Backcountry burglar

So after supper and a nap Saturday I grabbed my fly rod and pack from my Belly River camp and hoofed it about a mile or so back up to the trail to a place where I thought fishing would be good.

The evening light was fading fast and the river bottom had already gone dark with shadow. I got to the river, undid the top to the fly rod tube and looked inside.

There was no fly rod. Just the little bag the fly rod went in.

What the? Who would? What the? Why?

The wheels started turning immediately and I, of course, started going through the list of people who I had run into in the past two days, creating a list of suspects.

I put the tube back on the pack and in the evening quiet as the sun went down and I trucked my way back to camp I went through each and every suspect.

Someone, I was most sure, was a backcountry burglar. I first ruled out the obvious - the couple who carried two little kids back here were pretty low on the list. Sure, the 3-year-old could have snuck into my camp, carefully undid the cap to the rod tube and squirreled away with my heirloom fly rod. Never mind her fingers barely fit around a stick. Never mind she didn't even know where my camp was. She still could have done it.

Don't look at me like that. She could have.

OK, maybe she couldn't have. Spend enough time in Glacier's backcountry though and you can start thinking like that.

I kid you not.

No, the 3-year-old was ruled out. So was her cute kid sister. She couldn't walk, though I did see her chewing on a stick.

The kids' parents were out of the question as well. They looked frazzled. Like they didn't want to carry anything back out. Shoot, they already had to lug out a pack full of dirty diapers. Never mind the kids that filled them.

The wheels kept spinning. I ruled out some more folks and settled on three. There was the German, who had a nice friendly smile and by all standards seemed to be a standup fellow. Still, he was a foreigner and well, you know.

Then there was the woman he was with and her husband or boyfriend or whatever. They seemed nice, too. But he was from Ohio and he'd been asking me a lot of questions earlier in the day. See, there was this tiny window, about an hour I'd say, when I didn't actually have the fly rod with me. It was sitting back and camp while I was out taking pictures.

This guy from Ohio was camped right next to me with the German and the woman. They could have come in, taken the rod while I was out.

Plus the guy from Ohio, like I said before, was asking all these queer questions, like What do you do for a living? You fish here much? That river, it looks good for fishing, doesn't it? How long you been fly fishing? I need to learn to fly fish. is it hard?

And on and on.

The suspect list narrowed.

But the three of them had left camp and tracking them down would take some good old fashioned police work, I surmised. I imagined the guy from Ohio being nabbed back by Elizabeth Lake, my fly rod in his hand as he plied the waters right at dusk.

A flashlight beam strikes his eyes as the ranger closes in.

"Gotchya!" the ranger would yell.

"I was just trying it out!" Buckeye would blubber as they cuffed him and threw him over a mule, tying him to the saddle.

"Don't lip off, Buckeye," the ranger would say, threatening to whack him with the butt of his pistol.

Yeah, that's how it would go down.

There was one more possibility, however. One I would check out on my own, using my prowess as an investigative reporter. The next morning I got up at sunrise, glommed down a candy bar, drank a swig of tea (yeah, I drink tea, got something to say, smarty pants? I didn't think so) and headed out.

Down the trail I went, eyes peeled, nose to the ground. At just the right spot I veered off the trail and down through the brush and alders and prickers and swamp until the bushes broke clear and I was at the pool I'd fished two days before.

There it was. My heirloom fly rod. Leaning up against the bush precisely where I left it two days before.

Oh sure, laugh. Go ahead, let it out.

I got just one thing to say:

That guy from Ohio is lucky.

Real lucky.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse news.