The brochure was impressive, though, and its descriptions made Troutwaters Lodge sound like a welcome change from the mediocrity of my recent Alaska trip, so I turned to my calendar to search for dates when I might go. It looked as if a three-day slot in mid-June was the only time I’d be able to get away. That was less than the week I’d been invited to stay, but it seemed the best I could do while spring hatches might still be under way, so I sat down and wrote an email to Seifer’s assistant. Acknowledging receipt of the “generous invitation,” I offered effusive thanks for the same, outlined the dates I had in mind, and asked if they would be acceptable. “Should that prove the case,” I added, “I will need directions to Troutwaters Lodge.”
Within an hour I received a surprising answer: “While we are disappointed you will not be able to spend a full week with us, the dates you have proposed are fine and we will be pleased to welcome you then. As for transportation to the lodge, it will be our pleasure to send one of our executive jets to pick you up at any airport you designate and fly you directly to the lodge, which has its own airstrip. This is a service we plan to offer our guests whenever possible. Please advise which airport would be most convenient for you and what time of day we should meet you there.” The email was signed “Grant Sharp, Executive Assistant to Mr. Seifer.”
I had been privileged to stay at some very posh fishing resorts, but this was the first time one had offered private jet transportation. Perhaps the mysterious Troutwaters Lodge was indeed the ultimate fly-fishing destination.
The sparkling-new Gulfstream jet waiting for me at Community Airport was a spectacular sight. It was painted white on the outside except for the dark-blue letters “TW” in large script just behind the cockpit. The “W” trailed off into what looked like a series of waves that extended the full length of the fuselage, with a large, highly colored rainbow trout leaping from the water about halfway to the airplane’s tail. A pretty, petite uniformed flight attendant welcomed me aboard and invited me to choose one of the leather-upholstered reclining seats, then offered coffee or something stronger. I took her up on the latter and was served a classic single-malt. I was the only passenger.
I sipped the drink and looked around. The interior cabin walls were painted pale blue and decorated with colorful images of leaping, cavorting trout—browns, rainbows, and cutthroat, as promised in the brochure. The front of the cabin held a wide-screen television, DVD player, and a small library of fly-fishing DVDs. I sat back, relaxed, finished the first Scotch, and ordered another. Never had I experienced such luxurious surroundings or VIP treatment.
The flight took a little less than three hours, during most of which I snoozed, and it was midafternoon when I came awake just as we were beginning our descent toward a single long runway in a wide grassy valley. A large hangar was visible near the far end of the runway and a black Suburban—one like the Secret Service uses—was parked nearby.
The landing was smooth and the jet taxied to the hangar and stopped. The flight attendant opened the door and I got up reluctantly from the comfortable recliner, stretched, thanked the attendant, and bounded down the steps. A young man with a friendly freckled face and a mop of straw-colored hair was waiting for me. He introduced himself as David Dalton and led me to the Suburban, invited me to get in, then returned to the aircraft to collect my bags, which he loaded into the spacious rear of the vehicle. He started the Suburban and we began driving on an unpaved but well-graded road that ascended the gentle slope of the valley toward the tree line at its top.
In response to my questions, Dalton said it was about a ten-minute drive to the lodge, where he was employed as a guide.
“Will you be guiding me?” I asked.
“Probably not,” he said. “I think Mr. Seifer wants to do that himself.”
“Mr. Seifer? Is he here?”
“Yes, he’s at the lodge, waiting for you.”
I thought about that for a moment, then asked how many other guests were staying at the lodge.
“None,” Dalton answered. “Just you. In fact, you’re the first.”
“I’m the first? I don’t understand. Why is that?”
“I’m not really sure. You’ll have to ask the boss.”
When the lodge came in view I did a double-take. It was much bigger than I’d supposed; the photos in the brochure hadn’t done it justice. But the architect had fit it neatly into a cove in the pine woods, which surrounded the handsome building on three sides, so it didn’t overwhelm its surroundings.
