Summer, Start Your Engines

Get ready for tanlines and the smell of sunblock. Bonafide summer weather finally rounded the corner and none too soon. I’ve retired the rainpants from my river kit and may they sit there until fall.

The Winding Waters crew is Snake River bound in the morning for a pleasure jaunt and training trip down Hells Canyon with nearly all of our guides, some of whom are fresh from final exams.

We’ll be field testing a few new recipes. Sure, we could cook them up in the dutch oven back home on the deck behind Winding Waters headquarters, but it wouldn’t be quite the same.

Here’s an update on a special trip we’re running this year – pay special attention if you know how to either read or write.

Fishtrap is a band of merry literates out here in the northeasterly chunk of Oregon. They collect like minds each summer and winter, all concentrating on good reading and writing.

And as of last year, they started taking this approach to the boonies. Writing on the river Fishtrap-style combines all the qualities you look for in a river trip, plus a writer’s conference.

This year the instructor is Annick Smith. Seen the movie A River Runs Through It? I thought you had. Annick had a hand in that. She’s had her hand on many projects, written, filmed, edited and otherwise.

I direct you to this here portal. It will tell you all about it.

I’ll tell you this: I had Annick for an instructor some years ago at a summer Fishtrap workshop and she’s good. Real good.

And what’s more, I’ve tried at least one of these new recipes we’re cooking up for the river season on the lower Salmon, Hells Canyon and Grande Ronde . . . and it’s good. Real good.

So we’ll see you out here for whitewater and then some. And you writers out there, hope to see you during the Fishtrap trip.

Good day.