When Is a Man by Aaron Shepard

At the edge of a pool, he spotted a flash of movement. He crouched and angled the scope until he saw a broader portion of the creek. Cutthroat hovered close to the surface, their small, football-shaped bodies dwarfed by the bull trout staging below them. The bellies of the male bulls blazed, iridescent and molten. In the shallower water, a female trout with one of his new, bright blue tags scraped the gravel with industrious flicks of her tail. As she dug her redd, the finer sands rose and glittered. Diffused, refracted light in the floating sediment created a distorted world—each pebble, each blue-tinged halo on the trout’s flank, preternaturally glorious.

    No one had come by the camp since Jory, and he finally felt alone—felt it too keenly, choked up by certain sights: the silver flash and distant rumble of a jet passing overhead, a satellite breaking loose from the static cluster of stars to continue its monotonous loop. Clouds blew in toward the end of the week, and the night air grew colder. Huckleberries ripened by the paths down to the water, and the leaves of the ash and willow began to turn. Sometimes a mist rose in the early mornings and filled the river valley, the landscape showing the grey face of its isolation.
    He began following the Immitoin upstream with the fish scope, a little smug that he was getting into the secret stretches of river reserved for people like Jory. Dixon’s Gold said that nearly every tributary of the Immitoin had been prospected. He searched for old things—pans and tins, a knife, the sole of a boot. History gave context to the wildness, mapped and defined it somewhat. He was someone who needed scale, limits. The early stories of settlement were all tipped lanterns and lightning strikes, avalanches and mudslides.
    In the hills are the charred or buried remains of villages that had believed, for brief, shining years, that they would become prosperous cities, hubs of culture and wealth. They imported pianos and established health spas on the mineral spring that some prospector had stumbled upon. They became expendable when the railroads changed the face of the frontier. Towns died before their names could be put on a proper map. They were reclaimed by the forest and forgotten.
    One day he wandered up a small stream, its banks lush with false hellebore, arnica, and foamflower. The water tasted floral, alpine. He saw nothing of interest, other than a few rainbow trout and sculpins, and returned to the Immitoin. A shadowy cluster of large fish dashed into a trough that ran along the opposite bank. Water buffeted his knees and hips as he squatted in the gravel to peer through the scope. The riverbed, beautifully illuminated for most of its width, dropped away into indigo darkness as it met the trough.
    As he manoeuvred to get a broader look, he stepped deeper into the current and, forgetting himself, crouched too low. Water poured into his waders, the loose substrate slid away beneath him, and the torrent yanked him underneath, slamming his face into the riverbed. A high-pitched note sang in his ears as he began to slide downstream. He planted his arms and thrust his eyes and nose above the surface—he needed to cough water out, but the river battered his lips, seeking entry. His body seized with the shock of frigid water, his hands numb, the swamped waders a heavy sack he would drown in.
    He managed to wrench himself sideways and turn over so that he looked downstream, the current buffeting his shoulders as he coughed and sucked in air. Then the bottom dropped out again and he tumbled forward and beneath. The water was silver and disordered, flecks of light within bubbles that gathered and attacked. His feet hit the shallows, and he managed to take another quick gulp of air. The river hauled him over rocks and tumbled him this way and that, as if he were wood. He flailed his arms trying to stay upright, and he choked and sobbed between breaths.
    He twisted toward the