Sunday's postcard, and a return to the Redband realm

August 11, 2024

Aug 11, 2024

The rapids east of The Big Eddy in west Spokane

Liquid refreshment, and wild fish

Last month, for my adopted home town of Spokane, was the hottest July on record, by nearly two degrees. I don’t have air-conditioning, but I do have a bicycle, earplugs, a mask, snorkel and fins. As of yesterday I also have a new boisterously blue bathing suit, having worn a hole in my old one (I sit on rocks before and after my swims).

So this is how I get to cool off, with an afternoon commute westward on the Centennial Trail, to “The Big Eddy.” It is an opening in the Spokane River a mile and a half downstream of the T.J. Meenach Bridge where, each year, thousands of runners cross the Spokane River before trudging up “Doomsday Hill.”

A longer story of how I meet redband trout *Oncorhynchus mykiss gairdnerii), the world’s fastest freshwater fish can be found here, in a cover story for The Inlander that ran last September. The challenge this year was to find a new Tedband companion (or two) who’d let me swim with him/her. And I have found one.

His name is Clarence, and her name is Clarisse. Let's just say “Clare” for the purposes of the captions below. But it’s the same fish—as it’s nearly impossible to tell the genders apart short of disrupting a fish’s life in a way that I would not like mine disrupted. Clare favors a stretch of the river that is beautiful on the surface, but deep and gnarly beneath, so I have to be a bit careful. It is an urban river, and Clare (for some reason) hangs out where some steel and conrete debris has come to rest. But what a beautiful fish. Long story short, as my swim season is at a mid-point, I can share the evidence so far. Enjoy….

Share The Daily Rhubarb