For this week, I thought that since fall will be here shortly and Half-Pounder steelhead season is almost here, I thought you might enjoy a reprint of an article I wrote about fifteen years ago about American River steelhead fishing.
It’s about five in the afternoon on a summer day in 1973, and I’m slouched on the couch (which also served as my bed) of our rental house, drinking a PBR, which was real cheap stuff then, and watching the news when my roommate Chris comes through the front door looking kind of lit up from either too much beer or pot, or probably both, with a Cheshire cat grin on his face. With barely his foot through the door, he excitedly began recounting the adventures of his day, which included an afternoon at a clothing-optional beach on the shores of the American River that flows through our city, Sacramento, CA.
Well, I was totally unaware that there was such a place in our small city that wasn’t exactly on the cutting edge of modern California culture, and of course I proceeded to pump him for information about the lurid details of his afternoon at the nude beach. His recollection of the day’s events didn’t exactly include the kind of experiences that I had always assumed one would have at a place where everyone was naked, but it did pique my interest, and I made a note to go check it out the following day.
So, the next day I took the directions he provided and followed a trail through the willows along the river to what I hoped was going to fulfill my fantasies, at least from a thirty-year-old’s perspective. After a while, the jungle of willows thinned out, and through the branches I could see the glimmer of the river. I pushed on, and upon pushing aside the last willow branches, there emerged a wide strip of sand, a volleyball net stretched between two iron posts sticking out of the water, and scores of twenty-somethings sitting in beach chairs or lying on towels, cavorting as they do on any beach on the coastline of California, except that we were about a hundred miles inland.
I squinted hard to see what I hoped was a lovely, naked, hard-bodied young woman that I was sure must be lying among all those sun lovers, but I wasn’t having any luck.
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