Cold

Shivering, hunched down into scant layers that aren’t getting the job done, it occurs to me that it’s been over a year since I’ve been cold. Not chilled-so-I-think-I’ll-get-a-sweatshirt-from-the-closet cold, but teeth-rattling, bone-aching, finger-numbing cold. First-run-in-the-morning cold. Beneath the discomfort the sensation is glorious.

 

As Mary and I each have some years under our belts and skeletons in our medical closet that could make infection life-threatening, we’ve isolated ourselves quite drastically this past year-and-a-half, our world shrunk to the twenty wooded acres surrounding the house with an every-other-week run to the grocery (arriving, of course, at 6:00am as the doors are opened, in hopes of empty aisles). We’ve ZOOMed with our neighbors for social interaction. We’ve withdrawn. You may think us foolish, but so be it. 

 

That bubble, the place into which we’d taken shelter, has been climate-controlled, the thermostat sliding between 70 and 76, depending on the season. Those early-morning grocery runs preceded by remotely started truck-warming. Walks in the woods taken appropriately dressed or deferred during extremes. Our thermal conditions have been as regulated as our human interactions. We’ve remained comfortable in uncomfortable times.

 

But comfort has costs, inertia the worst of them. Despite vaccination, our return to the world has been slow. It’s been too easy to hold on to the routine, well-established during this past pandemic, and to look for reasons to maintain it. We’ve lived, and lived well, but in the comfort zone of reduced scale and scope; the temperature, consistent and even.

 

So now, as I skip across this lake, five states away from my bubble, as I huddle deep into my Gore-Tex for the first time in too long, I remember how much it can hurt. How cold can coalesce into a single, sharp point of focus, driving deep into your being and obliterating everything else with a numbing pain.

 

Pain that means I’m alive again.

The Kid

I watched through the drizzle as the small herd edged closer to our bird feeders and to Mary’s beloved forsythia. They’re a bold bunch here, not terribly afraid of my shouting or waving, but wary enough to walk away should I physically infringe too far into their personal deer space. Already low on sunflower and with the forsythia’s early blooms looking tasty, I resigned myself to another soggy intercession and reached for my muck boots.
 
But before I could slide into the galoshes, the herd, as one, lifted their heads and peered into the woods just outside of my view, around the corner of the house. There was no tension in their posture, as might be caused by a coyote or stray dog, but, instead, a wary interest. I, too, paused to see what played out. But several minutes passed with the herd’s distraction unwavering, so, tired of waiting, I walked through the house to an east-facing window to see what was holding their attention. It was The Kid.
 
I’ve spotted The Kid a handful of times as he’s limped through the woods, his malformed right foreleg hanging loosely as he forages. He’s a young spike buck with either a birth defect or an early injury that’s arrested his peg’s development, leaving it several inches shorter than its counterpart and with questionable sturdiness. I’ve seen him attempt to use it for support but once, while bending low to root in the leaves for food, and it wasn’t pretty.
 
As he approached, the herd (a collection of does and yearlings) began to move slowly away, in time with his awkward advance. They wanted nothing to do with him. As to whether their rejection was due to his gender or his disability, I cannot say, but I anthropomorphized it as both. He’s always alone.
 
I love observing the wildlife here, but it’s the unfortunates that really take my heart. Last summer it was a house finch whose limited flight was painful to watch, day in and day out. Like The Kid, the bird was perpetually shunned. I think that’s what affects me most deeply here of late. More than their imperfection, their isolation. Life’s hard enough when one can’t fly well or is hobbled profoundly, but to be left an outlier for it is cruel and beyond my understanding. It’s one of nature’s brutal truths, I can’t deny, survival of the fittest, but it’s difficult to swallow. I feel their loneliness.  
 
As the herd melted back into the woods and The Kid continued towards the house, I slid the muck boots back under the desk. I wouldn’t be chasing him away as I would have the others, even if he eyed the forsythia. And after some thought I stood by the window, quietly, where he could see me, hoping he might get used to my presence; that he might have some company, odd as that seems. At my appearance he paused and considered my intrusion for a moment, then resumed his clumsy march to the feeders, scattering the mourning doves as he arrived. 
 
 

The House Finch

I’ve grown attached to the little guy, a regular at the feeder for the past month or so. You might wonder how I can tell this particular house finch from the swarms of others that come and go from this station, but he’s not hard to pick out. There’s something not right with him.

At first glance I thought him a fledgling, small, just out of the nest and not entirely into his wings. But as he’s come and gone over the ensuing weeks his movement has never improved. There’s no glide in his flight. He struggles to stay in the air, moving in short, frenetic bursts, forward and upward a foot or two, falling back half of it, and repeating until he slowly works his way to his next uncertain perch. More butterfly than bird. I walk faster than he can fly. But he gets there, usually. It’s not clear whether his impairment is physical or neurological but staying airborne seems terribly hard work and it breaks my heart to watch. For him, it’s supposed to be effortless.

He must roost close by, somewhere at the edge of the woods that surround our house, for he’s clearly incapable of long distances. And he’s always alone as the other finches shun him, even chase him away from the feeder which is hard to watch. Surprisingly, he’s not intimidated by the bigger birds – the doves, the cardinals, the woodpeckers of various sizes - that come and go as he sits at his meal. He’s even tolerant of my presence as he's the last to flee when I approach to replenish the seed. He takes to the air only when I get within arm’s length. I interpret this as courage, but it may be that flight is so difficult that, despite the fear, he avoids it until there’s no other option. I suppose there’s a fine line between the two, if one at all.

He seems happy enough, though, sitting for long stretches at the limitless flow of safflower. He’s a sympathetic little fellow and for him I’m careful to keep the hopper full. I worry that he won’t be around for long.

At first, I assumed that my attachment was purely compassionate, that I felt sorry for this poor little creature and his handicap. But as these difficult Covid weeks have passed, I’ve come to realize that there’s more to it than that; that we’re birds of a feather, this finch and I. My flight, like his, is impaired; my range also limited by circumstance. We now both stay close to our feeders, leaving them only when absolutely necessary, invoking that odd mix of courage and fear. We are each removed from our breed. And, at the end of the day, I’m concerned for both of our futures.

Poor little house finch. I wonder if he dreams of soaring. I know that I do.

