He sat comfortably in his favorite camp chair, perched above what he always called “the swimming hole,” a deep pool formed by a sheer granite cliff that pushes the creek north into a sprawling meadow. He didn’t move or make a sound. Instead, he just watched.

It was meditative. Super chill. And he sat there for what seemed like hours. Just watching. Not moving much.

It wasn’t a secret spot — not anymore. A decade ago, it was a hidden little off-the-beaten-track dispersed camping site on the national forest. Then, someone noticed that, for some reason — some inexplicable equation of line-of-sight mathematics — they got a full data signal on their cell phone right from the lip of the canyon.

He couldn’t reasonably complain. Since he figured it out, too, he’d spent weeks camped above the creek, dutifully working thanks to the unprecedented connectivity when it was necessary and sneaking away for an hour or two of lonely, clandestine fly fishing for the creek’s spirited cutthroats when he could. He was, he willfully acknowledged, part of the problem.

But the little angel on his right shoulder cajoled him into understanding that it wasn’t really a problem — more of a consequence that, should life return to normal in the years to come, might fade away. The devil on his left shoulder, though, was adamant. All these damn people are trashing my favorite places. They need to get the hell out of the woods. Yesterday.

He reclined in his chair as a group of kids wandered up the creek from a campsite down below. They never looked up. Never knew they had an audience. For a few minutes, they lofted baitcasters over the pool — from his perch, he could see big globs of nightcrawlers suspended over the ubiquitous red-and-white bobbers.

This piqued the old angler’s interest. There were big fish in that pool. A handful of years earlier, he coaxed a 22-inch cutthroat from under the ledge far beneath his chair. The beast, in predictable cutthroat fashion, rose without a care and hit the ugliest Chernobyl in his fly box. But he hadn’t seen a fish like it since.

He watched carefully as the kitschy globe of plastic floated along the foam line as the creek slowed where the deep pool began. From his perch, and through his polarized sunglasses, he watched as a sizable cutthroat — maybe 18 inches long — appeared out of the ether and rose to check out the mass of bait under the bobber. The fish opened its mouth and took a bite. The bobber dipped. The boy on the other end of the baitcaster tightened his line, but nothing was there.

“I had a bite!” he heard the boy exclaim. “Probably just another little one.” Reeling in his line, the young angler checked out his now-bare hook.

“He took my worms,” he said to his buddy. “I need more.”

“I don’t got no more,” his friend said, shrugging. “Wanna try a salmon egg?”

The boy looked at his bare hook, and then looked out over the flat water of the swimming hole. Back to his hook.

The old angler atop the bluff could read the child’s mind. It was a hot one, this day. Much too warm for his liking, and if it kept up, the creek’s native cutties would slide into predictable holding water over spring holes and in the mouths of the chilly tributaries that helped form the magnificent trout stream. Warm water is a trout’s death sentence.

“Nah,” the boy said. “Let’s go swimming!”

In minutes, the boys were down to their shorts and river shoes, splashing through the deep, cold water of the pool, and doing what boys do. And the old angler grinned. He’d done that. He’d done that a week earlier during the first hot spell, and damn it felt good to cool off after walking the meadow and meticulously casting to trout.

“Good for you,” he said under his breath as the boys frolicked.

Their fun was interrupted by a deep-throated shout. An angry shout. A surly, gruff and … entitled exclamation.

“Hey!” the voice said. Whoever owned it was out of the old angler’s view, around the corner of the rock bluff, likely at the bottom of the trail that led to the swimming hole.”

“Get the hell out of there!” the voice boomed. “This creek is for fishing, not for swimming. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The boys stopped splashing and laughing, and looked back to the tail of the pool, where it flowed over some of the best engineering the old angler had ever seen. There, the creek’s beavers wove a tight wicker of willow boughs and muck, raising the water the pool a good foot. Without the beavers, the swimming hole might just be a wading hole.

The boys’ faces were blank with surprise and, oddly, the old angler thought, shame. Why on earth would they be ashamed? Then, the owner of the booming voice came into view. A man who looked to be about 40, wadered up in a pricey set of breathables and sporting a trendy, waterproof backpack, walked through the water at the edge of the beaver pond. A fly rod bristled from one hand and the haft of a landing net protruded over his left shoulder, as if he were carrying a katana sharp enough to match his attitude.

