world of one color
the sound of wind.
Matsuo Basho

Learning the art of Sumi-E in addition to tying flies this winter. Both are ideal practices of intense concentration and patience. Good preparation, for sure, to enter the stream when the ice lets go. Hopefully sooner than later.

Snow & Popcorn from thesowbug on Vimeo.

www.thesowbug.com

Hot coffee… a guitar, cello, snow shovel and some popcorn. Only 9920 more hours until they get a load of the Rooster at Carnegie Hall.

cityWILD student guiding the Arkansas River. Photo courtesy cityWILD.

Turns out the high water in Colorado this season has actually been great for some Denver youth… A couple of weeks ago I took a couple fly-fishing at Mayhem Gulch. Sure enough Clear Creek was still pretty high. In fact, three different whitewater rafting trips whizzed by. That’s when it hit me. All of this run-off and high water that’s been driving us fly-fishermen crazy across the state is actually providing for an opportunity to make huge positive influences on some of Denver’s students school, work, and family experiences.

cityWILD is a non-profit organization that has been operating here in Denver since 1997. Their work provides middle school and high school youth, who are at-risk for a variety of reasons, the support and opportunities to become empowered through outdoor leadership experiences.

cityWILD provides kids an opportunity to grow at both their facility and out and about in nature. There is another integral part… cityWILD Adventures provides outdoor adventure recreation to anyone at greatly reduced costs where all proceeds go to support cityWILD’s tuition free Youth Leadership Program in Denver.

So yeah… the rivers have been big and pretty much unfishable for most of this season. But seriously, how awesome is it that cityWILD is able to benefit and help out plenty of youngsters by taking advantage of what we fly-fishermen would consider less than favorable conditions? While the rafting season is over for this year, you can definitely go next year! And if you want to support cityWILD, you can attend the River Rendezvous this September 22 at Lodo’s.

cityWILD Has Four Main Objectives:

To support or get involved take a moment to learn more at cityWILD or click on the image below.

http://www.citywild.org/

And their upcoming River Rendezvous Thursday, September 22 – 6:30pm @ Lodo’s.

cityWILD River Rendezvous

What is Over The River you ask?

It’s an art installation…

Straight from the OTR Site: “The project’s plans calls for 5.9 miles of silvery, luminous fabric panels to be suspended high above the Arkansas River along a 42-mile stretch of the river between Salida and Cañon City in south-central Colorado. Fabric panels will be suspended at eight distinct areas of the river that were selected by the artists for their aesthetic merits and technical viability. Over The River will be exhibited for two consecutive weeks in August, 2014.

Construction time-frame: 26 months + 3-6 weeks + 8 days + 14 days exhibition + 2-3 months tear down.

As a recovering artist: I don’t understand the artistic statement or value of the OTR project. I’ll also maintain my opinion that Chisto is not much of an artist. He has profoundly little to say or show us with his works. It seems like yet another addition of amazingly strange public art to add to the list: The Evil Robo-Horse out at DIA, the Giant Naked Dancing Aliens at the Wells Fargo Performing Arts Center, the Yearling at the Denver Public Library, the The Big Sweep at the Denver Art Museum, and my personal favorite the Big Blue Peeping Bear spying in on the Colorado Convention Center .

From a fly-fishing perspective: I can only scratch my head and wonder… “Why, what’s the point in mucking around with the Arkansas River for 2½ years to hang fabric panels, a.k.a curtains?”

So, I decided to speak through my own artistic interpretation about the OTR project. There are a couple of deep insights here and there. I’ll leave it up to you, the viewer, to come to your own conclusions.

Click the Pop-Out Player button: if you wanna listen to the playlist while checkin out The Sowbug. Otherwise it will shut off when you jump from post to post. Sure it’s annoying and that’s just how it is.

This epic snow-melt runoff of 2011 in Colorado sucks. It makes for even suckier fly fishing. It sorta makes thesowbug.com suck, which is completely unacceptable. That’s exactly why there is Rooster Junk…

Rumor has it there is still plenty of snow up in RMNP, meaning no lake access past Fern Lake… and the Big T, at the dam, was peaking last week at only a mere 800cfs. Apparently friends in places like South Carolina & Florida know how to rub it in by sharing their heroic fishing snapshots. Even those damn filthy ferds are enjoying taking a couple of fish here and there.

Few options remain: Start looking into fly fishing with all the other “Johnny Lunch Buckets” down south on the South Platte River. Find or maybe start a 12-step program for fly fishing addiction. Drink more beer, “eso es una buena idea!” A sixer of Pyramid Apricot Ale happens to make a hot Colorado summer day sans fly fishing more tolerable. Consume any more than those six… You’ll get a sick feeling in your tummy. Not unlike when one eats a one-pound bag of Skittles in one sitting. Not to mention you’ll probably be quite buzzed except with a belly-ache too.

By the way: Thanks to our few readers for still hanging around during this major fly fishing suckfest.

Ferd

The Devil

Another Ferd

Spiders

Another Spider

Pyramid Apricot Ale

http://www.pyramidbrew.com/

Click the Pop-Out Player button: if you wanna listen to the playlist while checkin out The Sowbug. Otherwise it will shut off when you jump from post to post. Sure it’s annoying and that’s just how it is.

Clear Creek River Golden, Colorado

Clear Creek at and around Huntsman Gulch running swift and looking just like chocolate milk. Which continues to put the fly fishing on hold for a while. At the :35 mark notice all that freaking construction trash…!!! Like it’s not bad enough with the hundreds of casino cups and anything else one can only imagine.

Mitch Hedberg

Mitch’s routine is a bit too blue so here’s some of his philosophic insight instead…

You know when they have a fishing show on TV? They catch the fish and then let it go. They don’t want to eat the fish, they just want to make it late for something.

This is what my friend said to me; he said, Guess what I like? Mashed potatoes. It’s like, Dude… you gotta give me time to guess. If you’re gonna quiz me, you must insert a pause in there.

I was walking down the street with my friend and he said, I hear music, as if there is any other way you can take it in. You’re not special, that’s how I receive it too. I tried to taste it but it did not work.

This shirt is dry-clean only…which means it’s dirty.

My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them.

When I was a boy, I laid in my twin-sized bed and wondered where my brother was.

If you find yourself lost in the woods, screw it, build a house… Well, I was lost but now I live here! I have severely improved my predicament!

I order the club sandwich all the time, but I’m not even a member, man. I don’t know how I get away with it.

You know, I’m sick of following my dreams, man. I’m just going to ask where they’re going and hook up with ‘em later.

I had one anchovy, that’s why I didn’t have two anchovies.

A burrito is a sleeping bag for ground beef.

Every book is a children’s book if the kid can read!

I used to be a hot-tar roofer. Yeah, I remember that… day.

If my kid couldn’t draw I’d make sure that my kitchen magnets didn’t work.

I went to a record store, they said they specialized in hard-to-find records. NOTHING WAS ALPHABETIZED!

I saw a sheet lying on the floor, it must have been a ghost that had passed out… so I kicked it!

I saw a commercial on late night TV, it said, Forget everything you know about slipcovers. So I did. And it was a load off my mind. Then the commercial tried to sell me slipcovers, and I didn’t know what the hell they were.

Below Huntsman Gulch at Clear Creek Canyon in Golden, Colorado.