Old Haunts
In Memory of and Celebrating the Au Sable River
“The Au Sable, I’ve learned, is a perpetual beguiler. For every secret serum discovered, the river develops a new poison. This, to me, makes a haunting river. In the daylight, in the summer, it is flat and clear and the bottom waves with thin green weeds and the rocks are brick-colored and the sand is soft and clean and worn into waves at the bottom. The small trout dart about, from sun to shadow. It has history and culture, and it has solitude and moods. It fishes well at night, when you can’t see. It can crush your soul if you care too much about catching trout. But when it is alive, it is so alive. It’s the brilliant but bipolar friend: you hang in there for the brilliance.”
Josh Greenburg, Trout Water
Introduction:
For almost five years I’ve tried to explain the Au Sable river. Paradise and Purgatory, a constant topic in family conversation. To some, the space is an escape existing in a space somehow detached from real life. To others, an albatross. Even writing this now, it’s difficult to tell whether I’m penning a eulogy, or simply acknowledging that some chapters in life are worth ending before they sour.
To understand living in Northern Michigan is to understand it’s seasons. What most think of is the dreamy Grayling summer. Kind and breezy, life seems to just work out for the best no matter what the situation. Days start slowly, roll along lazily, and end under a sky unmolested by light pollution. A vibrant milky way is smattered with enough shooting stars to inspire epiphany.
But as September bleeds into October, temperatures plummet. Foliage wilts, greens turn to brown, and soon enough winter arrives. Bitterly harsh, unforgiving, frigid. Income slows, bills accumulate, relationships sour. It’s hard, like anything worth doing.
As the area and it’s memories fade from present to past, I don’t want to recall Luzerne as a burden. So much of my life in recent years has been molded by the ebb and flow of a place that was almost, but never quite, home. This is my attempt to capture what lured my father to Grayling with such magnetism.
My home river, that is, where I found a love for fly casting is on the Au Sable river. More specifically, the Big Water past Parmalee towards the Mio Dam. Hidden in plain sight, Luzerne seems to reward a lifestyle finding itself increasingly antiquated in a algorithmic world. With a 75-mph speed limit on main roads, I think the locals hope you stop just enough to spend some money without staying long enough to ruin anything.
Controversial in my own family and locally, Dad purchased a plot of land much to the agitation of my mother during the late stages of his chemotherapy. As she recused herself of responsibility in the whole affair, I was left to figure things out and became what the locals would refer to as an “out of stater”. A subtly derogatory reference to those with the affluence to own riverfront property and their relative arrogance towards the locals. A reputation well-earned in many cases, I was in the unfortunate situation of being neither from Michigan or affluent enough to afford the costs associated with a riverfront property. This set of circumstances meant I was both mildly resented and slightly fucked.
What one has to understand about Grayling, and most trout water, is there exists a vague line between where the people end and the river begins. Guarded, layered, complex. In many ways, the river is just as alive as it’s fishermen. Both are in the tenuous position of relying on an outside world for resources while resenting the accompanying trespass.
And much like it’s locals, the Au Sable is similarly tolerant but cruel to the “out of stater”. Pummeling, stringent, wary—seasoned wild trout make quick work of amateur expertise. Many statistics have spent thousands of dollars on rods, reels doo-dads and trinkets only to be rewarded while fishing with a big, fat, nothing sandwich. But with repeated visits and respectful participation, both community watercourse rewards those who exercise patience in loyalty and learn to relish subtle hints.
It starts with repeated visits to the fly shop. Learning the language of a river. The locality nearby is not pronounced “mee-oh” its “my-oh”. It’s not the “main branch” it’s “the angler trail a mile down the road past that one bridge”. It’s picking up your beer cans and volunteering with the river clean up. After learning the language, a guide might offer a casting hint, or a grid coordinate off-handedly. They may give you shit about your fly selection, offering golden advice about certain patters and hues of colors in veiled sarcasm. As the locals learn to trust—so does the soul of a river. It rewards the long game with a first catch and eventually trophy trout.
And for a long time, I was that casual visitor. I waded loudly and haphazardly into one part of the river or another. I casted a fly rod with all the grace of a labrador puppy, slapping the water loudly enough to announce to all trout that the B-Team had arrived. I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Death Valley and that was part of it. Aloof and harmless, I had to pay my dues and develop the patience and respect for a river that didn’t allow much margin for error. The trout would come, but the Au Sable wasn’t quite convinced I deserved them yet.
On one such trip, I found myself knee deep in both slow water and failure. Recent rains had swollen the riverbanks—which generally meant murky water and obscure flies. Sure, the trout might be munching on some buggy displaced grub, but I would all but have to walk them into a fish’s mouth in order to catch something. So, I practiced.
Overhanging brush and reedy shallows allow trout to rest, and it paid to be precise and accurate with your casts. As I rehearsed the metronomic flip, a kayaker silently glided past and remarked, “Finally, some youth out here. Usually, it’s just a bunch of old haunts.” Caught off guard and in some tangle of vegetation, I hardly got a glimpse of this river shade before she disappeared around another bend.
But the comment stuck with me for years.
Over time, I would come to realize these “old haunts” are a sort of symbiotic warden for the river’s soul. Pine and poplar flank tannin flows, these tangible items representing a living, breathing, entity in constant transience. But these elder fishermen—they preserve and improve something beyond roots and soil. Somehow more significant than either water or community. Contributions are thankless and silent, eroding new paths in a forever current.