Dalton stopped the Suburban in front of three wooden steps leading up to a covered veranda that extended the full width of the building. He got out, retrieved my bags, and led me up the steps and through double wooden doors, each carved with images of leaping trout.
A vacant reception desk was on our left as we entered and beyond that was an elevator. But I hardly noticed either one because I was staring ahead into one of the greatest rooms I’d ever seen. Pine-paneled walls rose on every side to a cathedral-style ceiling so far overhead I had to crane my neck to see it. The floor of polished pine was covered in the center by a thick carpet of muted blues and grays, somehow suggesting moving water; here and there darker shapes were woven into the fabric, resembling the shadows of trout.
But the room’s real centerpiece was a giant stone fireplace, open in front and back. A fire was blazing in the middle, a real fire of pine logs, not one of those phony gas deals. A tapered chimney made of river rock rose from the fireplace until it disappeared amid gloomy rafters far overhead. Every natural color of rock was represented in the chimney, each stone carefully arranged by size, shape, and color in relation to the others. It was the most magnificent display of the stonemason’s art I’d ever seen. “Wow!” I exclaimed softly.
“Pretty impressive, isn’t it?” Dalton said.
“It’s more than impressive. It’s incredible! It looks like the inside of a cathedral.”
“Yeah. We call it the Temple of Trout. It took three years to build this place, mostly because of the time it took to finish that chimney.”
“I can see why you call it a temple.” I noticed a dark stone mantelpiece set into the chimney just above the fireplace, with some words engraved on its side. I moved closer so I could read them and recognized a familiar quote from Izaak Walton: “If he be an honest angler, the east wind may never blow when he goes a-fishing.”
“Why is that there?” I asked Dalton.
“That’s one of Mr. Seifer’s favorite quotes. He has some strong opinions about angling ethics, as I’m sure you’ll find out. Let’s go meet him.”
He led the way around the fireplace and for the first time I noticed a solitary figure sitting in an easy chair near the back of the room. He was reading a magazine, and from the cover photo I recognized it as the latest issue of Salmo, which I took as a good sign. As the two of us approached, he put down the magazine, got to his feet, and stepped forward, hand outstretched. “Carl Seifer,” he said as I took his hand.
“Jake Stone. Thank you for inviting me here. This place is unbelievable!”
“I’m glad you approve. And thank you for coming.”
Seifer wasn’t what I’d expected. Since he’d made his fortune in software, I had thought he would be a quintessential geek, stooped from too many hours hunched over a computer keyboard and wearing ultra-thick glasses, but he was nothing like that. He was young, in his thirties, tall and slim, and looked more like an athlete than a software developer. He wore a flats-fishing shirt with the sleeves rolled partway up, cargo pants, and sandals. His hair was short and dark, almost but not quite a buzz cut. The most striking feature about his face was a pair of bushy black eyebrows, which sloped peculiarly inward to form a shallow V, giving him a perpetual serious look or the suggestion of a frown. Beneath those bushy brows was a handsome face with a pair of dark eyes that fairly sparkled with radioactive intensity. His manner was almost shy, but he gripped my hand with fierce strength. “Dave here will get you settled,” he said. “Then
come on back and I’ll give you a little tour.”
“Fine. I’m looking forward to it.”
I followed Dalton, who was still carrying my bags. We passed another mantelpiece set into the backside of the fireplace, a twin of the one in front. It also had words engraved and I read them as we passed: “Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”
Dalton saw me look. “Sigmund Freud said that,” he informed me.
“Freud? I didn’t know he was a fly fisherman.”
“I don’t think he was.”
He led the way past the fireplace and a large bookcase filled with books. I glanced at the titles and saw they were all about fly fishing and trout. We rounded a corner and entered a wide corridor; on the left a doorway and a large window opened into a room containing what appeared to be a well-stocked fly shop. A man inside was arranging T-shirts on a shelf near the window. Each shirt had the Troutwaters logo. The man looked up and waved. I waved back.
“That’s Andy Vanzetti,” Dalton said. “He runs our fly shop. His wife, Amy, is the lodge manager. Her office is behind the shop. Right now she’s in Denver, ordering supplies.”
