Men Gone Fishing in Colorado

Almost a football field away downstream, my host and fishing partner for the morning, Roger DeVilbiss, raises his left arm in my direction before disappearing around a bend in the sparkling East River, his fly rod poetry in motion.

We separate with no words but similar, face-fracturing smiles. The sirens of the free-flowing East are seducing us at our own pace. Knee-deep in a gurgling quiet, I quickly refocus my attention to my caddis slipping along some trout-heavy ripples. I retrieve the fly, admittedly with less poetry than my partner, and present it again at the edge of some bubble trails. Time becomes happily drugged to a slow trickle, and the sun warms my back as the East washes chillingly past me.

Moments like this, in middle of one of southwest Colorado's fish-rich rivers, are an integral part of an annual rite of summer's end for a small group of men from a North Texas neighborhood.

Six years ago, Roger decided to leave our genial Dallas neighborhood to move his clan back to the family roots in Wichita Falls, Texas. It wasn't easy parting from longtime friends on the block, where each Yule season neighbors stroll the block singing Christmas carols and then congregate at someone's home for toddies and treats, and where the young kids participate in an annual Mardi Gras parade on the block before a hardy dad makes pancakes for one and all.

Roger decided to rekindle a Colorado tradition his father-in-law, Doc Anderson, shared with a group of friends that reached back to the 1950s. He invited a group of neighborhood men to what he called the First Annual R&R Fish Hunt at a cabin he and his brother-in-law (Randy, hence the double entendre R&R moniker) own in Almont, about thirty miles south of Crested Butte.

As a result, each year a nucleus of guys mostly in their forties  — the lawyers, the guy who runs a paper goods company, and so on — head to Almont Labor Day weekend to fly fish, do a float trip, hike in the mountains, and take turns testing their varying culinary skills in the kitchen. Each savors the getaway far more than he first expected, as it allows us to reconnect with quiet streams and clean air, and recapture a thread of sanity. It requires a determination to make it happen each year (life does get in the way; Roger is the only one who has made it all six years), and an understanding from our families that it is an important part of our lives. New additions — Roger's brother and brother-in-law, an old college buddy, new acquaintances in Wichita Falls — enter the mix here and there, broadening friendships in the process.

For the forty-six-year-old DeVilbiss, an inventor currently working for a metals manufacturer, southwestern Colorado holds a special magic. He even caught his first fish nearby.

"I was living in Shreveport when I came to Colorado on a summer trip with my grandparents between seventh and eighth grade," he recalls one year as we bounce along a groomed dirt road on the way to pick up groceries in nearby Gunnison. "We stayed at cabins in Almont. My granddad set me up with a spinning rod and salmon eggs; I caught a large fish right away."

Roger's enchantment with Colorado was instant and lasting. "I love the beauty of the mountains and river, being in the water and not hearing another thing other than the water around you," he says. "Originally, I was just trying to get the guys together since we were moving from Dallas. Usually, trying to get a group of guys — especially successful ones — together and make decisions is like herding cats. But somehow, this group works."