A giant human, a small RV and fall fly fishing | Montana Untamed

With the rear end suspended out in space, I pumped the brakes, and the rig lurched over the ice, ever closer to the cliff.

“Keep coming back,” Steve said.

I debated releasing my seat belt to dive through the window in an emergency, but Steve told me to leave the belt on.

I guess he’d rather I was badly mangled than dead, and I couldn’t blame him because I’m such a great friend.

Who else would give a city slicker a taste of real Montana, complete with an authentic near-death experience?

Only the world’s greatest friend would.

And only in the world’s greatest RV — my faithful Toyota motorhome, The Spirit.

“Do I need gloves?” Big Steve Brown asked over the phone a week earlier.

I watched the snow fall outside my window in Butte. It was our first good storm, and the temperature dipped accordingly. It was not a logical time to take The Spirit out of retirement.

The Spirit is a small Toyota pickup motoring beneath a house. It doesn’t have four-wheel-drive.

Once before I had taken the rig out on snow and ice. Immediately it became stuck and had to be pushed. That was on a nice, flat driveway.

We better avoid nice, flat driveways, I thought, watching the flakes fly.

Steve insisted on a “nature-y” experience, so I figured we’d fish for wild trout in remote country and traverse high-mountain passes in The Spirit to get there.

Sure, I said, bring some gloves. Just in case.

Physically, I’d describe Steve as a refrigerator with a beard.

During our trip a stranger approached him at a gas station just to say: “I thought my truck shrunk when I saw you.”

The Spirit, meanwhile, is fun-sized, like a trick-or-treat candy bar.

Though I’m a shorter fellow, I hit my head on the bottom of the over-cab bed compartment a few times getting out of The Spirit’s front seat before I learned to duck.

I expected Steve would bash his head at least once, especially since I forgot to warn him.

Packed into the Spirit’s passenger seat like a mastodon in a baby crib, Steve asked where we were going.

I pointed up where the mountains were supposed to be, just beyond the storm clouds. I counted on his enormous stature to give The Spirit extra traction in the front. Headed into bear country, I figured it could not hurt that Steve was a massive prehistoric cave bear of a man.

Soon we stopped for refreshments.

“Oh dear God,” Steve bellowed, cracking his noggin, and I suddenly remembered to tell him to watch his head.

You would think for his own good Steve would have heeded my advice after that, but alas.

Fly fishing is basically impossible unless you find naïve fish. You can find these fish where there are no fishermen, and sometimes where the fishermen are naïve.

Being naïve fishermen ourselves, we figured we’d be able to recognize our own kind, but instead we just fished where there was nobody at all.

A great smile formed on Steve’s face as the Spirit pulled off at a pristine fishing hole, and I was feeling like an awful great friend. In his excitement, Steve swung open the door and hit his head extra hard.

He soon forgot all about that hideous bruise on his forehead because he started catching fish.

You can call me traditional, but I don’t think it’s very polite to come visit your old friend and catch all the fish.

Sure, I got into a couple early, but Steve demonstrated the intensity of a man who doesn’t get to do this sort of thing, whipped by society as he is. Many naïve, native cutthroat trout were his prize.

I tried to slow him down with helpful advice.

“The fish are rising. Maybe they’ll hit dries,” I offered, and switched back to nymphs.

Steve moved from hole to hole with the grace of a tyrannosaurus, creating miniature tidal waves with the footfalls of his Goliath-sized boots.

Still, the fish took his fly, believing there was nothing to worry about. I expect they mistook him for a pair of bull moose fighting to the death in the shallows.

Steve and I are friends from college in Colorado, where I am from and where he lives today.

Our paths diverged slightly after school. He married our dear friend, Nolan, a fierce southern belle. Steve is, above all, a brave man.

They have two wonderful, rambunctious children, live in the Denver suburbs, and are so busy it makes my head spin.

Steve regaled me with tales of the hours spent cleaning up his kids’ toys, and the torque of his new leaf blower.

For work, he wines and dines clients. He golfs. He dresses sharp. He invests.

Steve rarely gets to fish, and never gets to fish for several days. Back in Colorado, the fish all have PhDs in counterfeit entomology anyway, earned studying the flies of millions of Colorado anglers lining the riverbanks. There, a naïve trout is hard to find.

I, on the other hand, have made little progress toward the American dream.

I spent most of the time since college on the road or at sea — on a motorcycle in Latin America, roaming the desert in The Spirit, working on all kinds of boats in Alaska and beyond, wearing all kinds of rubber gloves.

When Steve and Nolan got hitched, I was fitted for my groomsman suit by a roadside tailor in India before flying to the wedding.

Many times I’ve fished for weeks. I believe I once fished a whole year away, without ever meeting a sophisticated fish or fisherman.

We have gained expert knowledge unique to our given modes of living, Steve and I.

I told him a brown bear and grizzly are in fact the same bear. He explained how a mortgage works.

Did either of us get it right?

I’m in my late 30s, and moving back into The Spirit full-time looms as a real possibility. I stay put for a while, the road calls, or the sea. I go back. My friends and siblings make permanent homes and cozy families. It’s hard to drag anyone on a long, rugged fishing trip anymore. It makes me wonder when the years will catch up and where I’ll be when they do.

And then there’s the scurvy to worry about.

For his part, Steve is haunted all hours by the unfathomable expense of putting his children through college — and feeding them, too. He lays awake at night thinking about the best place to raise a family during a climate crisis.

I told him I’d like to travel all over and write about it.

Throw a line in the river where the autumn larch cast warm colors on the surface and emerald-green moss climbs boulders to bask in sunbeams.

Perhaps an eagle soars by, or a fawn dips its lips in the stream to quench its thirst. Maybe a mayfly descends from the sky like an angel and lands on your nose, giving it a tickle.

“Is this nature-y enough for you?” I asked.

Catch a bright, wild trout, reel it in, and your life’s pressures — be they golf scores or motorhome mold — will float away, revealing a joyful present.

Even though André the Giant was catching all the fish, I enjoyed myself for his sake.

We’d had a fine trip, but something was missing. We’d trialed, but hadn’t errored.

If you really want to see this country, I said, I know a special place just several hours and two mountain passes away.

Steve was too exhausted from fighting fish to protest. My confidence in The Spirit was at an all-time high, and the snow hadn’t stuck to the ground for long where we’d been.

See, I said several hours later, in Montana you can drive over a couple mountain passes and everything changes.

The logging road narrowed as we climbed into shade and ice, and then the road became a luge course. Which is great for a luge, or even a bobsled, but not so good for The Spirit.

I’ll save you the suspense. We didn’t make it to the special place, nor did The Spirit plummet over the edge during our daring turnaround.

And with me, my version of this story survived.

It was time for Steve to return to his loving family, fancy job and big, comfortable home, and I to my own frightful challenges. We would both miss The Spirit life, and dare I say, each other.

I watched Steve lumber off into the airport, dragging the two colossal roller suitcases he brought for the short trip behind him, the people hurrying out of the way to avoid being trampled.

I knew I would cherish the memory of this trip, and I took a second to reflect on the best moments.

The overhead cab is one thing, but I had never hit my head on the doorway into the Spirit’s living quarters, or on the ceiling, or on the sharp corners of the cabinets. But Big Steve Brown sure did. Over and over, day and night, like it was some kind of cheap thrill.

It must be because he’s from California.