The Elephant

No one will look at the elephant. No one will speak of it though it sits just outside the front window of the Dalwhinnie, all gray and dank and dour, staring in at us as we gather for breakfast. Heads down in our eggs, our coffee, our phones, we try to ignore it, knowing full well that every man around the table knows that it’s out there and that knowledge is killing us. There’s talk, but it’s small. Inconsequential. A mouse next to the brooding beast that drips outside the glass. Even the eye contact among us is fleeting, lest the elephant be reflected in our glance for others to see.

We know what the elephant wants. It wants our submission. It wants our surrender. It wants to come in and sit down on us, to crush us under its massive flanks, to envelope us in its forlornness, its despair, its gray void. It wants to take away our Beaver Island fishing day.

Kevin says that there’s one thing worse than missing a day on the Lake Michigan carp flats due to the weather and that’s dying in his boat. At our core we know this, but we are slow to give in to the inevitability. The longer we can ignore the creature just outside the window the longer the carnival can go on. So we each pretend that the elephant’s not there and wait for someone else to break the glass. We sit, the six of us, and hold our breaths, knowing that eventually the beast will get what it wants but not wishing to be the first to give it the satisfaction.

In the end it’s done for us. A passing local casually asks “You guys going fishing in this stuff?” and with that the great gray pachyderm waltzes in the thrown open door on twenty-knot winds, jumps up on the table, and does a pirouette on the paper napkin dispenser. We all look up, first at the local, then at the elephant, and Steve dispatches them both with a short, annoyed “No.” The tension is released like a midway balloon at the end of the water shoot game and the elephant disappears before it can get a proper gloat on.

We breathe again, and start thinking about tomorrow and the next act.

Laundered

The second I pulled it out of the slingpack I knew there was a problem. It was neatly folded, all corners perfectly square, aligned, possibly ironed; not scrunched in a crusty ball like it should be. It smelled of peonies.

Over the years it had been worn from British Columbia to the Mexican Baja, from the southern-most Bahamas to northern-most Saskatchewan, from North Carolinian farm ponds to Montana trout Meccas. It was my fishing security blanket, my talisman, my mojo. My buff. Now, it was…laundered.

It no longer smelled of sweat and sunscreen and bug dope. Missing were the smoky undertones of Cuban cigars and the subtle spicy keynotes of Gunnison ganja (though I haven’t a clue as to how they got there). Gone were the phantom flavors of tacos and hops, readily available for a quick pick-me-up with just a flick of the tongue. My comfort saltlick was now tasteless. It no longer smelled of fish.

Front was no longer distinguishable from back by the leaked tobacco stains. No amount of twisting found that comfortable impression of nose and cheekbones and chin. Like OJ’s gloves, If it doesn’t fit, you won't catch shit.

Until now, its only cleansing had been courtesy of rainstorms, salt spray, and an impromptu dunking or two; ineffective for proper sanitation but perfect for the maintenance of a proper angling alchemy.

So there I sat, rigged and ready on the flats of South Andros, mojo-less, with all of my angling history, encodings in scents, my comfort zone - washed, rinsed, and tumbled dry into oblivion. We’d been sterilized. The Tide had come in and I wanted to cry.

But tucked neatly inside it was a bright yellow Post-It on which, in a beautiful flowing script, was written “I thought you’d like this all nice and clean. Catch lots of fish. Love you.” Now this was mojo of an entirely different sort. Strong juju. Magic that overrides everything else. Energy that I carry wherever I go, in fishing and in life. Her act was selfless and done for my pleasure. A lovely, thoughtful expression. How could I be mad?

I fucking hate the smell of peonies.


Note: I offer this as a follow-on to Jon Tobey's wonderful piece, She Loves Me, She Cleaned My Truck to which this little piece doesn't hold a candle. I've done so as Jon and I discovered these similar premises were each stolen from our mutual friend (and FlyFish Journal editor), Steve Duda. 

Now, who has a third for the trilogy?

Tough Love

I’ve been thrown out of bars. I’ve been thrown out of school. I’ve been thrown out of the house. But I’d never been thrown off a skiff before.

Bring it in. Put on your boots. You’re walkin’ back.

To be honest, I probably deserved it. (I typically come by my expulsions righteously.) I’d blown shot after shot. Torrie had busted his ass to find us fish and I’d screwed it up time and time again.

Eleven o’clock. Eleven! You’re lookin’ nine! Square up on the boat, mon.
Put it in front of the fish. He don’t eat out his tail.
I said forty feet. That’s [pick any number less than forty].
You don't see those fish? There’s ten of them!
No. You’re OTHER right!

So he dropped me off and he left me. Pushed off with Jason on the bow and headed out into the sprawling flat, instructing me to walk the edge of the mangroves with the sun at my back and keep going. He’d pick me up on that far point, a mile or so out. Maybe.

It had been frustrating, fumbling all those opportunities. Bad line management, poor accommodation for wind, poor fundamentals. I’d stood on the bow at the ready and took deep centering breaths to calm the inner tension but the moment Torrie said “fifty feet, twelve o’clock, moving left,” the yips came tumbling out. And it’s not like I hadn’t done this before. No this-is-my-first-time excuses. I just sucked.

But this humiliation was uncalled for. This being left to slog along, alone, was unjust. It wasn’t right. Yeah, I’d disappointed myself and I felt guilty about disappointing the guide, but this? I walked and felt pissy about it.

But it’s hard to stay mad in the islands, wading along firm sands on a bluebird day in crystalline, emerald-green, shin-deep water. A light breeze filling your nose with the hint of salt and promise. A fly rod in your hand. There’s a reason that the islands are so relaxed. It’s in the air.

The flats seeped in, replacing everything else. The ripple of wind and the reflection of sun made the waters dance and the feeling of isolation comforted me. My tensions slipped away, left in the blue mud trail that extended behind me. All that mattered was the next waft of breeze, the next breath, the next passing cloud. The call of birds and the hush of slow steps in shallow water. I gave in to the place, in to the peace, completely.

They appeared in my peripheral vision. I saw them, not because I was looking for them, but because I wasn’t looking for anything and they were something. Anomalies. Subtle wrinkles in the fabric of the flat. Movement slightly askew from everything else. Two of them.

