Jack Gartside, He didn't go gently. Yet another one I hate I missed!

“I frankly don’t make much of a living, but I make a hell of a life, ’Jack Gartside invented some of his much-prized fishing flies while using a vise clasped to the steering wheel of his cab as he sat in Logan Airport’s taxi queue, waiting for a fare. Jack died the 9th of December this year, if you fly fish and haven't heard of the man you should read up. He had the guts to put it down the road against the flow, and the fortitude to remain true to his direction. AP

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace!
Jimmy Hendrix
Until then, may the Armed Forces of the Great United States of America continue to PULL THE TRIGGER!!
Audwin McGee

Poison and Wine, The Civil Wars

My friends John Paul White and Joy Williams singing their song "Poison and Wine" which was featured on Grey's Anatomy episode 609. Congratulations! More great music from our area.

Need I say More!

Thanks JKT for the Pic. AP

YOU SHOULD BE INTERESTED, I THINK

I've been reading "Ngorobob House, Life from the Hill", for a while since my friend Kelvin told me about it. And from the Blog's author Janelle I heard about "Monkeys on the roof". Both give great perspectives of life in Africa, one from Tanzania and the other from Botswana. Believe it or not Africa is a small world when you get to traveling or living there. Just a few months ago I was speaking to a new friend Elemer that I had only known for a few weeks. We met in the bush and got along as friends right off. We came on the subject of another friend (another hunter) that had tragically died up in Tanzania. We both knew a lot of the same people from different parts of the world. The only common denominator was Africa. It seems that, "people that thrive on being out there", eventually rub shoulders at some place or the other, usually on a Hot Dusty Bush Road, a Sheer Mountain Face, or more often during a "late night" at some Remote Backwoods Backpacker Bar. Ap

MONKEYS ON THE ROOF

"NOGOROBO HOUSE" LIFE ON THE HILL

Sheridan Anderson, I hate I missed him!

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I came across and old magazine entry about the death of a fly fisherman, Sheridan Andreas Mulholland Anderson. I had heard of him years before and even have a copy of the Manifesto. I am always sad in a way when I hear or read about a man I missed meeting that I know I would have liked, especially one that died during my lifetime, especially one who died too soon. Here is an excerpt from the piece I found in Drake Magazine." Just like everyone can remember the first time they met Sheridan, almost everyone can remember the last time they saw him. Joe Kelsey, who was on his way from Berkeley to the canyons of southwest Utah, stopped by to visit Sheridan in Vegas in 1981. “By then, there were all these hot climbers sleeping in their VW buses near Red Rocks,” he says. “They were drinking Perrier and doing yoga. Sheridan came in with a bottle of Jack, and plunked down in a chair, and they were all in awe of him. They knew he was one of the greats.” One of the last times Mike Anderson saw him was at their father’s funeral in February 1983; Sheridan was close to 300 pounds, and didn’t look well. “I hadn’t heard from him in a while, other than that drunken phone call every so often: ‘I miss you, I love you, brother,’” says Mike. “He just didn’t take good care of himself.”

On the evening of March 31, 1984, while he was in Vegas, he suffered an acute attack of emphysema and passed away. Mike spread his ashes in the Golden Trout Wilderness near Lone Pine, where Sheridan had spent many seasons exploring the streams and high mountain lakes of the southern Sierra. It was a place he’d hiked before, where he had found peace and solitude—and even found the elusive golden trout, “a leaping, flashing, dancing, bold ray of living sunlight.” He wrote:

Mount Humphreys was blazing away in the late afternoon sun, looking like a colossal throne against the relentless blue sky. I grinned and started laughing. I’m an eagle (I thought), a big, fat, very thirsty, rollicking eagle who was about to spread his wings and swoop down to Bishop and drink gallons and gallons of cold beer."

Mozambique Bush, The Last Bastion of Remote Africa

Upper headwater of Lugenda River at Metarica Camp Luwire Safaris

Mareth, my daughter with me at Metarica

Views of the Bush flying in to Luwire Safaris

My Old Casa on the Indian Ocean

My habitat for about a year while overseeing design and construction of a small guest lodge in Northern Mozambique. Note, the custom outdoor restroom/shower complete with view of the Indian Ocean. This was a very satisfying set up. I had a wind generator that kept a couple car batteries charged for lights and a small frig. I had a well drilled and we pumped water with a generator once a day for mixing cement and my shower. The shower water was heated by the sun as it lay in the black plastic pipe that brought it from the big black plastic tank we had erected on stilts. I hung the end of the pipe in a tree limb over the shower portion of my bathroom and installed an on off valve. It was a shower any man would lust after, big pressure, hot water, watching the tide come in in the morning or the stars in the evening. AP