Doc Young
“Hi, I’m Doc,” the man with the flowing white hair billowing out underneath his ball cap said. “You wanna go fishing with me? I can take you down river to some private water.”
“Oh, heck yeah!” I exclaimed.
“Grab your stuff, hop in my car and let’s go!” he said.
I had just arrived in Estes Park to spend a few days fly fishing for trout and immediately headed down below the Lake Estes Dam to check on the fishing conditions. I spied Doc along the river trying to coax some sizable trout into taking his fly and could tell he knew what he was doing. Shortly, he came up out of the river and I introduced myself. He must have seen the desperate look in my eye – the one that all fly fishermen get when they haven’t been on the water for almost a year – and immediately asked me if I wanted to go fishing.
Doc had me with the “private water” comment. The sport has increased in popularity since Brad Pitt made it look easy in the movie, The River Runs Through It, so much so that public water is usually crowded with other anglers. However, private water is the crème de la crème of fly fishing. It’s like offering a fat kid the keys to a candy store.
We hopped into his small SUV and took off down the Big Thompson Canyon where the river flows between a narrow road and the sides of jagged mountains. As we raced of to the first hole, and, yes, I mean raced, Doc began told me of the high-country fly-fishing business he and his family began. Doc is a great storyteller and only interrupted himself long enough to go, “wheeeeeeee!” when he took a corner a bit too fast. His squeal was a mixture of child-like delight sprinkled with a smidgen of fear that had made me feel that, even if we ended up in the river, we’d both laugh hysterically and he would look at me and say, “Wanna do it again?” To which I would reply, “Of course!”
I now have a new life goal: to reach the state of quasi-reckless maturity where I can yell, “wheeeee!” as I race around the mountain curve and not have a passenger jump out of the car. I ended up spending two days with Doc going up, down, under and all around the mountains and began to anticipate his squeal and was disappointed when he didn’t. But I doubt my lovely bride, Christine, will share in my enthusiasm when I obtain said goal.
Doc Young has more character in his pinky finger than most do in their entire body. On the website for their business – Fly Fishing the Rocky Mountains – if you go to the Doc Young and His Guides pull down menu, they talk about Doc; the Man, the Myth, the Legend. The best part is a photo of what one would assume to be Doc, but the disclaimer below the photo reads: “So, we wanted to be truthful, that’s not Doc in the picture. We couldn’t find his a** when the photographer showed up, so we had to use this stupid stock photo. Know where Doc was? You guessed it, fishing. (Sigh)”
Doc soon took me to a spot of lovely private water. He was five months into recovering from a broken hip, so had a difficult time scrambling down the riverbank lined with big boulders. I had the same difficulty, but not the same reason. Once in the river, he put me in a pool where a school of chubby rainbow and brown trout were hanging out in deep water like a bunch of teenage girls at a high school dance waiting to snicker at the pimply dork coming over to ask for a dance. If you’re not familiar with trout fishing, they can be more finicky about their food than a spoiled child who uses mealtime as a standoff at O.K. Corral with their parents. Or they can be as dumb as our dog climbing into the cat’s litter box looking for tootsie rolls covered in sprinkles. Usually, it’s the former.
Some fly fishers are truly poetry in motion on the river like Brad Pitt was in the movie. They swing the fly rod to an internal metronome and arc the line in such a way as to drop the miniscule mayfly, often so small that a dozen will fit onto the face of a quarter, into the water as if it was truly a live insect flitting gracefully onto the surface to lay eggs. I, however, am not Brad Pitt, so my fly plops on the water like a June bug that slams headfirst into my windshield in the summer. What I’m trying to say is that, if, on the off chance I do catch some trout, it’s the one in the cat litter looking for the tootsie roll with sprinkles.
Once I had sufficiently traumatized the fish enough that they scattered behind every bolder within 20 feet, Doc and I clambered up the hill to find a new spot. Although he was not aware of this fact until, perchance, he reads this story, I gauged our success each time in his fishing car by the number of “wheeeee’s” he emitted.
One time as he drove, wistfully reflecting on his life, he remarked, “Serious people die early and that really sucks. I love the river. I’m at the river every day. I hope to die on the river.”
“Let’s just hope it’s not today,” I casually replied.
As that day drew to a close, he offered to take me another day to even more secret places…if I was interested.
“Oh, heck yeah!” I exclaimed.
Two days later, we coursed through the mountains once again. One of the best parts of spending a day with a local person who loves the mountains and is to hear stories, the history, the culture, the nature of trout, the people and, above all, the person. Doc shared stories of his life, his family, his career, his grandkids, and spoke with great affection of his wife, Mary.
“Mary always says, no matter how difficult it gets, just look up at the mountains,” Doc said more than once. “Look up at all of this beautiful creation all around us. You can’t be unhappy when you live in a place as beautiful as this.”
On the last evening, Doc invited me over to have dinner with he and Mary. As I suspected, she was the Yin to his Yang. He’s more than just a bit mischievous and has varying degrees of laughter that is a more than just mirth, it’s like each laugh is an opinion he has about whatever the subject. It’s hard to explain without hearing it, but the tone and cadence of his laughter could either be like that of a little kid that was just about to do something rotten he knew he was going to get in trouble for or a gentle chuckle of a grandfather who welcomes a grandchild onto his lap. If he could bottle his laughter, I would buy it.
Mary was classy. Elegant in her movements, delicately measured in her speech, steady diction of her words like that of royal upbringing and the articulation of thought like that of a philosopher was mesmerizing. Sitting in their living room listening to Doc’s banter in one corner and her commentary on his opinions in the other corner was like sitting in on a Garrison Keillor episode of Lake Woebegone. It was Americana at its best.
I often pray that I will realize when I’m in the presence of greatness, rather than looking back in retrospect and recognizing it too late. With full assurance, I know that with Doc and Mary, I was in the presence of greatness. It’s people like that which make this world a much better place in which to live and people like me, better for having the privilege to travel for just a brief period with them in the mountains they call home.
Yes, Mary, I promise to look up.
And, Doc, thanks for reminding me to add more joy and adventure to my life.
Wheeeeeee!