And before I thought too much about how it happened, my drag was singing and I soon held one of the pair in my hand. A splinter of silver, chipped from the flats, reflecting everything in each perfect mirrored scale. Wet lightning. And as quickly as it had arrived it slipped back into the warm salt, paused for a heartbeat at my feet, and was gone.

Take that, Torrie. I don’t need no stinkin' guide. I can do it myself.

But, I had to admit, I had done everything he’d said. Read the fish as they approached. Put myself and my line in a position to act. Moved the fly when it needed to be moved, stopped it when it needed to be stopped. Closed the deal. I’d been listening. I’d been thinking. But I’d been trying too hard.

So I smiled and waded on, soaking up the day and nicking a fish here and there, each almost as an afterthought to this splendid stroll on the flats. And quicker than I would have liked (though all day wouldn’t have been enough) I caught up with the skiff at the prescribed far point where the guys were digging into the cooler. Before I could say a word, before I could give Torrie a piece of my mind, he looked up from the box, a huge smile on his face, and extended a cold Kalik in my direction.

I been watchin'. Knew you had it, mon. Could see it in you. Just needed some time to yourself to make it right.

He had seen what I was missing and he had given it to me. Not the cast or the vision or the physical act. I needed the headspace to go with those tools. The room to figure it out in the very best way. My way. He'd put me where I could only disappoint myself, knowing that I wouldn't.

The beer tasted damn good.

We finished the day on the boat with a few more close shots, thirty and in, as the tides dropped out. I blew a few of them, but didn’t sweat it that much. Torrie was quiet until he called it a day and watched as I made my wind-em-up cast, clearing the coils on the deck with two leisurely flicks, sending out sixty feet of line, straight as an arrow. Twelve o’clock. No pressure.

I could hear him chuckling from the platform.


Note: Okay. Torrie didn't really throw me off the boat. Pardon a little poetic license. But I was sent in the described direction, on my own, after a frustrating morning. The rest is true, right down to the reason that he sent me off. My deep gratitude and respect goes out to an extraordinary guide, Torrie Bevins of the Andros South Lodge, for recognizing what I needed and making it happen. I look forward to walking the Dirty South with (or without) you again, my friend.

Oh, and pictured at the top of the post is my buddy Steve Duda of The Flyfish Journal who, if I recall correctly, was heading out on a similar walk our second day on Andros South. We jointly agree that wading's the very best way to play this game.

Carnival

Her advance posters, displayed brilliantly up here on the ridge, were full of promise. The golds and oranges of her oak, maple, and sourwood vestments were adorned with dogwood red and holly green accents. Her wardrobe, exotic. And with the forecast calling for cloudless skies, it seemed the perfect time to wander down the hill to the river, to the big top, to gawk like a schoolboy as the beauty passed through.

There's one born every minute.

Along the river, Old Man Winter and his carnies had already started sweeping the debris of Autumn into the dust bin. Her costume, so full of paint on the ridge, stood threadbare in the river's basin, a pallet of tarnished gild. And the forecasted clear sky, that promise of stunning blue backdrops, was obscured by the pungent haze of wildfire smoke, carried the hundreds of miles from the western Carolinas and east Tennessee to settle into the cool trough of riverbed. I was late to the carnival.

But my disappointment quickly vanished as I opened my eyes to the awkward, tired beauty of it all. The closing stage of Autumn's striptease, that sideshow moment just before it all comes off. That final tired, smokey pause before all is revealed, the dingy curtain drops, and the crowd disperses into the night.

Fall's circus, as quickly as it had arrived, was on its way out of town once again.

The Dance

We dance with the winds. Play cat-and-mouse with thunderheads. Skip over the salt that swirls in the erratic patterns of spooked bonefish. We circle, circle, circle, to outflank the looming cataclysms, to hide behind keys, to sneak around stray sheets of showers in search of hidden blue skies, to simply get out of the blow that comes impossibly from all sides at once.

Tides shift in minutes, ignoring their lunar influence. Instead are herded like livestock, driven mercilessly by tempestuous phantoms, whipped to a bellowing froth. Stampeded across the mangroves.

Flats empty, then fill, then empty again. Whitecaps in eight inches of brine. Now five. Need to run but no depth to get it on plane. Rumble out slowly, painfully, the grey wall closing in behind. Find a depression and spin the skiff hard, pirouette, slingshot to speed. Escape. Run for the next tack, too stubborn to give in, too hard-headed to go home. The waltz goes on.

Boreas. Zephyrus. Eurus. Notus. They toy with us. No. That’s flattering. They couldn't care less of us as they romp amongst themselves for control of the empyrean. We’re collateral. Insignificant. The Marles are theirs.

But in between the skirmishes we find tails, waving in the chop like crisp silver flags. The bones don’t care about the firmament. It's just air and they have no interest in it. Noses down, not up. Get a fly to them, they eat. And they run. In defiance of it all we laugh and we celebrate our own small conquests, lesser gods that we are.

The winds note this hubris and we dance once again.

Place

This past week, I attended Christmas Eve service in one of the grandest cathedrals in the country, Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian, on Michigan Avenue, downtown. I sat in the rear balcony and stared across the expanse as thirteen-hundred worshipers celebrated the birth of a child and must admit to being brought to tears at the opening strains of Silent Night in that magnificent space, lit only and entirely by small candles held by each member of the congregation. I am not a religious man, but consider myself a spiritual one, and I was moved by the wonder of the place.

On a similar night, thirteen years before, I sat in a small brick Episcopal church in old Raleigh. No pomp or grandeur, the aging congregation outnumbered by the modest choir. The pain of great loss still weighed heavy on my heart. From the humble pulpit a simple holiday message, the birth of new hope, was offered into the tiny, solemn space and I was deeply soothed by the quiet peace I felt there.

To close each year, I step gently into the waters of a particular gorge as the fog lifts and the sun begins to creep over the edge of the wide ravine behind me, illuminating the far rock wall in golden splendor. My heart, already enlivened by the solitary hike in, leaps from my body and soars into the pine rafters of that Nature’s sanctuary. Eyes closed, my face to the heavens, I soak in the majesty of our Mother’s temple and send skyward heartfelt prayers of thanks for the year past and hopes for the coming to whoever might be listening. The place, in return, fills me with joy.

Here’s hoping that you find your place - of wonder, of peace, of joy - in the coming new year. May it sooth your pains and give you life and happiness unbounded.

Thank you for reading.

