pay attention to the Yaak's creeks, springs, marshes, fens, or even the dramatic waterfalls, when there was so much country to explore? In the larger scale of the place, the tributaries were like tiny threads laid down in the greater, seemingly endless fabric or matrix of the mountains: faint veins that glittered in the mountains. There were animals everywhere, in the Yaak— porcupines amidst the spruce forests, moose belly-deep in the marshes, and bears leaping up from the green heat of their marshy alder-bowers.
There were even wolves, back then, in the 1980s, passing back and forth from Canada, even though folks thought they were extinct. It was all part of the Yaak's signature and iden- tity, and while I didn't take it for granted—there were wild animals any place there was water to be found, and water was everywhere—I kept hiking farther into the mountains. The Yaak is so wet that even in the high country there is water.
I
didn't take it for granted, but now that we are moving further into a dryer, warming world, the Yaak seems to me even rarer and more valuable than ever, a wet low-elevation refuge, a bowl of moisture and lushness better suited perhaps than any other to face the heated future with more buffer, stability, moderation. Likewise, the extreme vegetative diversity en- gendered by all this moisture and its positioning between the Pacific Northwest and the central Rockies, seems to offer some possible protection against the current and forthcoming rigors of a fast-changing climate and vegetative regime. How strange to think that a place known for its extremes— farthest north, farthest west, lowest elevation, wettest, wildest, most remote, etc.—might eventually—and soon—be one of our state's best hopes at retaining some balance and moderat- ing buffer against the wild amplitudes going on farther south in the Rockies, and even in Montana. For this reason, and so much else, the Yaak is to be cel- ebrated, protected, conserved. Many places in Montana will change dramatically over the next hundred or more years, but I like to think that given its diversity, the Yaak might continue to be diverse and special, retaining all the elements—perhaps in different proportions—than it has now. Not even geology is immutable, but in a healthy ecosystem like the Yaak, I think that time behaves differently, moves more slowly. I'm pretty sure of it. We'll see.
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NJOY MONTANA... LY FISH! FLY FISHING IS FUN - GIVE IT A TRY!
GUIDED/INSTRUCTIONAL FLOATS DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE RIVER CASTING INSTRUCTION WITH VIDEO ANALYSIS WOMEN'S FLY FISHING DESTINATION TRAVEL
Molly is a Master Certified Casting Instructor and winner of the "Best of the West" Accuracy and Distance Competition 2012.
www.tietheknotflyfishing.com mollysemenik@tietheknotflyfishing.com 406-220-5234 21