“I don’t see any customers.”
“That’s because you’re the first guest.” Dalton continued down the corridor to another door on our left marked “Gentlemen.” Across the hall a similar door was marked “Ladies.” “These are our tackle rooms,” Dalton said, pushing open the door on the left.
We stepped into what looked like an NBA locker room. A series of semi-private cubicles stood along one side, each with an upholstered bench and a metal locker. Opposite the bench an overhead metal rod held several empty boot hangers. We stopped at the second cubicle. “First one’s Seifer’s,” Dalton said. “This one’s yours.” He set my bags on the bench, withdrew a card from an electronic lock on the double-doored locker and reinserted it. There was a soft click, a little green light went on and he opened the doors. “Do you have all your fishing stuff in one bag?”
“Yes,” I said, pointing to it. He hefted it into the locker and closed the doors. There was another soft click and the green light went out. He handed me the key card, led the way out of the cubicle and pointed toward the end of the corridor. “Showers are down there. It’s the same set-up for ladies on the other side. There’s a door at the end that leads outside where we’ll pick people up to take them fishing in the morning. There’s also a place where you can rinse off your wading shoes when you get back.”
“Looks like you’ve thought of everything.”
“I hope so. Maybe you can tell us if we haven’t. Anyway, let’s get you to your room.”
We headed back down the corridor into the great room. Seifer was still seated in his easy chair, reading the latest Salmo. Dalton stopped in front of the elevator I’d noticed on the way in, punched a button, and the door opened quietly. “There are also two stairways,” he said. “I’ll show you where they are.”
The elevator walls were painted the same color as the cabin of the Gulfstream, with the same galaxy of cavorting trout. Dalton punched a button numbered “2,” the only choice. When the doors opened, we stepped out onto a balcony that ran around the entire second-level perimeter of the great room. Doors in the outside wall apparently led to guest rooms.
Dalton led the way around the balcony. We turned a corner and saw a short, bulky man leaning against the balcony railing, looking down where Seifer sat reading. He wore black jeans and a short-sleeved gray shirt that revealed heavily muscled arms. He had short salt-and-pepper hair and a bulldog face. He didn’t even look up as we approached.
“This is Anders,” Dalton said. “Anders, meet Jake Stone, our first guest.”
Anders turned, thrust out a large hand that swallowed mine, nodded without saying anything, and then returned his gaze to the room below.
“Anders doesn’t say much,” Dalton confided as we resumed our trek along the balcony.
“Does he have a first name? Or is that his first name?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know. He always just calls himself Anders.”
“Is he on the staff here?”
“Yeah. He’s sort of a butler in a way. He looks after the fireplace, empties the ashtrays, picks up empty glasses, things like that. He also tends bar part-time. But his real job is bodyguard.”
“Bodyguard? He didn’t look like he was armed.”
“Oh, he is. Ankle gun. He’s a former Boston cop. You don’t want to mess with him.”
We passed several other rooms and stopped in front of a door with an electronic lock like the one in the tackle room. Dalton removed the card sticking out of it, reinserted it, and there was the familiar click and green light. He pushed open the door, withdrew the card and gave it to me. “Your room key,” he said, then led me into the room.
It was huge. There were two queen-sized beds, each with a coverlet in familiar blue with cavorting trout all over it. The walls were painted off-white, which surprised me until I saw the array of Tommy Brayshaw prints of trout in fluid motion, each image superimposed on a framed backdrop of that same familiar blue used throughout the lodge. There was also a large framed text written in calligraphy, and I went to get a closer look while Dalton retrieved a folding suitcase stand from a closet and placed my bag on top of it.
The framed text was a verse:
“Man is his own star, and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate.
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angles are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”
“The Honest Man’s Fortune,” by John Fletcher, 1647
I was beginning to sense a familiar theme here.