There's Always Rock 'n' Roll

Hate to tell you, but there's more to life than just fishin’. There's also rock 'n' roll.

It’s a familiar story. I was going to be a star. Got my start in a local band during the late sixties and early seventies. Rock covers, mostly, with a few heavy jams just for fun. I wasn’t the most competent of musicians, but volume and fuzz (with a modicum of wah-wah) can cover a host of technical inadequacies. Talent aside, I had the look. Long hair, hip-hugging jeans, a carefully cultivated aura of indifference. Most of all, I had the burning desire to stand up on stage and bathe the masses in power chords. Good times.

Too good. My pipe dreams, and the lifestyle that came with them, drowned out my first attempt at higher education like bad feedback. A degree in mathematics couldn’t hold an incense stick to Guitar Godliness so in three quick semesters I was out the university's back door, a coiled cord trailing behind me. No big loss. The only calculus I needed was the derivation of twelve bar progressions and integrations on the five positions of the minor pentatonic. Newton dug the blues.

But the band flamed out in a blaze of personality and the girlfriend became the wife, then the expectant mother of my child, at a pace that was truly terrifying. Adulthood reared its perverse, ugly head. The Strat and the stack were sacrificed on the alter of domesticity, pawned to pay tithe to the working stiff’s holy trinity; Carolina Power and Light, Southern Bell, and the blessed Piggly Wiggly.

Decades passed.

I must admit that I’ve not been completely fretless. Over the years I’ve been bestowed a pair of acoustics, a gift born of love and a bequeathment steeped in sorrow, and I cherish them each dearly for their origins. But I've played them sparingly, all this time, as I have always been more moved by their emotional resonance than their tonal. They've been strung with my heartstrings.

But for all of their unplugged joy, I’ve missed the hot smell of over-driven tubes and the crunch of Jensen paper. I’ve missed low action necks and sustain lasting for days. I’ve missed being coaxially tethered to enough raw power to rattle your bones and pop out your fillings and make your ears bleed. I’ve missed the noise.

So, last week, I wrote off getting that next couple of fly rods and new pair of waders to realize, instead, my neglected Fender fantasies. Beautiful things. Just the boogie-woogie kick in the pants I’ve been craving. Sure, my having this rig is like giving the keys to the Ferrari to Grandma, but goddamn it feels good. It's time to shake the house once again.

Have no fears, fly fishing is still my passion and I'll continue to write of it here for it holds a part of my soul and always will. But something older has retaken my gut and it won’t be set aside, ever again.

‘Cause, Son, even when the fish won't bite, there’s always rock ‘n' roll.

1971-ish

Flesh

When enunciated correctly, the word is both deeply erotic and profoundly disturbing. Say it with me.

Flesh

Feel the tingle?

When you get tired of catching fish after fish, drift after drift, grayling after goddam grayling (with the occasional lipsticked dolly tossed in to make it marginally worthwhile); when you get tired of fishing that piece of costume jewelry, that perfectly round trinket, that princess-pink bauble painted with just the right nail polish; when easy fishing degenerates from easy to boring (perhaps thirty minutes, if even that long), your buddy says the ‘f’ word and something dark inside of you moves.

You know what you’re giving up. The numbers, the clockwork tug, the comfort and ease of your trapped air technology. (No Charles, it’s not a fucking “bobber.” It’s a strike indicator! For God’s sake, have some dignity.) You give up that mind-numbing rhythm of mending and catching, mending and catching, mending and catching.

They say that you don’t leave fish to catch fish, but they’re wrong. All fish are not equal. All fishing is not sport.

So you ignore the outside bubble line and focus, instead, on the inside snags; the slow water and blow-downs where rotting corpses gather in underwater creep shows. Phantoms, waving in tatters like carrion sheets on Lucifer’s clothesline. You dead drift (acquiring a whole new perspective on the term) tan stingers that, for all the world, look like soiled shreds of toilet paper flushed down Seward’s folly, but promise their targets the carnage they crave. You dredge the putrid downstream abattoir where the meat eater lies. You pursue the beast that's following its basest of urges, not daintily sipping on priss caviar as it gently flows by. You stalk the savage. You want him at his baddest, his inner zombie full-blown, his depravity manifesting in glorious carnivorous splendor.

He deserves a hook in the face and you’re all about giving him one.

Sure, you’re probably foregoing twenty, thirty, to chase just that one. That cannibal. That monster. And maybe, just maybe, he’d think about taking a bead, but what fun is that?

He wants… you want…

... flesh.

this blue moon

this limbo, this midnight, this blue moon

dark as Death at the edges
quiet as the grave but for the sweep of a paddle through still waters
and the soothing wash that trails a sixteen-foot Old Town under pull

when it's my Time, I forgo the ash,
lie it gently at my feet,
and slide silently towards the light

the spark manifests, full-faced, above the eastern tree line,

illuminating this liquid rent in the forest with bright monochrome

black and white, dark and light, somehow both

soundless to the center, in flight o'er the stars that shine beneath me,

waters as deep as the Milky Way reflected, the Universe above and below

I glide to a stop between worlds

here to sit
here to stay
here to spend my Forever in this stark transplendency

but I am mistaken, it's not my Time

as much as I might wish it to be

my immutable Forever's not yet mine

for there's one on the shore that awaits me

a love that keeps me afloat

so I must scatter the stars with my stroke, once again, and return

but not right away

a minute, an hour, an eternity I'll pause 

to savor

this limbo, this midnight, this blue moon

Down the Rabbit Hole

“Be sure to bring your headlamp.”

It was an odd instruction given that I was to meet him at noon. Everything else he’d suggested – sturdy boots, rugged clothes, large dark streamers – made sense.

“And a 7 or 8wt. But it needs to be short.”

I’ve visited a lot of odd places with Troy. He has a knack for finding local out-of-the-way fish and figuring out how to catch them. Landlocked stripers in Jordan, gars with rope flies on the Neuse, bowfin cruising those out-of-the-way Durham floodplain impoundments, contraband carp from golf courses unnamed. Not your classic fly fishing fare, but never boring and always for targets with some kick. So when he suggests that we try something new, I don’t ask anymore. I just go.

I’d been bitching all week about how cold our streams still ran, delaying the late March white bass run and keeping the largemouths’ lips locked up tight. I’d had enough winter trout (enough goddam nymphing) and was itching to get the warmwater season going. Troy’s call was a ray of hope.

