Fishing with Nathen

Our brother-in-law Nathen is a super outdoor woodsman sort of guy. If there were ever a freshly eaten grandmother in the forest somewhere, he'd be the kinda guy that wouldn't even think twice before volunteering to cut her out of the big bad wolf. Back in August he invited us to go "up the canyon" with him to do some fishing. For those of you who didn't grow up in a mountainous region, "going up the canyon" is a local term, which loosely interpreted means to pile into a truck, go on a two hour drive through windy rock-ridden roads, and get really dirty and sweaty. The Nathen fishing trip was no exception. I learned that going up the canyon with your wife is a lot more fun than it ever was with the Boy Scouts. Here's why:Sara is a closet camper. There's no way she'll agree with me, but I think she really likes to go out of doors and enjoy the wilderness, regardless of her frequent tirades to the contrary. If it weren't for the dirt, wild animals, lack of toilet paper, and e-coli, I think she'd be a mountain man woman. Observe the picture above. That's not an "eeeew" face, it's an "I'm so proud of myself" face. In the middle of a long silent spell during our drive to the lake Sara exclaimed, "Are we there yet, I really want to kill a fish". This is the girl I married. Here's a picture of what Nathen did the entire time we were extracting fish from the lake. None of us were any good at tying the line, casting, hook removal, or sharing, so he ended up spending all three hours going from one hopeless fishing novice to the next fixing our mistakes. The less queasy among us (me) even got a fish gutting lesson from Nathen, which ended up being really cool. I had no idea that fish came pre-equipped with handles for facilitating disembowelment. Nathen's a great guy. I wonder why he hasn't invited us back to the lake? It probably has something to do with our moving to Seattle.
We each succeeded in fish catching at least once. The one I got was a funky looking albino freak, so I was forced to return it to the white demons that spawned it. Nathen instructed me to throw it back, which I did by way of a very manly overhanded football pitch. I was then ridiculed by my family members for not knowing that "throw it back" is fishing lingo for "gently release into the water". I'm not sorry for the maltreatment of the albino mutant, he was probably one of those weird roller-coaster loving fish anyway and I provided for him the thrill of his aquatic life. That's the kind of nature lover that I am.