Saturday, July 12, 2008

Through the rhodo hell to the trout stream


Today and Monday I plan to tackle a portion of my home creek that I have never had the nerve to struggle up and I am not even sure there are any trout up there.
I know one thing - I will find the rhododendron hell, those twisting, gnarled, grasping, hat knocking bushes with the pretty blooms that make getting to the creek, and back up the bank to the road, so challenging, as we say in the fly fishing world.

These plants are not always the benign shrubs the brochures touting the Blue Ridge Parkway make them out to be.

Besides skinning elbows and knocking off hats, the bushes sometimes hide hornets' nest, so watch your backcast.

The story goes that a bull once got caught in some rhodo hells near a western North Carolina mountain town. The cowboy bushes got ahold and would not let go of those horns.

The bull, by the name of Cassius, died.

And the town that took the bovine's name somehow butchered its spelling.

The town is called Cashiers.

That sorta sounds like Cassius if one has been imbibing from a mason jar, which of course is another mountain story.

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