IT WAS LATE afternoon in Northern California and Bill Barich had his waders on to go fishing. For much of the last five years he had dedicated himself, both on bitterly cold mornings and drawn out evenings such as this, to the pursuit of steelhead trout. He didn’t consider himself a particularly good fisherman, but these trout had proven a more evasive target than even he had first cared to imagine.
They clung to the river bed, immune to what he had to offer them. Travelling from the Pacific Ocean to this stretch of water to spawn they had no desire to be disturbed by him. Stood on the decking that bordered two sides of the mobile home he rented with his wife on a 14-acre plot, he could see the Russian River below that they had inhabited and he would shortly head toward.
All around him was the untouched beauty of Sonoma County and it gladdened Bill’s heart when he looked out from here how much it reminded him of landscapes he had experienced in Italy years earlier. The trailer itself (to call it a mobile home is perhaps too grandiose) was shoddy, but nice. It had two bedrooms, two bathrooms and there was a hole in a wall where Bill had flung a boxed manuscript only to discover the fragility of plasterboard.
For $200 a month, however, Bill and his wife could overlook any shortcomings. Out there in the countryside, one encountered other people with the same regularity that steelhead trout made themselves known to Bill. This sense of being somewhat removed from the world was.