Hands off, or hands-free?
Yet sometimes you have to get a little dirt on your hands.
CFers of S: Spring classes start this week, so I'm nervously looking at the weather report to determine if we're going to have glory days of summer sunshine, or in-between winter days of buckets of rain and muddy boots. Keep your fingers crossed for us.
Still blazing: The book club discussion is THIS THURSDAY. If you haven't read the book (In Praise of Floods, by James C. Scott), or don't care to, you can still join the Zoom and say hey and hang out. Just register and I'll share the info.
Meanwhile, let me know if you'll be coming to the Maupin Meetup. I have word from good authority that the Deschutes River Alliance will be sharing its list of classes, talks, entertainments, etc. shortly, so there should be plenty to plan around soon. You can see the whole Current Flow State events calendar here.
Technology, friend or foe?: We moved to a new site / email host this week, and this is our first time sending with them. It's always a nervy business, moving hosts and re-configuring, but this time it was relatively painless.
I will not rest (or check the project off my to-do list as "Complete") until this email goes out smoothly, so please let me know if you experience any weirdness, of any kind (well, related to this newsletter, we all know there's a a lot of weird going around.)
This season's must-have streamside fly-fishing accessory:
Nick Parish
It's almost spring, and time to stock up on gear for the season. Retailers are advertising screaming deals left and right, for that critical piece of equipment that's going to help you catch all the fish.
There's only one thing I recommend everyone carry this season. Like your AmEx, don't leave home without it.
Leaders ➰
Mindset 🧘♂️
In case you missed it from last week, here's a little video spiel on what our Intro to Fly Fishing class at PCC offers. (link)
Environment ⛰️
Click anywhere on this map of the Lower 48 and see the path a drop of water takes through its watershed to the ocean. Kind of cheating, for the Big Here Quiz, but that's OK. (link)
A quick factsheet-style reminder from Raincoast Research on the impact salmon have on forest-building (link)
Tools 🎣
Clackamas chapter of Trout Unlimited's own conservation superstar and rod-builder-to-the-stars Terry Turner is talking about lines, leaders, and knots at this week's TU meeting. (link)
Technique 🤺
Kayla Lockhart talks about moving from Oregon to Colorado and adapting from fishing dry flies and trout spey to, gasp, having to resort to nymphing. "I finally forced myself to pick up the euro stick, a handful of nymphs, and nothing else, meaning I'd have no other options to fish." (link)
Conservation 🌲
While the assault on public lands kicked up a notch last week, Wes Siler was there, doing a great job reporting on all the facets of the metaphorical attempts at strip-mining the public trust, so the literal strip-mining can happen. (link)
Meanwhile, TU (link) and Patagonia (link) both have begun to mobilize their policy apparatuses to defend the places there members recreate, and Chad Love at Hatch magazine (link) reminds us of the cronyism and covetousness attached to public lands, a fight that became personal for him over three decades ago.
Community 🏘️
Preventing the extinction of southern California steelhead requires a wide scope of change with many constituencies, as this recent "Save Santa Barbara Steelhead" town hall demonstrates (link)
Meanwhile, toward a slightly more populated part of the coast, SoCal Water Sierra Club is looking to the derelict Rindge Dam built on Malibu Creek, and surmising about how its removal can help restore wildlife habitats and renew the coast with free-flowing sediment (link)
Hopefully CalTrout's upcoming Fish Water People Film Festival will continue to build advocacy where these critically endangered fish cling to life. If you're near Sacramento, Orinda, Larkspur, or San Diego, the festival's coming to you. (link)
Despite folks' political positions, the majority of people (72%) surveyed in this Colorado College poll across eight western states support Congressional reps "protecting clean air, water and wildlife habitat while boosting outdoor recreation over maximizing the amount of public land used for oil and gas drilling." (link)
Not surprising, given the outdoor economy represents as much as 4.6% (Montana) of western states' GDP. In Oregon, the outdoor economy accounts for 2.6% of GDP, $8.4bn annually. (link)
If your nose is close to the grindstone
And you hold it there long enough
In time you’ll say there’s no such thing
As brooks that babble and birds that sing
These three will all your world compose
Just you, the stone and your poor old nose.
Current Flow State is a weekly newsletter from me, Nick Parish.
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