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1 week ago | 
themountainmail.com | Hayden Mellsop
A successful day’s fishing depends on one’s definition of what actually constitutes fishing. The day had begun sitting on the deck of the small cabin as the sun rose above the surrounding treetops. All around the forest awakened with the sound of birdsong. A pair of quail sat stock-still on a rock at the edge of the clearing.
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2 weeks ago | 
themountainmail.com | Hayden Mellsop
“This ski gear has been about the best investment I’ve made,” she said as she slipped into her boots. All around the parking lot the buzz of excited conversation rose, car doors opening and closing, the crunch of boots on ice and gravel. As I stepped into my own boots I thought of the early years when a trip to Monarch on a Sunday was not met with near the same degree of enthusiasm.
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1 month ago | 
themountainmail.com | Hayden Mellsop
I unbuckled my pack and set it on the ground, then sat streamside with my boots dangling over the water. The grassy clearing still retained a hint of green, yet the willows growing in clusters along the bank had long since shed their leaves save a few that hung limp and lifeless from branches pointing skyward like skeletal supplicants. From my pack I withdrew a can of stout and a tin of smoked oysters and began a late, leisurely lunch.
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1 month ago | 
themountainmail.com | Hayden Mellsop
“We call this the parting glass,” she said, handing me a snifter with a generous measure of honey-colored liquor poured over ice. It was late, and in the morning I’d be leaving. “It’s an Irish tradition, whenever friends part.” We three clinked glasses, and I thought of all I’d seen and heard and absorbed over the preceding handful of days. I thought of the countryside – mile upon mile of fertile and green, dotted with sheep fleeced in brilliant white with jet-black faces and close, curved horns.
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1 month ago | 
themountainmail.com | Hayden Mellsop
Similar to mountain communities across the West, the Upper Arkansas Valley is experiencing a cycle whereby the cost of real estate is outstripping the ability of many locals to afford to settle here. While the reasons for this are multifaceted and complex, homeownership in our valley is more attainable than may think.
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1 month ago | 
themountainmail.com | Hayden Mellsop
“I wish I had your job.” A frequent refrain that spilled forth from the mouths of enthusiastic anglers high on the luxury of a day on the river. So far, so good. For the most part I thoroughly enjoyed the guide’s life – no 9-to-5 drudgery, exercise and fresh air every day, observing up close the beauty of rivers and the rhythms of nature. I struggle to recall a single instant where I envied a client their life over mine as they pulled out of the parking lot at the end of the day.
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2 months ago | 
themountainmail.com | Hayden Mellsop
I woke before the sun. Crawling from the tent, I faced the river and stretched the stiffness from muscles no longer accustomed to sleeping on a mattress of sand. Scattered clouds lay low to the east, bellies lit a deep crimson in herald of the coming day. I scavenged a few sticks of driftwood and rekindled the fire, then set a pot of river water on the edge of the flames. Color seeped into the landscape. I sat at the river’s edge sipping hot tea in contemplation of the coming day.
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2 months ago | 
themountainmail.com | Hayden Mellsop
The helicopter lifted off, kicking up a maelstrom of grit and debris as we hunkered at the edge of the clearing, backs turned, hats clutched close. Soon it had cleared the ridge top and we stood in the welcome silence of the river. “Put together your rod and tie on a dry and dropper,” I said to the fisherman.
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2 months ago | 
themountainmail.com | Hayden Mellsop
Winter nights are when my mind often wanders back to my guiding days in New Zealand. Seasons between the hemispheres being opposite, while the Colorado high country is gripped in winter’s freeze, New Zealand finds itself in the thrall of high summer. New Zealand has achieved mythic status as a fly fishing destination among anglers the world over.
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2 months ago | 
themountainmail.com | Hayden Mellsop
In my youth fly fishing seemed about the least cool thing a person could do. Floating rivers as a whitewater guide, the anglers I encountered were generally stuffy old males with gin-blossom noses who drove Range Rovers and stood on the side of the river glaring at me as I floated by, apparently experiencing a mere fraction of the fun I was enjoying. Then there was the question of the fish themselves: trout. What was the point?