“There’s something we’ve got to go do.”

We met, the next day, just a stone’s throw from downtown Raleigh, behind a long, single-story brick building occupied by two hair salons, a nail parlor, and a dingy old laundromat. Beyond the back lot, where the stylists parked, the ground fell away to a trickle, barely wet, one of the many small creeks that interlace the capitol and ultimately coalesce to find their way to the Neuse.

We rigged and I noticed that Troy didn’t have his usual gear. His favorite Orvis was replaced by a stubby off-brand stick, thick in the butt and no more than six feet in length. My 7’10” bass rod seemed huge.

We dropped to the water below our parked trucks and, to my surprise, turned upstream, not down, towards the Volkswagon dealership and the heart of the city, shortly arriving at a small muddy pool below a culvert that burrowed under Wake Forest Road. Sunfish, I thought, or maybe a few small Roanokes. Pretty dull stuff and a waste of an 8wt. I’d hoped for more.

But Troy didn’t stop at the pool. Instead, he climbed along its littered edge and hoisted himself into the opening.

“What are you waiting for?”

I followed, though not easily as the rough-edged culvert extended a couple of feet above and out over the stream, and shuffled along behind him, beneath the roadway, head bowed and back bent in the four-foot space, all the while wondering why we hadn’t just climbed to the surface to cross. An easier portage, it seemed, than going underneath.

But Troy stopped mid-tunnel, switched on his headlamp, and turned left into an opening that I had not yet seen; a passage that ran parallel, and under, the roadway median, accessed through an old steel grate door that Troy opened with no small effort. I followed him through the gate, down a handful of steep cement steps that ended at the lip of a hole into which a ladder descended; iron wrungs imbedded into the concrete sides of a ten foot drop. At the bottom, another pipe.

It’s not easy, traveling down a four-foot conduit with nothing but a headlamp. Even without claustrophobic tendencies, it’s unnerving; never mind managing a fly rod in such tight quarters. But Troy pushed on, unfazed, as the pitch of our tunnel turned downward, to the right, and the sound of mid-day surface traffic gave way to the quiet white noise of the shallow water flowing between our feet.

After a couple of turns and what seemed an eternity, Troy stopped, leaned forward to put down his rod, worked his way around to face me, and reached into his pocket to pull out a small puck-shaped container.

“You’ll want this. Under your nose.”

He twisted open the puck and I flashed back fifty years. Nightmarish memories of childhood colds, remedied by undershirts plastered to my chest with this putrid petroleum product. Vicks Vapor Rub. No thanks. I’d rather be forced to fish bluegill the rest of my days.

“Suit yourself.”

He stuck his finger in the glop, smeared a wad into his sparse mustache, and inched back around. We continued on, shortly to turn at another crossing pipe and it quickly became clear why he'd suggested the rub. The smell was awful. Sewer meets garbage meets dead rotting flesh, emanating from a cavernous junction in the city’s old drainage system. But it was better than the Vicks.

“We’re here.”

We're where?

“This street kid told me about it. We help at the soup kitchen. When he heard that I fished…”

I squeezed up beside him at the end of the pipe and looked out into the space. The far side was not discernable in the weak light of our headlamps, but Troy thought it was no more than sixty feet, and perforated, like swiss cheese, with other pipes and culverts, both inlets and out. Below us, perhaps four feet, was a concrete floor that sloped into black water, the surface of which held all manner of unidentifiable flotsam. The place had an uncomfortable clamminess accentuated by the smell. I couldn’t fathom what we were doing there...until fifteen feet out something swirled.

Something big.

“Don’t know what it is. The kid doesn’t either. But to live down here... Gotta be badass.”

What flashed in my head was the scene from Star Wars - down the Death Star prison garbage chute. Luke and Han and Chewy and The Princess, bobbing about in the junk while something horrific swam below them, tickling their feet.

Troy chuckled at the reference and dropped down from the pipe.

I waited above for there wasn’t much room on “the shore.” And even in old clothes I was reluctant to get too close to the mess. I’d stink for days. But Troy never flinched.

“Third time’s a charm, big boy. I’ve brought the meat today.”

He’d already been down here twice?

And when he said “meat” he meant it. A huge deerhair sculpin, the size of a sewer rat, black, with a 2/0 stinger in the head and a second in the tail, both weedless to get through the trash. Mousing simply wasn't enough.

If I had to bet my life on a man catching a fish, I’d bet on Troy. Some folks just have the knack. They may not be pretty or sophisticated or have all the flash gear, but they know how to outsmart a fish. All you have to do is watch for a moment and you’ll see it.

He squatted at the edge of the effluence and watched for another swirl. He was poised as for bonefish, sculpin in his left hand, the fly line’s head out of the rod tip, ready for a quick hauling roll and shoot. That’s all the room he had, anyway. Troy looked like a heron, stoically waiting.

And waiting. I began to wonder if the swirl I’d seen was an illusion. If it was the exotic effect of toxic fumes finding their way through my un-vapor-rubbed nose and penetrating deep into my brain. But just as I’d decided that this was all insanity, there was a ripple at the edge of our visibility and Troy took his shot.

The huge streamer landed, with a splat, just out of lamp range and a foot to the left of the disturbance. Troy gave it an immediate pop strip and then paused. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing, until some nearby trash bobbed, ever so subtly. Troy twitched his rod tip with an equivalent genteelness.

All hell broke loose.

Trash and dark water exploded. Troy gave a mighty strip-set and his reel started screaming; reverberating eerily in the small concrete space. Fly line flew out like it was tied to a Ferrari. Forty, fifty, sixty feet. Beyond the bounds of our small dark enclosure. The beast, in his madness, had gone down an outflow and kept right on going.

In an instant he was into the backing and, without hesitation, Troy did what any good fisherman would do. He followed. He pointing his rod after the fleeing prey, ducked his head, and ran splashing through trash down the rabbit hole. In a wink he was gone.

It took my heart a moment to stop pounding and my brain a bit longer to sort out what had happened. But when it all went quiet I found myself alone in the dark, listening as Troy’s awkward footfalls echoed softly into the indeterminate distance. And when I finally started breathing again there was only the sound of lapping water and floating garbage rubbing against the sides of the cistern.