Dalton gave me a tour. A large cabinet housed a 48-inch flat screen TV and DVD player. “We have satellite reception here with hundreds of channels, so you can watch just about anything you want,” he said. At the end of the room we rounded a corner and entered a cozy sitting room with a picture window looking out on the woods. There were two leather-upholstered easy chairs and a desk with computer keyboard and monitor. “The computer has Internet access so you can check your emails or do pretty much anything you want,” Dalton said. “It’s also tied into the fly-fishing and fisheries-science databases downstairs. I’m sure Mr. Seifer will explain all that.”
“This isn’t a room, it’s a suite,” I told Dalton.
“Nope. It’s just one of our ordinary guest rooms.”
“That’s hard to believe. What does it cost to stay here, anyway?”
Dalton looked a little uncomfortable. “You know, I don’t really know the answer to that. You’d better ask Mr. Seifer.” He seemed anxious to change the subject. “You need a few minutes to freshen up, or are you ready to head downstairs and take the grand tour with him?”
I was ready and we went out onto the balcony, where Anders still leaned against the railing. Dalton led the way to a stairwell in the nearest corner and we started down. We had taken only two or three steps when Dalton stopped. I looked past him and saw one of the largest human beings I’d ever seen coming up the stairs. He was at least six-foot-five and close to three hundred pounds, with a great round mahogany-colored face and shiny obsidian hair pulled back and tied in a knot. He wore jeans and a denim shirt that strained to cover his massive chest and shoulders, and flashed a billboard-sized grin as he tried to flatten himself against the stairwell wall so we could get by.
“Hey, Hiapo, meet our first guest,” Dalton said. “This is Jake Stone. Jake, meet Hiapo Ulutala.” I reached past Dalton and took Hiapo’s gigantic hand, which squeezed mine like a hydraulic press.
“Hey, man, are we glad to see you,” Hiapo said. “Now we can open this place and get going.” He pushed himself up as close to the wall as he could, but there was still barely room enough for us to squeeze past him single-file and continue down the stairs.
“Hiapo’
s another bodyguard,” Dalton explained when we were out of his hearing.
“He looks like an NFL lineman.”
“Almost was. He was a tackle at USC, sixth-round draft choice by the 49ers, who put him on their practice squad. But he finally got cut. Tried pro wrestling, but he’s too nice a guy for that crowd. Took a job as a rent-a-cop, liked it, and decided to get some professional training in martial arts and firearms. Now he’s expert in both. He’s one of the friendliest people you’ll ever meet, but I’d bet on him in a stand-up fight with anybody.”
“Is he Samoan?”
“Hawaiian.”
We reached the end of the stairwell and stepped out into the great room, where Seifer was waiting.
I had thought Seifer shy and retiring when we met, but he started talking nonstop as he led me on a tour of the great room. He demonstrated a computer system with a digital catalog of books in the lodge fly-fishing library and links to databases containing thousands of papers on fisheries science and entomology. We inspected display cases filled with an amazing collection of cane rods by some of the great master builders and others containing priceless antique fly reels. Nearly half of one wall was covered with dozens of framed fly plates displaying row upon row of classic patterns tied by some of history’s greatest tyers, from Theodore Gordon to Harry Darbee, Lee Wulff to Preston Jennings. I’d visited several fly-fishing museums, but had never seen anything like this.
We passed the entrance to a large dining room where another Izaak Walton quote was carved into the wooden frame over the double doors: “She and I both love all anglers, they be such honest, civil, quiet men.”
There it was again, the word “honest.”
I noticed Anders trailing silently behind us as Seifer led the way to a back room with a large window admitting late afternoon light. The room was furnished with four tables, each equipped with a high-intensity desk lamp and a fly-tying vise. “This is the fly-tying room,” he said unnecessarily.
The walls were lined with chests of shallow drawers, each containing different fly-tying materials. All were labeled, but Seifer demonstrated “the easy way to find things,” another computer with a digital catalog of materials. He clicked on an entry for “grizzly hackle” and a small white light appeared on one of the drawers. I opened the drawer and found a half-dozen brand-new Grade-A grizzly necks.
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