My family has a long history with this gem of a river in Northern Wisconsin. A family tradition is to put in at Stones Bridge in the late afternoon and lazily fish to a secret landing. There we cook some food and drink some coffee laced with Bailey’s. We put back into the water as the last tendrils of light fade from the sky and fish our way down the river in the dark until the moon rises and makes shadows of the cedars. On this one particular trip I was in a canoe with my brother Tim. There had been a thunder storm as we put into hidden landing and now as we entered the stretch of river called Big Lake it was eerily calm with mist forming along the edges of the river, the trees reaching toward the moon. The moon was full and bright and we felt naked out in the middle of the widest part of the river. Silence. I whispered “this is where the creature rises from the depths and pulls us down.” At the precise moment I finished my sentence a huge trout jumped out of water waggled in the moonlight and plunged back in with a thwap. I yelled and fell back off my seat and my brother screamed. Our fright turned into hysterical giggling and fishing was done for the night. One of my favorite memories.