Matt Smythe
THE TARPON AND THE DAMAGE DONE
6:30 a.m. skiff running wide open and silent but for the already warm racing wind sun starting its upward creep steady growing fire and...
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Matt Smythe
- Apr 24, 2012
RIVER-RIGHT
I pull up my chair most mornings and find no words. The sun is up. Traffic is purposefully outbound. I watch. Drink coffee. Listen...
Matt Smythe
- Feb 22, 2012
THE REMINDER
It’s nineteen degrees and still dark. By dawn it’ll be colder. Overnight we were bombed with the season’s first real powder and it’s...
Matt Smythe
- Feb 7, 2012
WE FISH BIG BECAUSE IT’S THERE
Until 5,500 years ago this river lived a small existence. Long before glacial melt had its way and rammed the sonofabitch clear through...
Matt Smythe
- Jan 18, 2012
THE VIEW FROM MY BOOKSHELVES
My home office has got some hellafied built-in bookshelves. As a matter of fact, those bookshelves and the barn were the two things that...
Matt Smythe
- Aug 19, 2011
TWO MORE FROM THE MOUNTAIN
PADDLING Fat white-gray clouds on blue beyond the rugged pine shores, east beyond Indian and Wolf Mountains, west beyond Chaumont Swamp...
Matt Smythe
- Aug 15, 2011
VIEW FROM THE FIRE TOWER
I’m reminded of a poem by Gary Snyder, written while a fire lookout in the North Cascades. Months at a time he’d spend in service and...
Matt Smythe
- Aug 13, 2011
JUDGING DISTANCE
Ten foot kayak in eight feet of water. Settled into the glass between a field of lily pads and a line of flooded pine stumps— trees that...
Matt Smythe
- Aug 3, 2011
ALIVE ON ARRIVAL
this road begs a truck and a full tank of gas windows down tire-tread serenade humidity and cool 4 a.m. headlights bugs on the...
Matt Smythe
- Jul 18, 2011
WHEN THE RAIN FINALLY FELL
parched cordwood weeks stacked one on another brittle browning bare feet grass chickens in the garden in the rhubarb huffing and puffing...
Matt Smythe
- Jun 24, 2011
READING IN PEACE
Obama just announced a withdrawal of 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year. 33,000 by September of next year. This is a...
Matt Smythe
- Jun 15, 2011
SLIDE GUITAR
She asks Tell me, sad eyes What would it take to get a dance? I don’t answer My silence doesn’t register as an answer She asks again I...
Matt Smythe
- Oct 6, 2010
MORNING BROWNS WITH DAD, Installment 6, Thesis
* The 6th installment in a series of sections from my Masters thesis, which was (in large part) about fishing. [20] Villager Restaurant....
Matt Smythe
- Jun 3, 2010
A BOY’S FISHING ROUTE, Installment 5, Thesis
[2] I. Not yet sun-up. 10-speed with fishing pole across the handlebars. Tackle box in backpack. Maybe a snack. Maybe some paper route...
Matt Smythe
- Apr 9, 2010
OLD MAN RIVER, Installment 4, Thesis
Another from the thesis. I spend a total of two months in the Delta doing research for a book about the Delta Blues. One day I had a...
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