I called, but heard no response beyond my own echoes. I waited.

Time looses its hold when it’s deep under ground. In the dark, the seconds and minutes get lost, turn back on themselves, and wander helplessly about. I waited ten minutes, or three hours, it might have been either.

Troy didn’t return.

I needed to move, to find my friend, to get the hell out of there. I needed to locate somebody who could help. I tried to retrace our steps but in the vast drainage maze my sense of direction came undone. Always go up, I eventually decided, and followed anything with a positive pitch until I began to hear the sound of tires on pavement and saw pencils of light that, as I got closer, illuminated another wrought iron ladder. It led up, thank you God, to a manhole; a manhole that emerged on the sidewalk of Salisbury Street, downtown Raleigh, two miles from the hair salons.

I pushed open the cover and crawled out to the pavement as onlookers stared. Ignoring them, I pulled out and unwrapped from its plastic baggie my cell phone, intending to call 911. As it searched for a network I wondered what to say. They’d think I was crazy and, given what we’d been doing, they were probably right. The connection happened quickly, there in the heart of the city, but before I called Emergency and made a fool of myself, I threw a Hail Mary. I called Troy. No answer. More desperate, I texted.

Where are you?

To my surprise and great relief, the “typing” icon immediately popped up. He was safe! He was responsive! A rush of questions flooded my brain. Did he land the beast? What was the damn thing? Did he get a picture? Was he back at the trucks and could he come here to get me?

But the joy was sort-lived. The typing stopped and the message was delivered.

him gone u come bak bring mor meeet

Photo Credits: I wish I could claim these images. Instead, I enlisted my good friend, the uber-talented Thomas Harvey, to help me create something unusual. What he came up with simply blows me away. Thanks, bud. This stuff is badass.

Oh. And happy April 1st.

18°N

The deadbolts in the place are installed upside-down. Considering that they act as both door latch and handle, each opening and closing takes some thought. Some mental reorientation. Some conscious override of a lifetime of repetition and acquired muscle memory. Clock-wise is close, counter is open, unlike everywhere else. Everywhere else, that is, to the north.

Things change as you move into the tropics. The physics of objects get nebulous and conventions get slippery. Hot is cold and cold is hot in the bathroom sink and broil and bake are somehow reversed in the toaster oven. Here and there, odd things turn around. Thank God there’s no ground plugs in the electrical outlets, no forced right way in the wiring, or some things might simply not work.

But experience tells me that that’s just about right for this latitude. That as you draw near the equator, the rules get erratic. More is different and nonstandard. More is unpretentiously whatever. And it’s not all mechanical or angle of sun or direction of spin in the toilet. It’s the essence of things. The clock slows down and calendar speeds up (if you happen to worry with such things around here). What was important is no longer.

Does it continue towards chaos as you sail further south? Does this inversion of norms become a toss-up at the equator? And, once crossed, will things begin to stabilize, 180-out, as you move towards the opposite pole? When you cross the earth’s midpoint does your stomach turn over, black become white, and white fade to black?

Will all this weight that I carry turn to blissful relief? How nice that would be.

The deadbolts in the place are installed upside-down. But I’m getting used to them now. I just don't think too hard, turn them both ways, and open the door only when the time seems right.

And I’m feeling lighter by the day.

A Heart-to-Heart with the Jolly Old Elf

Ho Ho Ho! Well hello, little boy. What can Santa Claus do for you this Christmas?

I’m not so sure that you have what I need in that bag of yours, sir.

Now, now, son. You’d be surprised by what Saint Nick has in his sack. Have you been good this year?

Good is a bit of a sliding scale, don’t you think? Do you mean Mother Teresa good, or Mae West good?

An excellent point, young man. How about I just check my list. Let’s see. Naughty or nice... naughty or nice... Ah, here you are. Oh. Ummm. Will you promise to be just a little bit nicer next year?

Yes sir. Absolutely. Done. You have my word.

Well, okay. We'll let you go with nice, this time. What is it that you’d like Santa to bring?

Santa, what I really want is my writing Mojo back.

Your writing Mojo? Mojo’s a very big item, you know. How about a nice camera instead?

Sorry, sir, but I just bought one.

A shiny new fly rod then?

Got a closet full, but thanks for the thought.

Some waders?

I’m good.

Let’s see. How about World Peace?

Asked for that last year. Remember?

Yeah. Sorry about that, kid. Father Christmas had a tough year.

Tell me about it.

So. You want your writing Mojo, you say?

Yes, sir. It’s all gone to shit lately. (Oops. Sorry, sir.) I haven’t been proud of anything I’ve written for months and I’m disappointed that so little has found its way to the page. My blog has been terribly neglected and I’m really struggling to keep it interesting. I need my Mojo.

I hate to tell you this, son, but Mojo doesn't work that way. It’s not a thing someone can give you. It’s something that you already have and simply needs to be tapped into. That’s easy to say, I’m afraid, but not always easy to do. It’s a lot like flying reindeer. Most of the time they just hang around the barn, eating hay and playing games. But every now and then, when the moment’s right, for no discernable reason, inspiration strikes and they float into the rafters. That’s Mojo. It’s a gift, there’s no doubt, but not a gift that can be easily given. I’m sorry.

I understand. I knew it was a tall order. I just hoped, you know, for my readers…

I know. I wish it were possible. How about something else? Anything. Just name it.

Well, how about a leadership that will acknowledge that man-made climate change is real and start to do something about it, that can quantify the value of our public lands and wilderness areas in something other than dollars and cents, and whose members will start to think like individuals rather than mindless party shills. One that will do something for the people of this nation, all of them, and not just for its anthropomorphized corporations. A leadership that actually works.


So, young man, do you want to write poetry or prose?

Finding My Texas

Four days in McAllen. Might as well have been Cleveland.

Airport to hotel on the shuttle. Hotel to convention center by air-conditioned bus. Return and repeat. Views of the city through dark safety glass. Interior courtyard and square meeting rooms. Southern climes masked by thermostats set to “Icebox.”

I longed for the Lone Star vibe.

So as the meetings came to a close it felt good to get in the rental and go. To head east out of town toward the Gulf. But I wasn’t in Texas even then. Seventy miles-an-hour on Interstate 2. San Juan, Weslaco, Mercedes. Southwestern labels, but indistinguishable from anywhere else with their end-to-end Home Depots, Burger Kings, and La Quintas. The ubiquitous acres of Wal-Mart. Only the occasional HEB gave a clue.