“Get out of here!” he shouted at the boys. “Go on! Go!”

The boys glared at the fellow, not sure what to do, and clearly intimidated into thinking they’d done something wrong. The shirtless swimmers worked their way back to the shallows with grimaces on their faces.

The old angler sat slowly up in his chair. The boys still had no clue he was there. The gruff fly fisher didn’t either.

“I don’t know how you expect anybody to catch fish in here today,” the fly fisher said. “You’ve ruined it. Ruined it for everybody.”

The old angler slowly shook his head.

“What an asshole,” he muttered under his breath.

The boys disappeared behind the bluff, presumably to gather up their clothes and fishing poles and head on back down the creek from whence they came. The fly fisher took off his canvas fedora (of course it’s a canvas fedora, the old angler thought) and wiped the sweat from his brow. He replaced his hat and put his hands on his hips, glaring out over the now-murky water of the deep swimming hole.

He shook his head slowly, and waded the rest of the way across the creek and started up the canyon. There was some really nice trout water up there, the old angler knew. And, he could tell the fly fisher knew, too.

The dude, still clearly perturbed at having to deal with the public on his public lands, slid into the creek about 20 yards above the swimming hole, and right below a nice run that the old angler knew held a few trout.

This guy had a good cast. A really good cast, the old angler thought. Smooth as sweet cream butter. But he was … precise. One cast left. Drift. One cast middle. Drift. Fish. Fight. Net. Release. Replace net. One cast right. Drift. Move.

And up he went to the next run. Same shit. Different water. Like a machine. An unambiguous, perfect, joyless machine.

The old angler watched as the younger fellow worked his way up the canyon. And it looked like work to his tired eyes. It looked laborious. Arduous. Below him, in the deep pool, a cutthroat came up to grab a caddis.

He looked back at the fly fisher.

Nice cast. Still. Asshole.

And he melted into his chair a bit more, trying to rob the sun of any of his exposed skin as it moved overhead. The shade of an ancient lodgepole filtered most of it, but, now and then, he could feel the seer of the UV rays biting into his summer-tan arms and legs.

A few minutes later, another angler moved into the swimming hole. Younger guy. Probably in his 20s. Slung over his shoulder was what looked to the old angler like a Marlin 4570 — a short-barreled bear gun. Necessary in this well-traveled place? No. But not unheard of. Nevertheless, the old angler frowned.

How little can it be, fella?

The gun-toter was also sporting an ultralight spinning rod. He was moving quickly, wading through the pool in a pair of hiking boots, water be damned. He crossed the creek, flipped a spinner into the deep water for a bit and, catching nothing, trudged off into the trees and up the canyon, clearly in a hurry to get to the upper meadow.

Won’t those two dudes enjoy seeing each other…

He stayed put in his comfy old camp chair. After a bit, he fell asleep.

It didn’t seem like too long, but his eyes flipped open at the gruff sound of the voice.

“Yeah, I caught a few,” the voice said, and the old angler looked down into the canyon below him. The younger fly fisher was walking along the stream, cell phone to his ear. If he’d gone clear up the canyon and into the next meadow … well, damn. He’d been asleep for a good hour or so. “Nothing huge, but there are still a lot of fish in here.”

Wow, the old angler thought. The signal’s gotten even better.

“But you won’t believe this,” the fly fisher said. “When I got to the corner pool, there were two kids in it, stirring it all up and screwing around.” He stopped about on the gravel bar just above the swimming hole.

Corner pool, my ass.

“Yeah, in the water!” he exclaimed into the phone. “Just swimming and making a mess of everything. I didn’t even bother trying to cast a fly over it. I’m sure they spoiled it for days.”

I think so, too. Move along. Asshole.

“Oh, I haven’t told you the best part yet,” the fly fisher said into the phone. He paused to let his phone companion say something. “Oh, yeah. Way better. So I was fishing the upper meadow, right where Quicksand Creek runs in.” He paused. “Yeah, right there.”

