Jimmy

16x20

Oil on Linen
SOLD

One of my favorite scenes from Bruce Brown's classic, The Endless Summer, is Robert August and Mike Hinson trout fishing in New Zealand. Right after graduating college, I attempted to follow the South Pacific leg of their famous journey. With the exception of Tahiti and the West Coast of Australia, I was able to cover most of it with an cheap open ended plane ticket and a willingness to hitchhike during a time that was still relatively safe in the countries I visited. The North and South Islands of New Zealand were by far my favorites with their rocky coast lines, green mountainous terrain, and crystal clear trout filled lakes and streams.
After arriving in Auckland, I thumbed down to Lake Taupo and got a start on catching some of the stocked brown and rainbow trout there. I had a telescope light spinning rod that I could easily stow in my backpack, and after a few days of learning some tricks from locals there, I headed down to Tangariro National Park. There I hiked the alpine trails for about three days fishing the more remote streams. 
A couple of days later, I returned back to the base visitor center to resupply. While washing some clothes, I found a pay phone and made a international call to a college friend back in Chapel Hill to check in and leave word of where I was. These were the days before internet, smart phones, and email, so land line phone tag was all we had. It was then that I learned that my old roommate, John, had cut away from this travel group in Australia and was flying to New Zealand to try and find me. He had left his flight information in case I called and surprisingly was arriving in Auckland that night. Back on the highway with my thumb out again, I was able to hitch a couple of rides back up to the city's airport. Unbelievably, there he was waiting at the gate, so we caught a cab to the outskirts of town, and it was back on the highway with our thumbs out again as we headed back down to Tangariro.
There was a stream supposedly over a snow banked pass that I had not reached before, so the next morning we loaded up with supplies and hit the trail to hopefully get to this particular trout hole in a couple of days. The climate on these mountain trails can change from warm and sunny to cold and snowing just within a few hundred feet of altitude change. John was prepared for global trekking - really not alpine hiking. He only had a traveler’s backpack, shorts and Nike running shoes, and it was close to sun down as snow began to fall on what was once a sunny warm afternoon. We plowed on to where our map told us was a hut to hopefully bed down for the night. It was getting late – a time when most hikers would have already made camp or had already staked their claim at a trail hut.
Most of New Zealand's national forests have a first come first serve shelter about every 6 to 8 hours of hiking. Most can sleep around 6 to 8 people. Thankfully, we saw the fluttering light of a candle in a window through the falling snow. Smoke was pouring out of the chimney of this small hut at the base of the snow covered pass that would lead us to the lower trout stream the next day.
You never know who, if anyone, you are going to run into at these huts. This particular night there were two German hikers and a lone Japanese hiker who were already sitting around the wood stove with their top of the line hiking gear neatly leaning against their bed posts. The two Germans were talking over some freeze dried noodles and dehydrated figs, and the Japanese fellow was writing in his journal while quietly sipping some tea. We both came barreling in tracking snow all the way to the bunks in the far corner. No one could speak the other's language - or at least pretended not to, but the expressions on these experienced hikers’ faces communicated clearly a feeling of utter bewilderment at a Yank coming out of nowhere in the frigid wind at the top of one of the North Island's highest snow capped volcanoes with only shorts and sneakers on. After a minute or so of awkward silence, the room nervously filled with German conversation again and the Japanese hiker's pen resumed inking out the memories of the day's hike.
Sprawled out on the bottom of the bunk and exhausted, I noticed some chatter coming from John. Apparently, it had been going on for a while, but I was so tired that I hadn't even noticed. By this time, the Germans were once again quiet and the Japanese was peeking over his journal book – all staring at John again with that same incomprehensible look they gave us when we exploded through the cabin door just minutes before. After making eye contact with the three frozen wax figures at the opposite end of the one room hut, I slowly turned my head over to see what John was rambling about. He was frantically tearing into his backpack throwing clothes and food bags all over the floor and methodically yelling, "Jimmy, Jimmy Boy, I know you are in there somewhere. Don't you hide from me, Jimmy Boy!” I quickly thought that maybe it wasn't such a good idea bringing him up there. The exhaustion and high altitude must have gotten to him. Or maybe he’s suffering from hypothermia, I thought, and hallucinating that there is someone named Jimmy hiding in his backpack. The three foreigners' expression on their face comfirmed that they were thinking the same thing and everyone found themselves in a very uncomfortable situation as we were all days from any town or medical help and unable to leave the hut as the temps outside had already plummeted.
At that point, John started talking in a calmer and more compassionate voice as he reached down in his pack one last time. With a big ‘ol Grinch-like smile, he softly whispered, "There's my Jimmy boy. I knew you were in there!" Thinking he had completely lost it, I reached out to him to sit him down and talk some sense into him when suddenly he pulled out a fifth of Jim Bean that he had apparently bought at the airport spirit shop the day before. "There's my boy”, he yelled and opened the top and turned the bottle up with about three to four good solid seconds of bubbles. He capped the chug off with a good 'ol southern yell that could have been easily heard outside of the hut if anyone had been within a mile. Relieved and laughing at this point, I grabbed the bottle and took a few hits myself.
John, oblivious to the fear and shock he had bestowed upon our foreign cabin mates, snatched the bottle from me and walked over to the Germans and handed Jimmy to them. They nervously looked at one another and finally took a sip each hoping to get this crazed yank out of their space as quickly as possible. The Japanese wanted no parts of John and quickly dove in his bunk and frantically began his journal again. There is no telling what he wrote in there.
The next morning the Germans and the Japanese couldn't get their gear on quick enough to get the hell out of that hut turned frat house that had kept them up all night until Jimmy was all gone. Later that day, we finally made it to the secluded trout stream that was over the pass and down the backside of the mountain in a much warmer and greener climate. Our clothes were still wet from the night before, so we stripped down and stretched our shirts and pants on the rocks to dry in the sun. As we were casting for the trout and laughing about the night before, we would jokingly nickname our fish target and yell, "Jimmy, don't you hide from me! I know you’re in there!” This went on for most of the afternoon, when suddenly John landed one of the prettiest rainbow trout I had ever seen. As he was holding it  and laughing, "Jimmy, I knew you were in there", the Japanese fellow from the night before suddenly walked up on the trail above the stream. Somehow we had unknowingly passed him hiking that morning. He probably had walked off the trail somewhere and had taken a nap exhausted from no sleep in the hut. Shocked as we were to see him, he was as equally shocked to see us - especially half naked talking to a fish named Jimmy. He literally went in to full sprint with backpack on and all. Needless to say, we never saw him again.