So I tried to shake my case of the “wherevers” by turning on the radio. Satellite XM, Outlaw Country, seemed a good place to start. But it was country as generic as the asphalt I traveled. Corporate cowboys, polished and precise despite the clodhopper drawls. Sterile. I was looking for roots, dirt and all.

I-2 dumped east into Texas 83 and I switched to FM. Began to feel the southwest sun and attitude creep into my bones. Strip mall sprawl gave way to cattle land, manicured six lanes to concrete divided four, and meticulously mastered rock to something more earthy. Something more don’t-give-a-damn. Digital perfection acquiesced to analog authenticity. Big stage to front porch. A grittier sound on a grittier track.

But I wasn’t there yet.

I escaped the expressways onto State Road 100. Shook off the highway and found my two lane. Rolled down the windows and punched up AM. Sagebrush and mesquite flew by never-ending. Fruit stands, flat land and big sky with a soundtrack of scratchy mariachis. The soft background hiss of carrier wave, like tires on pavement, lent texture and life to squeezebox and guitar. White vinyl noise swaddled voices in cotton as if they’d been packed away for generations like precious artifacts. Canciónes that crossed cultures and borders and time.

I understood little of what was sung as I drove, but that didn't matter. Enough of the words were transcendent. Señorita. Bonita. Cerveza.

I’d finally found my Texas.

Skipping Away

I shuffled through the rapidly accumulating Indiana snow, head down, buried deep in my overcoat and deeper in my thoughts. Adrift. The night air hung heavy; a thick winter pall, muting all sound and shrouding all sight; a white weight descending, smothering, despite the mortuary's parking lot lights' best efforts to pierce the soft obscurity.

Forgive me, kind reader, this cruel bait and switch, for this post is not about the fish pictured above, impressive though they be. Rather, it is about the young lady in the middle, holding the trophies. Truth be told, she was not a sportswoman - at least not for the years that I knew her - though the piles of photos we've wandered through these past couple of days hold their share of sepia-toned surprises; big bass just the beginning. Who is the girl? That vibrant young thing is my wife's mother, Emmy, who, I am so sad to say, left us this past week.

No obituary, this. No recount of the things she'd accomplished in her lifetime, as if there was room for them all to be listed here. This is no long tribute. Let the papers do that.

Instead, it is a simple thanks. For her smile. For her warmth. For her generosity. And for her gracious acceptance of me, though I turned up in her daughter's life at the most awkward of times. Thank you for so many things, dear Emmaline, but especially for that.

As my wife communicated the passing and simple details to friends and family, she, at one point, texted that her mother had slipped away, only to have a misplaced finger, no doubt assisted by misty eyes, misspell and send that she had skipped away. Mary quickly rectified the error, but its recipient replied that he rather liked the image of Emmy skipping happily once again, on to her next big challenge.

And as I trudged through the parking lot to clear the windshield and warm the cold car after the family visitation, surrounded by the hush of falling snow and heavy hearts, I, too, had to smile as I imagined the lass with the bass skipping away; pirouetting into the endless swirls of white.

Godspeed, dear Emmy. Godspeed.

One Bug is Quiet

We stood back and watched as she roll cast the slow, shaded run that tucked tightly under the thick rhododendrons. Cast, drift, cast again; avoiding the encroaching branches with a quiet ease. “And she’s just getting started,” he whispered with a subtle hint of pride. “She’s figuring it out.”

I hadn’t seen Brandon since our week chasing redfish on the Laguna Madre, a year-and-a-half past, but had followed his exploits through One Bug is Fake, his online journal of fly fishing, survival, and whatever. I kept up with his angst through job changes, moves, and the generally painful business of sorting out what was important in his life. Kept up, that is, until the blog fell silent earlier this year. I worried a little.

So when I caught word that he’d be in my neck of the woods for a family Thanksgiving gathering, I wandered westward and reconnected with him on a chilly Appalachian trout stream. There, I came to understand his disappearance.

“Have you been writing?” I asked, thinking I knew the answer. “Not really,” he replied, watching her swing the fly once again. “I’ve been happy.”

Those who write understand. Words, all too often, come from deep, dark places and passages born of hurt carry a weight and an edge that can resonate. It’s been suggested that contentment is the death of good writing. I’m not completely convinced, but do know that it’s easier to express when things are broken. Through the cracks seep emotion and heart and, inexplicably, craft. It’s a gruesome tradeoff.

“But I’ve been thinking on a piece for a while now,” Brandon added, as his companion concentrated on her next drift. “About what’s changed.”

I nodded, and smiled, and thought to myself that there was no need to hurry. No need at all. I’d be glad to not hear from One Bug for a while.

Red Lights, Night Eyes, Four-AM Brews

The cramp hit about six in the morning, left hamstring seizing every time I bent my knee in the slightest, which was a real pisser as I’d only been in bed for a little more than an hour. Maybe that four-AM beer hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

As the leg began to loosen (or, it turned out, just teased me into thinking the agony was subsiding before cruelly cinching tight once again), I heard Jason in the other room, cursing softly as he tried to walk out a similar affliction. I regretted his pain, but deep down there simmered a guilty satisfaction that I wasn’t alone in my misery.

--- o ---

We squatted by the stream as the sun disappeared. Waiting. Waiting for nightfall. Waiting for the streamside shadows to lengthen and coalesce. Waiting for obscurity complete, when the big browns would slide out from under the deep cut banks, like trolls from a beneath a bridge, to begin their search for meat.

Nine-o’clock. My old eyes strained for details.

“It’s not dark enough yet,” said Jason.

--- o ---

As the sun turned its back and looked to the west, intent then on lighting the Orient and leaving us behind to founder in the dark, the Milky Way crept out, bolder each moment as its nemesis dropped from sight. While the cat’s away the mice will play, and it was on the mice that we counted.

With the arrival of starshine, an eerie netherworld unfolded, neither dark nor light. A monochromatic shadow box of blacks and grays. A rough fragment of grade school art, cut from ragged-edged drab construction paper and pasted in layers – stream, bank, tall weeds, tree line, horizon - with a dark, doleful palate, perhaps a red flag to the observant educator, but of cool cinereal comfort to the nocturnal predator; man and fish alike.