He paused again, nodding. “Yeah. Exactly. Anyway, I’m casting over that run, and this guy shows up out of the brush, and he’s packing!” Another pause. “Yeah, a friggin’ gun! A big one. Like, for bears!” Pause. “Never seen one up here. Not even a black bear.”

A longer pause. More nodding.

“And then that sonofabitch high-holed me. Just stepped into the creek and started fishing upstream. You believe that?”

That’s because you deserve each other.

“No respect for propriety. No respect for anything. There’s just too many people out here, and they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know how to act. They’re selfish. They’re trashy. I’m so damn tired of it.”

Another pause.

The devil on your left shoulder, huh?

“No, thankfully he didn’t point the gun at me. Can you imagine? What a douche. What kind of idiot wanders around out here with a gun?” Another pause.

Well, come hunting season ...

“Well, anyway,” the fly fisher said. “I just needed to vent. I can’t stand when people misuse the resource. Yup. Say hi to Cathy and the kids. I’ll catch you later.” The fly fisher unzipped a mesh pocket in his too-expensive waders and deposited his phone into it. Then, as he started walking toward the swimming hole, an unfortunately stupid little cutthroat rose to eat a caddis.

The fly fisher stopped in his tracks and backed off a bit. He saw the rise, too. Acting as if he was sneaking up on a Nazi foxhole, the fly fisher knelt low, unhooked the fly from his fly rod and started to false cast. To his credit, the old angler grudgingly admitted, the fly fisher cast away from the pool, not over it.

When he figured he got the distance right, he flipped the cast and pulled it a foot or two short so it would drift right over the feeding fish. There was no hesitation, and from his perch, sitting quietly, the old angler watched as the eager cutty darted up through the water column to eat the fly fisher’s perfectly placed dry fly.

But what the fly fisher didn’t see, the old angler did. Even as the little cutty that fell victim to the caddis moved on the fly, a bigger shadow lurked beneath. A larger fish — maybe the fish that got lucky with a mouthful of worms earlier — showed interest in the dry fly, but the little trout moved on it first.

The fly fisher lifted his rod and the line pulled tight. Excellent hookset. In seconds, the little cutthroat lay atop the rubberized mesh of the landing net. The barbless fly pulled easily from its jaw, and the fly fisher tilted the net and let the little fish go. No wasted motion. Precision. Perfection.

Jeez. Come on. Have some fun, Captain Serious.

The fly fisher looked at his smartwatch and quickly reeled in. He strung his fly on his rod, and slowly worked his way to the lower end of the swimming hole, where he gingerly crossed the creek and then disappeared.

The sun, now a bit lower on the horizon, reflected the rocks onto the water beneath the old angler, still quiet and still in his favorite old camp chair. Finally, the itch moved him. His little 3-weight leaned up against the old lodgepole, and it looked ready for action.

The old angler reached over and grabbed the rod and achingly stood up from the comfort of the camp chair. He found the trail down the bluff and carefully crab-walked down the steep slope, taking care to avoid the stinging nettle at the bottom. He wandered over to the swimming hole and stepped into the chilled water.

Not perfect, after a hot day under the sun, he noticed, but still plenty trouty. He walked along the edge of the intricately constructed beaver dam and crossed the creek. Once there, he stepped up onto the far bank and looked back to the top of the bluff. There sat his empty chair in plain sight.

I can’t believe nobody saw me. I can’t believe nobody even looked.

He wandered over to the head of the pool and stepped into the creek, right where the fly fisher made his last cast of the day. He unhooked the big Chernobyl from the rod and let out some line. He made a few false casts and, when the distance looked right, he dropped the big, foam bug at the top of the pool and let the current take it.

The bug, likely just a silhouette to the fish beneath it, drifted lazily with the slow current toward the sheer rock wall, where, if it got there unmolested, it would likely be pulled under the water and pushed into the depths of the swimming hole with the force of a washing machine agitator.

But it didn’t go unmolested. About halfway into the drift, a big head pushed from the water and grabbed the ugly fly. The old angler lifted his rod, and it pulled tight to the giant cutthroat he’d seen twice over the course of the afternoon.

“I love this place,” he said under his breath.