Reflections West

"I fish with my children, the paddle knocking the canoe in an easy rhythm," writes Caroline Patterson, writer, teacher, and director of the Missoula Writing Collaborative. "Phoebe is five, her taffy hair in braids; Tobin three, his round face expectant as he scans the pocked water. I take up the spinning rod, for we are trolling, the dreamer's way of fishing. Phoebe and I let out line, and I show her how to reel it in. I lie back to wait, studying the tamaracks, capped by the Swan Mountains. "So what does it mean when the pole dips?" Phoebe asks. Quiet becomes chaos: Tobin grabs a net, Phoebe reels in the line until the struggling fish is dangling, mid-air. Then it wrenches off the line and disappears into green water, hook and all. With a new lure, we set out again, I stroke, glide, stroke, and this time when the pole arcs, Tobin catches the cutthroat. It is beautiful and vaguely nauseating: white-green freckled skin, a blood-red belly, translucent fins, and a grimacing mouth, in its