In time, we got started, pitching #2 rodents across the flowing slate ribbon to where we thought the far bank should be, threading backcasts through gaps in coal paper trees, as much by memory as by sight.

--- o ---

Jason said I’d hear the strike before I’d see it. The brain takes a moment to sort out the grays, but the ears don’t care how dark. I’d hear the splash as my skittering foam mouse swung across the surface of the unlit waters, then feel the weight. That lag would be just about right for setting the hook. I’d counted on that.

So when my drift was quietly interrupted in mid-strip, came tight in silence, I hesitated, puzzled. Then a subtle tug found its way up the line and I instinctively stripped, hard, in response. It stayed tight, but didn’t move, and I knew that I’d found that branch lying near the opposite bank; the one that I’d seen earlier in the brief reconnoitering sweep of my red-lensed headlamp.

“I’m snagged, “ I whisper-shouted, giving Jason the option of finishing the run before I spooked it completely. “I’m close,” he replied. “I’ll get it.” He slipped into the ink and waded towards the other side.

After a moment, I heard him chuckle. “It’s hung alright, but on a branch on the bottom. Something took you down. You’ve been mugged.”

“But I didn’t hear the take.”

“Yeah. Sometimes they’ll just sip it and it screws you up...”

“… but only the big ones do that.”

I suppose that was meant to make me feel better.

--- o ---

The ghosts approached. Wispy, ethereal illuminations bouncing quietly along the stream. Soft rustling in the deep weeds. Whispers - whether incorporeal voices or wind, unclear – drifted our way. On which side of the stream, also uncertain, as it, and the lights, wound serpentine through the overgrowth.

Directionless.

“Is that you Zach?” Jason queried in a low voice. We’d seen his FJ parked at the turnout.

“Yeah. Me and Trent. Had any luck?”

“We’ve moved a few fish. Mike got mugged by a good one.”

Thanks for reminding me.

For a while we held seance with the shades, invisible in the weeds and the darkness of the far bank, a mere thirty feet away. A minute, an hour, time didn’t matter even if we could get a fix on it. A wee-hour ouija with phantoms, shadows within shadows, with no visual context. Just voices, soft and quiet, muffled by murk, held to low tones out of respect for the night.

--- o ---

Around two came the moon, bright as day after the cold light of stars. Sight reconstituted, in a holistic sense, but details remained obscure and the trip back downstream was no easier for it. Even with our headlamps set bright, deep weeds hid beaver holes, tiny rutted tributaries, and fallen limbs. False steps plunged two feet and you listened, as you fell, for the snap of tibia or femur. I wondered if Jason would be able to carry me out if I broke.

Then, I wondered if I could carry him.

--- o ---

Trips back always seem shorter than the outbounds, especially when you’ve fished it hard, yet the hourglass flowed just a grain at a time as we stumbled towards the turnout. The knowledge that sunrise would arrive shortly lent a lost-in-time quality to the trek, while the pre-dawn darkness and headlamp's tight focus made the remaining haul bearable, showing us only the next step rather than the entirety of the final climb. A blessing of ignorance.

We arrived at the car, and the cooler, as the earlybirds were just waking for another workday. Soaked to the skin, legs beyond weary, ready for a shower and bed, though we'd have to pull the blinds tight by the time we got back to Jason’s place to hold in the darkness.

And while we’d pay for it later, the four-AM Oberon tasted mighty darn good.

Bad Boyfriend

Forgive me, Dani. I knew he was trouble.

I should have known better, that he'd steal you away, spend your money, leave you breathless. But I introduced you to him anyway. What was I thinking? How did I not see that you’d fall for him? Hard.

Sure, you asked about him first, but that's no excuse for my actions. What I missed was that he’d already caught your eye out there on your forays into the southeastern woodlands, restoring those pretty little brookie streams, learning to love the surroundings. But, when you asked, I should have talked you out of it. I should never have helped with the whippy little 'glass starter setup. You said it was just for an alternate sampling method, but I should have known better. It was about spending time with him.

It happened so fast. Seems like just yesterday you called me from Virginia, excited about catching your first small stream rainbow. Next thing I know, you're with him, sending grip-and-grins from Colorado’s South Platte; Eleven Mile Canyon, Dream Stream. You’re even posting about the big one that jumped and spit the hook, telling the one that got away stories like a veteran. He put you up to that, I'm certain. He’s sweeping you off your feet like a swift, tumbling current on worn vibram soles.

So before this infatuation goes any farther, there are a few things you need to know about him.

He’s moody. He’ll stand you up two, three times in a row. Skunk you bad. And just when you’re ready to toss him out he gives you a day that makes your head spin. He keeps stringin’ you along so you never know where you stand.

He’ll dress you up in ways you could never have imagined. Kinky. Belts and rubber and big boots kinky. To show you off to his friends.

He’ll get under your skin and you’ll find yourself thinking of him constantly. Every waterway you pass, no matter how big or how small, will bring him to mind. You’ll drift away at work, at play, in your dreams. It’s scary sometimes.

And just so you know, he treats his men friends just as badly. I'd rather not talk about it.

I implore you. Dump the bum. He’s no good. He’ll consume you. He’ll take you to far away places and then rain on you. He'll make you buy him stuff. Lots of stuff. That 5wt's not enough. He’s a monster.

If it’s not already too late, turn and run. Please, please, please listen!

Fly fishing is a bad boyfriend.

Bad.

But, then again, sometimes bad can be very, very good...

Notes: My thanks go out to my good friend and neighbor Dani for allowing me this bit of fun. Despite my warnings, I am thrilled to have her as a fellow fly fisher and wish her the best of luck in all of her angling endeavors. I sincerely hope that they bring her as much joy as they have brought me.

And be sure to visit Dani’s blog, Chasing Spring: Each Day a New Beginning. It’s a warm and honest look at the challenges of raising a family with a special needs child. The lessons are universal, lovingly told and beautifully depicted.

A nod and a thank you, as well, to Mike Taylor of the Peak Guide Shop, located in Colorado Springs and Woodland Park, for the image of Dani and her first western rainbow. Well captured, sir. The smile is priceless.

Finally, a reminder to all you women anglers out there that your first year of TU membership is currently free. Take advantage of this great offer to get started with this fine organization.