iii.
The bank is barren and slick in Colorado, pieces of granite and sandstone, no sediment to get your boot stuck in. The water is cold, holding trout of all varieties: brook, rainbow, brown. The water is always clear, unless there’s been a mudslide, never dripping like the black veins that trickle through Pennsylvania valleys. When I backtrack up the road, I find snow clinging to the edges. I stand in the water too long and my toes go numb. You’re standing on a stone, calling back to me about the caddis, and all I can think about are your hands: unhooking the fly lodged under the lip of the brook trout’s eye.