Forever seeking to provide each of you with good perspective and meaning to our collective fishing endeavors, last week Kathy and I traveled to the scene of it all, Official Extravaganza 2008 Headquarters, and on this, my 61st birthday (thanks Mom & Dad!), I write (a) to give you a pictorial overview of what winter at Headquarters is like and (b) to formally introduce to you the addition this year of a grant that we have given to provide for the filming of Extravaganza 2008 by and with the Missoula-based International Wildlife Film Festival.
The photos here tell it all: It is winter here in Montana; snow is on the ground and, indeed, wild animals abound even in the winter climes. The first photo contains a portion of my right boot heel and a very large print of an animal that even my hunter and trapper friends in this area have yet to identify. One thing that we do know, however, is that the print is a big one and was found right outside our front gate while I was taking a stroll in between (excellent) football games this weekend! The second photo is one of my perennial favorites—a photo of one of our patio lights decorated in its winter finest, with the third and fourth photos providing an almost Christmas card-esque overview of the site of the nigh Extravaganza chaos to be released upon the current silence in just six short months. You can see in these shots why this time of the year is one of my favorites to be here.
Regarding Extravaganza 2008, much as we did last year in supporting our successful and valiant fight to stop the subdivision of the mouth of our Rock Creek (it appears that we may well have won that war, by the way!), this Fall, Kathy and I were introduced to an extraordinary person, Janet Rose, Executive Director of the equally extraordinary International Wildlife Film Festival ("IWFF"), and, together, we came up with the idea of sponsoring, in conjunction with the Extravaganza, a film camp for six lucky Missoula high school students. Their mission, should they decide to accept it, is to shoot, edit and produce a film of Extravaganza 2008, with its underlying theme being stewardship in nature; i.e., how a bunch of city slickers like us can come into as pristine of an environment as shown in the attached photos, treat it responsibly, fish it responsibly, enjoy it uproariously and then leave with the experience of it safely packed away in our hearts and spirit but errant of damage to the environment.
Well, as you can see from this article that appeared yesterday on the first page of The Missoulian (our one and only source of information in these parts), it appears that this small idea made an extravagantly large impact in these parts. Moreover, the flag is already to interview for the scholarship students and the result (a film of you, us and all that the Extravaganza has become) will be entered in the IWFF's annual film contest—winning entries with respect to which are shown and distributed worldwide. Further, I have committed that, collectively, we will raise $10,000 for this wonderful organization and, to date, Kathy and I have made major strides in that regard...the balance of which, I am confident, we can and will do with élan.
By way of introduction, the final attachment to this welcome-to-the-new-year note is a welcoming letter to each of you directly from IWFF's Janet Rose. This summer the 10-day IWFF film camp will span our Groups One through Four, with on-stream filming to be with Group Two (whose members, yes, were the first to get their deposits in—hint, hint for next year, folks!). If things go as they have tended to in the past, this could well be an Extravaganza tradition that, yes, extends us further into the infrastructure of this wonderful Montana community. What fun! [For those of you who are so inclined, toggle over and reach out to Janet via email at jr1@wildlifefilms.org and give her and her wonderful staff a true Extravaganza welcome!]
Happy New Year to all! Both Kathy and I hope that each of your days this year are Extravagant ones and we can't wait until June 20th when the rowdy folks of Ignoble Group One bless our door step and set siege on our liquor and wine larder!
Viva la Extravaganza!!
Best to all from the scene of it all,
Rock Creek Ron
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