Fencerows: Deep in the Driftless Hollows
By John Luthens
A glow spread from a hidden horizon in the southwestern heart of Wisconsin’s driftless area. Unlike the ice-age glaciers, which never penetrated this bluff-swept region, the waxing moon finally crested over the ridge and tracked us into our hollow. The trout stream in the thickets behind our camp turned silver in the moonlight. The water mumbled and swirled like voices. We sat by the embers of our cooking fire, whispering of trout to come, watching and listening.
I’d met my fishing partner, Shawn Murphy, of Appleton, outside of Westby Wisconsin, and we’d wound our way into the hollows of Timber Coulee Creek, setting up camp on the grounds of the Westby Rod and Gun Club. We are travelers and fly fishermen. Trout stream stories flow right through our wheelhouse. But as we fell asleep with moonlight rising like a searchlight through our tent walls, we weren’t prepared for the following day’s chapter that awaited us in the driftless hollows.
A bear hide foretells another day in the driftless hollows.
I was on the stream early, trying to solve the mystery of what a plopping brown trout was feeding on beneath the dewy overhang of a grassy run. I heard the first dogs start howling at daybreak. By the time I waded back into camp, a bear hide hung from an oak tree across the trout stream. We had barely wet a line, and already we’d been cast headlong into the hollows.
“I had a dream that I was being torn apart by a wild pack,” said Shawn, wiping sleep from his eyes and stringing up his five-weight rod at the same time.”
Three tracking hounds were tethered at the base of a ridge. A wild-eyed man was dragging a furry pelt through the trees and grass. He splashed across the stream and disappeared up a draw. Pickup trucks bounced down the road; the baying of more hounds caged in the beds voicing their approval over clouds of dust and gravel.
“Something’s going on here,” I said, being a keen master of the obvious.
We’d pitched our tents in moonlit silence the night before, and now we found ourselves in the midst of a field dog trial competition. Heats of tracking hounds were set out on the trail, and the fastest dog to tree the bear skin was declared the winner. Dogs ran rampant across our campsite, tracking collars beeping and baying calls echoing through the hollows.
We’d never seen anything like it, and likely will never see it again. We ran wild like the hounds, our fishing gear in a forgotten pile, cheering the chase down the trail and chatting with dog trainers. Trout fishing is like life; you never know what to expect.
A trout startled from a pool as a wayward dog scrambled up the bank. The fish left a wake in the shallow water. It shook us back to our senses. We begrudgingly left the spectacle behind and drove deeper into the driftless hollows.
I had a place in mind and two sets of maps to get us there. Shawn had internet connection and a GPS on his phone. My maps got us started in the general direction before their owner got confused. Shawn’s phone got us closer still, before the shadowed hollows snapped off his internet connection quicker than a striking trout breaks off a weak knot on a leader. A trout-tracking hound would have come in handy from there on out. Eventually we found a valley and a clear-running stream. Whether it was our original destination, I honestly can’t say. The driftless hollows are like that.
It was like a dream, white clouds above green pastures, deep bends and cattle grazing in the distance. I remember hooking a thrashing brown trout in a broken riffle with the white steeple of a church shining in the distance. We’d woken in the morning to chaos, and now there was nothing but the wind through the ridge tops and the waving grass above the bank holes.
Shawn Murphy fishes through the hollows.
I shouted trout strategy at Shawn. He was 50 yards up the stream and stalking an undercut riffle of bedrock when he froze silently. I figured it was either the fountain of my wisdom or the beauty of our surroundings that rendered him speechless. I stomped over to shake him out of his reverie.
“A shadow came from beneath that rock and swam upstream.”
I know for a fact that you can’t catch shadowed rumors. The Loch Ness Monster was only the fantasy of a trout fisherman with too much idle time on his hands. I told Shawn as much.
“The shadow I saw was easily 25 inches long,” he whispered silently.
I quit yapping and started fishing.
A brown trout caught and released in southwestern Wisconsin’s driftless area.
By nightfall, we’d worked into a new hollow. Branches canopied in a tunnel over our heads. Casting became precise and more difficult in the darkness and the trees. Trout rose in the gloom. We cast to the rising fish, moving into better positions. Sometimes a trout would plop from the very spot we’d just vacated. Bats swished through the air and night birds rustled in the bushes. Shawn caught a final brown trout before we climbed up the bank to contemplate where the heck we’d ended up.
It was very late when we finally hauled back into our camp. The moon was riding high above the hollow. There were no dogs. At first, there was no noise. It was as if a day in the driftless hollows had sprung open, sucked us in, and spit us back at our starting point.
But as we turned into our sleeping bags, we heard it low and clear. The wild and low babbling of Timber Coulee Creek was telling the moon what had transpired. We listened to it babble long as we could. Then we drifted off into the hollows of sleep.
John Luthens is a freelance writer from Grafton, Wisconsin. His first novel, Taconite Creek, is available on Amazon or at www.cablepublishing.com or by contacting the author at Luthens@hotmail.com