The only emotion that rivals “lost,” in my outdoor vocabulary, is “found.” True about directions, it’s equally true of stuff.
Take a pair of visits to the Rogue River at Rockford, where I continued this spring to think I would stumble across a steelhead fishing bonanza like those of the late 1970s. (Another essay, maybe sometime: on the folly of fishing for long-ago fish, or hunting for far-past game, instead of adapting to the now and the near future.)
I fished the dam tail-out one pleasant afternoon, and winced when I snagged bottom and lost a second lead-head jig a friend had tied, and the nine-gram float above it that another friend had crafted. I re-rigged, shortening the lead between float and jig in hopes of drifting over bottom obstructions, and continued fishing – unsuccessfully, but I did loan out my landing net to an angling neighbor who had found a willing fish…