For decades these haunts rise in the pitch black of night. Red lenses and instinctual casting to hunt the apex predators of a hex feeding frenzy. Monitoring hatches, observing flows, noting temperature. The concept of seasons, to an old haunt, flows in line with a more ancient clock.
Their lifetimes are spent observing, noting. They come to appreciate the tying of flies appealing to prized quarry; sometimes only viable for days at a time. Flashy purple and marabou enough to dupe some, while only naturally harvested buck tail and pheasant feather will work for more cultured prey. The knowledge of these interactions is both guarded from many and free to all, the only currency for access being time and trust.
One such haunt was a man named Boyd Dillon. A titan of the community, Boyd sacrificed much of his life to care for the river through tumultuous and critical years of change.
Like the Au Sable—Boyd was someone both reserved and skeptic. River and man had seen many people come and go. Those too weak to weather the hard times were not given much time or deemed worthy of the rewards. He was someone who required a down payment of sweat equity for his time and respect but was hardly frugal with compassion once debts had been reconciled. To date, any success I’ve had on the river is his for the most part.
My most prominent Boyd memory is being invited along for a “day on the river”, his version far from the half-fishing, half-smoking adventures I had partaken in before that day. He and a friend, Glenn, were both highly accomplished fishermen who spent well over 200 days a year interacting with the water in some way shape or form. The amount of tacit knowledge they both possessed was staggering to me.
When Boyd fished—that man fished. We left at eight sharp and made damn sure everything had been inspected the night before. His bags were organized and well stocked with anything needed for the day, and that was absolutely the expectation for guests of the expedition. Putting in was done with a militant level of efficiency, and once we were on the river it was an exercise in silence and awareness, hand signals and silent nods towards honey holes with the indications of good fishing. And the initial critiques were merciless.
“Stop bending your wrist”
“Bring the line straight up—no no, more sharply”
“Drop the arm down dammit, hard stops to avoid tailing loops”
“Please stop slapping the water”
“Just look here at how I do it”
“I’ve told you this a couple times now”
“Ok, roll cast here. Again, double cast tug on the end. Good. Again.”
From a bygone era with a different kind of compassion, I improved more in the 14 hours of fishing that day than I had in 14 months prior. By the time I left the water with Boyd, my casting looked like a hibachi chef dicing up an onion locomotive—and I was positively lethal on the water.
Once we had established that Carol Bennett had not, in fact, “raised no bitch” his caring streak came out. I was offered a sandwich bite or two. Boyd tied a few flies for me, and eventually shared some stories of trips to Yellowstone and Montana, filled with trophy trout and captivating views.
But, having crested 70, time was also waning for my proxy grandparent of sorts. He remarked one day that, “Your dad was a wake-up call for us. He was younger, and passed away. Seems like it can happen to anyone anymore”. And that would prove to be foreshadowing his open-heart surgery only a couple of years later.
In the weeks of Boyd’s reckoning, an infection taking hold following his procedure. With the decision to entire hospice made—my final interaction with Boyd was on a freezing early spring day in Traverse City. Anticipating what was coming, Michigan’s bitter cold mourned a titan of its recent history alongside those who had fished with and known him.
Boyd looked at me in the hospital and said, “people don't come here to get better”. In true Boyd fashion, I feel he wanted to express so many emotions like fear, frustration, anger, grief and sadness. But as is the case with his generation, he could only do so in a way he knew best. Short, tough, useful. Economy of emotion and thought. But, simple he was not. Simple people don’t fly fish.
Behind his terse exterior Boyd was swirling in a galaxy of emotions understood through the lens of a lifetime pensively rowing a drift boat. There is a nuance and elegance required to appreciate the art of casting line while distilling life’s complexities. Understanding the man and his meaning meant understanding his composition.
Boyd Dillon was an intellectual of the blue-collar variety. A working man’s aristocrat, he worked hard to achieve the life he desired toiling away for years on call and working thirds to make the literal engines of America run inside of General Motors in Detroit.
He did these things, I believe, not because there was money involved (ok, probably mostly for the money) but because the art of doing a thing well was ingrained in the marrow of his soul. Boyd was not one for half-assing anything. If it deserved doing, it deserved doing well; and Boyd would not suffer the company of those with waning commitment or lackluster drive. The process was an art, he was an artist.
He may not have born a physical child, but he had a love and prodigy in his 20 acres of riverside paradise. He cared for the land and it’s people in a way that was close to child rearing. Nursing and nourishing this resource through conservation and meticulous care. He participated in and orchestrated cleanups. He made efforts to prevent damming, and fought to keep wildlife preservation relevant. Most fly fishermen like him realize we’re only granted a small lifetime of experience and provide a level best to leave things for the better.
In the case of Boyd Dylan, 72 years were spent quietly drifting through the alter of nature. Admiring the world’s deepest infinities across years of natural symphony; he rowed along concertos of indigo sunrises, watercolor sunsets and milky way nights sprawling into limitless heaven.
Ultimately, Boyd died on March 14th in home hospice—close to the friends, families and flows that had loved him with the same intensity and enthusiasm he freely offered in return. His loss is significant, both for loved ones and the community, and he was welcomed home on a sunny day nipping at the beginnings of summer.
But, much like my father whose ashes were spread upstream years before, their essence escapes but aura remains. I feel their kindness breathed into every bend, eddy reed and weed of the Au Sable’s branches. Their best qualities seem endlessly exalted across a jubilant summer, before a long grief for those recently passed in the still of winter. More than a memory, less than a tangible thing, these old haunts are the mystery and majesty of our trout waters.
