The First Count
The first count of the season is always in the rain. This is not a rule written anywhere, only a pattern I have noticed over eight years of walking the same gravel reach of the Stillwater in the last week of March, and it has the force of rule regardless. The sky presses low against the alders. The river runs green-grey with snowmelt from the Cascade foothills forty miles east, a colour that does not occur in the river at any other time of year and that belongs, to my eye, to late winter and to late winter only.
Len arrives at the pull-out at five past seven, which is his usual variant on being on time. He has the waders over one shoulder and the clipboard under his arm and he is already drinking coffee from the dented thermos he has carried since, he says, his first season with the state. He does not say which state, or which season, and I have learned not to ask. Len is sixty-one, a former smokejumper, a man whose right knee is a forecast instrument more reliable than the NOAA model. He was my technician before I was anyone's principal investigator, and the arrangement has survived promotions, a change of funding agency, and one grant cycle so hostile that I briefly considered selling the truck.
*Water temp 6.1 C. Air 4 C, light rain, wind SW under 5 kt. Flow estimated 220 cfs from the gauge at Cherry Valley.* I write this down standing on the bank, the notebook already