The Gals Go Fishin’

As a part of New Mexico Magazine's centennial celebration, we'll be looking back at some of the stories from the past 100 years. This story appeared in the August 1942 edition. 

MONDAY WE TOOK BATHS and hunted Lem. Lem is the guide who also rents horses, and Marie and Mary Alice wanted two for the trip to the West Fork of the Gila on Wednesday. Lem is a difficult man to find, but we left a scribbled note on his door and hoped he could read it.

As for the baths, taking one at Willow Creek is quite a complicated affair. First, you gather your semi-clean clothes. Some of them will be in Recene’s bag, some under our bed rolls, some in the car. What you can’t find have blown off the line and are either on top of the tent, under the table, or over the fence by the creek. By the time you have gathered all the clothes you need, the fire is out under the water. You build that up, and, while you are waiting on the water, you get interested in something else and let the fire go out again. Then you decide this has gone far enough and you will bathe in less water than you had planned.

One corner of the tent is the bath house. After you push back Marie’s pillow on one side and the foot of Mary Alice’s bed roll on the other, you have room enough for the pan, your soap, and whatever part of yourself you choose to sit on. If you have everything you need now, the bath proceeds on the installment plan.

Recene and Mary Alice went fishing again in the afternoon, but caught only two fish.

They didn’t like salt pork either although it had been recommended by a man who had been a successful fisherman for three days on Willow Creek. Lem came by at sunset to tell the girls they could have the horses. After he’d gone, we weren’t quite sure about the time, or whether he’d bring them, or they’d go after them.

Tuesday was a meandering day of preparation for the big trip. We did the usual things about camp. Marie and Mary Alice gathered enough supplies to last for several days. They prepared for more emergencies than happened to the pioneers in a month. They were pouring liquids out of jars, bottles, and powders out of sacks, and pouring them into other jars, bottles, and sacks all day. Anything could happen.

This was also grasshopper day. Since someone had told the girls that grasshoppers were the trout delicacy this season, they decided to try them. Recene took the fly swatter and Marie her rubber over-shoe. The technique consisted of locating the grasshopper, anticipating his decision to jump, swatting him just before he made the first move, popping him into a container. If swatted skillfully, the grasshopper was stunned sufficiently to be quiescent, but not enough to be disabled. A proper balance is important because trout like their meals alive and wiggling.

Recene and Mary Alice tried out the grasshoppers late in the day. If I could only fish! But fishing is one of my blind spots. I am told that every bend in the creek is a new adventure. Just in the shadow of that great rock, there lies a beautiful twenty­incher. If not there, then on down the creek behind that log, I may find half a dozen beauties. If not there, then on and on and on. In the meantime, I fill my creel with my limit of not quite so fine fish as I had hoped to get, but they are adequate.

We didn’t have fish Tuesday night either. The girls had spent all their fishing time leaving notes for Lem—at his house, at the lodge, on fence posts, probably, to clear up the ambiguity of the conversation the day before. But we didn’t need fish. We had a delicious mixture, by Recene, of bacon, tomatoes, onions, and macaroni. Lem appeared at dark on his way home to say that he would bring two horses over at six-thirty a.m., War Time.

Recene and l barely heard the girls leave next morning. I raised my head once and saw Marie silhouetted against the tent. Since all seemed well, I went back to sleep and awakened much later to a lovely lazy day. After reading and lolling about all day, we went into a great burst of speed about five o’clock to get the camp ready for the return of our adventurers. We cleaned the camp, pumped plenty of water, made the beds, picked up articles that had fallen off the line, chopped wood, set the table, and sprinkled the ground with water to lay the dust. This had been regular routine all week.

At last Marie and Mary Alice came galloping and whooping into camp.

They had had a wonderful day, across Iron Creek, up Cooper Canyon—where they saw a deer—over Turkeyfeather Pass and down to the West Fork of the Gila. No mishaps. The fishing was just right.

Mary Alice had cleaned the fish before she got to camp. I fried them. They were good! We ate all twenty of them, with accessories, in the light of the moon.

AND SUDDENLY it was our last day. We had stolen six days out of time, but now we had begun to smell the odor of shampoo and lotions and to think how nice a hot bath would be. Our hair was stiff with dust and soot; our faces and hands grimy in spite of frequent washings; our clothes ready for the laundry and dry cleaner. But, since we had to go home, that, too, would be fun.

Our fishermen were out again at noon on Iron Creek. They brought back twenty-six fish—but we decided to save them for Silver City consumption.

But we could be generous with our menu that night because we had almost enough supplies for another week—beets, beans, peas, lettuce, bacon and eggs, cookies, and something of nearly everything we had started with. We compromised on corned beef.

So we took back twenty-six fish. But we had gotten a lot of other things there on Willow Creek besides fresh fish. We got a fresh viewpoint and friendship, sun, and solitude. Yes, we had, as Marie put it, soaked our souls in the sun.