Gone Fishing
By Matthew Beaudin
My grandfather never tired of taking me fishing. Never stopped wanting to put a worm on my hook and sit with me while I dangled it from an aspen bough into the creek below. He’d make me a new fishing pole with each trip to the cabin, a serene dwelling built near the flanks of Rocky Mountain National Park. In the mornings at the cabin, we’d get up early and wander through the land he helped survey years before, to the beaver ponds, where I learned to cast. We’d pull brook trout, the most beautiful of all fish, from the ponds and creeks, and take a few home with us for grandma to pan fry with a few eggs for breakfast.
I don’t fish at all now, but when I took this old picture off the wall a few months ago when I was moving, I had my mom call grandma and set up a long-overdue family trip to the cabin this summer. Just to go fishing again with grandpa and hear the sizzle of the frying pan.
Photo: Robin Lund, taking Matthew Beaudin, his grandson, fishing outside of Estes Park, Colo., near the family cabin circa 1988.
