| Frost still covered the ground
when he caught the gray horse from the pasture. He fed it an apple. Then
he placed the pad and blanket over its back and swung the saddle on and
tied the cinch. The sweet cider of the apple foamed from the velvet
corners of the grulla’s mouth and onto the rider’s fingers when he
slipped the bridle up over its ears pulling the bit into place. The
horse’s exhaled breath pulsed in bold streams into the crisp morning.
He swung up and the horse put its ears back and stepped once to adjust
its footing, then stood waiting, the barrel of its ribs kinetic and
loaded under the rider’s
heels, and sprung with a touch, and they were moving unified over the
crunching grass leaving glyphs of dark smiles upon the ground behind
them as they went through the salted vetch grown thick on the meadow and
down the crooked fence line where they flushed a mountain bluebird that
fluttered up the bluest thing in the pinto horsehide world and then
arced over the field and was lost within the morning sun warming him and
the horse and fusing their shadows cast upon the ground to a tattered
and jangling entity of unity appearing then dissolving then appearing
again as they went over the home ground and then up onto the road where
they stopped and waited listening and the silence broken with the clop
clop of the horse stepping over the blacktop going across and gaining
soft earth again on the far side where the cadence of sound changed to
goodluck goodluck goodluck
as he urged the horse to a slow canter over the wide and tilted open
country under the long sky leading to the mountain and they passed as a
small dark shape over the land which was formed of cataclysm yet holy in
its firmness and the horse made good time and soon they were among a
blaze of yellow aspens where a passing wind ignited the trees with a
sound like water rushing over stones or legions of hands clapping in a
hall forever lonesome and they passed through and up onto the steeper
slopes going up the shoulder of the mountain and he loosened the reins
so the horse could drop its head close to the ground and pick its
footing up a rocky draw where the going was easier than through the
dense fir woods and the air smelled like cold water and the yellow ranks
of tamarack and groves of birch raged impossible yellow and the vine
maples along the draw burning red as they topped out under the high blue
autumn sky almost purple at the edge of space. |
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Steven Bird Bio
Steven Bird was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, where
his grandfather gave him one of his old bamboo fly rods when he was four years old, and
he's lived a life based more or less around fishing ever since.
Steve, along with his wife, watercolorist and illustrator Doris Ann Pease, settled in Northeastern Washington in
1974.
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Steve obtained his first guide license in 1980,
but, that first year, was unable to convince a single soul that fly
fishing the Upper Columbia was a worthwhile endeavor.
Steven Bird is the author of Upper Columbia Flyfisher
– Notes, Stories and Secrets from the Shining Reach, Amato Books
Press.

Featured Writings:
StoryArc
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