THERE’S NOTHING QUITE like tent camping in the rain forest during the monsoon season.
The rain falls like it’s being sprayed from a hose. The wind rocks the trees, causing a multi-colored blizzard of falling leaves.
Sitting in a mudhole in the choking smoke of a campfire, picking the spruce needles out of my cocoa, I thought that autumn might be my favorite time to camp.
The tourists are mostly gone. The weather’s so abysmal no one in their right mind would ever think of being out in it. Leaving a few old fishermen to camp in the rain along a back eddy on the river.
Rain sprouts the mushrooms and swells the rivers to bring the fish home.
All is right with the universe until someone comes from town with the news.
“This country is going to hell in a bucket now that we’ve elected that idiot.”
“Which idiot is that?” I asked. Pretending to care. With our never-ending election over, some of us would really like to be done with it.
America is a nation of laws. I don’t make the rules, but I try to follow them.
The first rule in any fish camp is, no arguments before breakfast. Chances are, if you wait until after breakfast, you’ll forget what you were arguing about.
Rule No. 2 is, no bear meat in the chili. That should be self-explanatory.
The most important rule in any fish camp is no politics. Can’t we all just get along? I like to celebrate diversity as much as the next guy.
We even let a fly fisherman into the fish camp in the interest of burying the hatchet on the row vs. wade controversy. Fly fishermen typically wade the river. I row a boat down the river, but start talking politics and you are gone.
Politics has always been a nasty business, but if you think we bad-mouth politicians now, it’s nothing compared to the good old days.
Aristophanes summed up what constitutes a popular politician, “a horrible voice, bad breeding and a vulgar manner.”
George Washington was the father of our country, but he had an enemy list as long as your arm. James Thomson Callender, a reporter for The Richmond Recorder, called President Washington, “the grand lama of the federal adoration, an immaculate divinity of Mount Vernon.”
Callender described our second president, John Adams, as a “hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force nor firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” He accused Adams of wanting to crown himself king and said “it would have been best to have President Jefferson beheaded five minutes before his inaugural address.”
Destitute and drunk, Callender was found drowned in 3 feet of water in the James River in Virginia. Proving journalism has always been a risky business.
Not much has changed since the time of our founding fathers. Journalists still use eye-catching headlines to increase sales. And if we have to exaggerate and speculate to educate, so much the better.
In this age of misinformation, all news is suspect.
At the end of the day, Americans can be proud we elected the best politicians money can buy.
Then, we’ll conveniently forget we voted them into office against our own self-interest in the first place and keep them enthroned until they are rich and old.
President Abraham Lincoln said of politicians, “Most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men.”
In these uncertain times, only one thing is certain: it doesn’t matter which idiots we elected. The country will survive.
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Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.
He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.