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Show Volume II , Issue III Page 19 The OGDEN VALLEY NEWS December 1999 Fishing cont. from page 18 knows what he is doing.” Just a few seconds later, I set the hook on a beautiful German Brown right in front of him. Memories and experiences like that are priceless, I will always remember that moment and the friend I made. Tyler Pendleton, Student Journal Mike Vause, director of Honors, cooked a hearty cholesterol laden breakfast before our second day of fishing. Students gathered around Peter and Dave as they shared experiences of their trips to Siberia. Soon we were all entwined in their adventures, along with their thoughts on fly-fishing, conservation and the outdoors. Casual conversation over fried eggs and whole-wheat pancakes is a good way to start a day of fishing. bits by cattle really. This is a spectacular place, Flaming Gorge, so that was a great opener. That was an awful good bunch of kids, kids that are willing to do that, stand around in the rain [to] get rigged up. As I know from hard personal experience, dry fly fishing can be very frustrating indeed for a beginner, it’s difficult. The students were all great sports. I think I got to talk to all of them before the smoke cleared there. Some were shyer than others and came up kind of slow, when I turned around there a student was sitting next to you. I had a real good time with all of them. Not too many of them are in my line of work which is English literature and American literature but even those who weren’t wanted to know what I was made of.” Adam Taintor, Student Journal - Members of WSU’s Honors course, Epistemology of Fly Fishing, gather for a group picture. Tuesday morning, Jack Dennis and Gary LaFontaine, world famous fly-fishing author, gave a two-hour seminar on the banks of the Green river. Accuracy casting to rising fish, matching the hatch, and Gary, suffering from Lou Gehrig’s Disease, sat on a rock and gave a magnificent lecture using students for his show-and-tell. They were filming a television show on the Green and were gracious enough to spend some time with the students. Trout rising just above the boat launch made it harder to focus on the instruction, but we all appreciated being taught by experts in such a setting. After Dave helped us all tie on our first rig, a two fly arrangement bound to get tangled sooner or later, we started up the river for one last chance to complete the final exam. I listened to Peter talk about chasing tigers in China early Tuesday morning while we had breakfast. Later, Peter and I talked as we made our way to the vehicles to head home after a days worth of fishing. We talked about how the day went, and we compared our fish stories. He had a great day of fishing, while I only caught one fish. it didn’t matter, we both had fun. At Pizza Hut in the evening, I sat next to Peter during dinner. I got to listen to some more of his stories. I even asked him who his favorite musician was and he answered Bach. How could I not like this guy, we had Bach and fishing in common. Nicholas Demas, Student Journal When asked how he felt the field trip had gone, Matthiessen replied, “I enjoyed it very much. First of all, I had never been on that part of the Green. Where I had seen the Green before was way upstream and it’s a much smaller river all hammered to My understanding and appreciation of fly-fishing has grown tremendously during this semester and I believe my understanding of the world around me has increased as well. I have learned that physics and biology, literature and philosophy are not just something I learn in class but whose threads are woven throughout everyday and every activity of my life. Blynn Simmons, Student Journal Peter never let the conversation lull and he was always willing to bring people into the group. I felt so welcome around him and never once did he make me feel like I was this unlearned fly fisher person and that he didn’t have time for me. It was a pleasure being in his presence. On one occasion, I began by discussing the particulars of a peanut butter sandwich with Peter Matthiessen and he told me a story from his boyhood. Due to the fact that he likes birds so well, he found an injured bird and took it home. He nurtured it back to health, but the bird’s wing still hadn’t healed. He would occasionally feed the bird peanut butter on Ritz crackers. There came a point when the bird refused to eat anything other than the Ritz crackers with peanut butter, so consequently that was [what] it got fed every day. One morning Peter got up and went outside to see the bird. He found it dead on the porch. After his brief grieving process, he proceeded to do an autopsy and discovered the entire inside of the bird filled with undigested Ritz crackers. He said he was so amazed that he wrote a letter to the company demanding that they send him an entire lifetime supply of crackers or he would report the incident. Of course, they never replied. This was such a fun time for me, I just wanted to sit there all day and talk with this man. The Legacy Highway: M istaking a Land Use/Design Issue for a Highway Capacity Problem or Eagle Nests Give W ay to Eagle Hardware: Is This Progress? by Keith Bartholomew, Associate Director, The Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment It is well-understood that the outcome of most problem-solving processes is determined by how the a problem itself is defined at the outset. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the way state transportation agencies address transportation and congestion issues. In most cases, these agencies begin the process, not by asking how to improve the quality of people’s lives by allowing better access to needed activities and services, but by asking how to increase vehicle throughput in a given corridor. With that as the question, it is no wonder that the answer most agencies give is new and bigger highways. The local example of this phenomenon is the Legacy Highway. Like their counterparts in other parts of the country, state and regional leaders who are advocating for the construction of the Legacy are trying to use a new freeway to address what is not, at base-level, a transportation problem. It is, rather, a land use planning and design problem. Unfortunately, the government agencies looking at the Legacy have declined to look at the real issues, preferring instead to stick with the “tried and failed” strategies of decades past. As they say, when you only have a hammer, all problems look like nails. In this case, the nail is traffic congestion. Eighty-eight percent of trips made in the U.S. are in private vehicles of some sort. Basically, any one with a car drives it pretty much for every trip. Of course, our dependency on the car didn’t arrive, full-grown in the 1990s; we’ve been building it for decades. Annual miles traveled increased 75% between 1973 and 1993. More than three times the rate of population growth. Road and street mileage during that period increased only 2.6%. This, of course, has led to increased congestion levels, with the percentage of rush hour vehicle miles traveled under congested conditions increasing from 41% in 1975 to 69% in 1993. How do we solve this congestion problem? We know one solution that does not work. Expanding or adding new highways will not reduce traffic congestion in the long-term. This conclusion has been observed anecdotally on a number of occasions. It always seemed that no sooner had Robert Moses added a new bridge to Manhattan, the bridge would be full to capacity without appreciable decreases in traffic on the pre-existing bridges. Legacy cont. on page 21 3 6 7 5 Ri ve rrda da le Rd. Riv 3 9 4 -2 6 4 7 WE’RE M OV I N G T O: Come S ee Us 1893 N. W ASHINGT ON BL VD VD.. ASHINGTON BLVD NOR TH OGDEN , UT NORTH New Phone 737-4781 HOME OF THE EXPRESS LANE SERVICE $10OFF $5OFF $20OFF ALIGNMENT OIL CHANGE Most Cars, Trucks Extra. Not valid with any other special. 1893 N. Washington Blvd. North Ogden store Only. Expires1/15/00. Most Cars, Trucks Extra. Not valid with any other special. 1893 N. Washington Blvd. North Ogden store Only. Expires 1/15/00. COMPLETE BRAKE SERVICE Most vehicles. Not valid with any other special. 1893 N. Washington Blvd. North Ogden store Only.Expires 1/15/00. |