Ewan Steffen WoB Short Story Contest October 23, 2024
The Alpines Golf ball-sized pebbles crunched underneath my feet as I looked out on the sheet of glass that was an alpine lake. The mountain in front of me looked like a sad old giant, sleeping deeply as the early morning sun warmed the dark gray rocks. On one side of the lake, a hundred feet below, was the site of what had once been a massive landslide, with boulders the size of school buses jutting out of the water. Other than that far end, the rest of the shore was graceful solid rock, with the occasional gravel bar breaking up the landscape. Several peaks around me were sprinkled with snow, as if powdered sugar had been sifted onto the jagged rock ledges. The glass of the water was broken by a fish splashing on the near end of the lake, almost certainly taking an insect that had been unlucky enough to find itself in the water. I gripped onto my fly rod tube strapped on my pack, once again checking that all was secure. I began to undertake the task of navigating onto the boulders, heading down the peak and into the sparse sagebrush and spruce that dotted the land. By the time my feet touched the solid rock shore that made its way into the gravel-laden lakebed, the sun had made its way completely into the sky. I took off my heavy pack, and the chilly mountain breeze took the sweat from my back as I looked over the deep, clear water. A little down the shore was the beginning of a stream, funneling out of the lake, which tumbled down the dam of rocks before eventually slowing many feet below, and which would lead all the way down to the end of the mountain range, leading to the Missouri river, and, one day, would enter the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi. But at the moment, it was cold mountain water that had never seen a human’s touch. I unstrapped my rod tube, putting together the four sections of my fly rod, before screwing on the reel and tying on a fly. I casted out to a steep dropoff, and began working my fly in. The glint of a fish caught my eye.