It’s been a while since you’ve come here to fish. Back then¾a forever ago¾it was easier going. You’ve assembled your nine foot fly rod and from a high point on the sloping meadow you study the stream where it meanders through the slough, and see a trout rising. Between you and it, at the bottom of the meadow and before the water, stands a hedgerow of multiflora rose and spiny hawthorn. You don’t remember it being there. You have memories of approaching the river on warm evenings during springtime when, back then, the field was bordered by wild phlox and flowering dogwood. You look for a detour but there is no easy way. You walk through the meadow to the hedgerow and look for an opening. There’s a game trail that offers an opportunity for access if you’re willing to assume the posture of a quadruped. You break down your fly rod and proceed to bust brush, like you did years ago along other streams. It added an adventurous tone to your forays and was the modus operandi to reach the most secluded portions of a river and therefore, the least fished. Halfway in you determine that the hedge is a wider swath than you thought. You look at the bloodied tops of your hands and then at the new tear in your patched waders and feel the burn of a scratch on your cheek and begin to doubt your sanity. You remind yourself that as an elder you should be sitting streamside in a camp chair casually fishing with bait and a bobber. You rationalize that since you’ve already taken down the four piece rod and navigated the thicket this far, it would be a wasted effort to back down now.
You peer through the barbed tangles looking for an opening and curse yourself for not carrying the brush clippers in your pack. There’s an illuminated clearing ahead, so you continue, grasping the most threatening stalks between the thorns and bending them away. The unseen ones seem to have a life of their own when they grab hold of you out of nowhere and won’t let go, like unfortunate events that arise suddenly and stop you cold. You move gingerly and plan every step, bending and twisting here, duck walking there, assuming positions among the thorns unkind to one with limited flexibility. You deduce with a certain amount of logic that it’s probable there haven’t been fishermen here before you. That alone holds promise and you regain the feel-good feeling you had
¾ was it just last night?
¾ when you were sedated, semi-comatose and dreaming of this, your once favorite trout run. You persevere and sacrifice a few more inches of exposed flesh to the thorns. The river beckons.
At last you make the swampy clearing and do your best to stay on top of the grassy hillocks or else sink into the muck. You trudge closer to the stream bank where you disturb a pair of geese; they voice their concern rather vociferously and slip into the water. They bark back and forth and paddle into the current which carries them downstream and into the glow of an otherworldly sunset. At the same time, a muskrat appears at the opposite bank swimming upstream and when it sees you, dives for cover with a splash. Surely all the commotion will have put down the trout. You edge forward at a crouch, eyes on the water and looking for anything to indicate a rise. From beneath your feet a bull frog springs into the water and you flinch.
You stand upright and begin to reassemble your rod, the need for stealth diminished by all the activity. You’re confident now that the riser you had first seen from the meadow has taken the hint and withdrawn to safety. To seal the deal, a kingfisher flies over the stream with a fish gripped in its beak. You thread the line and leader through the tiptop and tuck the rod under your arm as you fiddle with the fly box and gaze at the water. With purpose, you select a newly tied, diminutive, white-winged dry fly and hold it before you. You tie it onto the tippet and head for more solid ground.
You’re drawn to the slough because the water
¾close to its headwaters
¾will harbor a population of native trout, and what seems like a lifetime ago now, you’ve experienced here some fine fishing moments. You recall those times as being in the company of a young man, an unburdened, vigorous and happy-go-lucky sort with good intentions and high hopes. You wonder, oftentimes, what ever became of him. If you could say anything to him now, it would be to berate him for squandering his acute senses and physicality on foolish temptations and bad decisions. You’d tell him not to waste time. You know that the young man would scoff at you and call you an old codger and tease you about your waning abilities as a fisherman. You’d tell him you had more experience and could fish circles around him and you were going to show him how it’s done. “You’ll see. Just watch,” you say aloud as you point the tip of the rod at the water.
It’s a long run of slow moving water, barely a riffle to be seen, with a silt-covered bottom unlike the rockiness of the bigger river farther downstream. You’re limited to casting from the bank. To wade would mean becoming mired up to your knees or more. You emit a groan when you recall how you found that out one evening when, fighting a trout, you were forced to jump off the bank into the water where you sank to your hips in mud. You remember how you struggled to free yourself before darkness set-in. It was a struggle repeated throughout your careless years, when jumping without thinking and suffering the consequences of trespass or temptation. Never mind you say. What’s done is done. You remind yourself that angst is for the suffering of younger men. You’ve come here to redeem a few chits earned from atonement, so you turn your attention to the river and those things about it that please you.
You’ve seen the surface rife with the rings of rising trout on warm evenings when swarms of mayflies brought them out to feed, as well as the bats and swallows. You didn’t know then, if your cast fly would even reach the water lest it be snatched out of the air by bird or flying mammal. Although then you preferred quicker waters where you could wade among the rocks and hear the purling sound, the slough had it’s special charm. You became enchanted with it’s voice born among the peepers and frogs, the birds and insects; the musky scent of swamp, sprouting reeds, skunk cabbage and fiddle back ferns; the alluring perfumes of flowering shrubs. All this never failed to stir you. Now it’s more of a comforting feeling than the stirring of the testosterone concoction within that it used to be. You find yourself conversing with that young man and reminding him to appreciate important things like beauty and serenity.
You cross another game trail that leads to the water from the hedgerow, with fresh tracks of deer imprinted in the mud. You hope this may be a better route to follow on the way out. From where you stand the hedge seems fortress-like, separating the fields of the hillside from the marsh along the river. With some trepidation, you wonder how far up and down the stream it continues. You’re not enamored with the prospect of having to fight your way through those entanglements with evening coming on. The suggestion comes to you suddenly, as if a whisper carried upon the breeze, that you ought to not worry, that this is where you need to be.
Then a fish rises close to the opposite bank. You’ve heard it first and when you turn to look, you notice the spreading ripples on the surface. A change overcomes you, a metamorphic oddity when your older self is invigorated by the spirit of the young man emerging from beneath the surface of your skin. He frees you from the bonds of certain infirmities. You forget who you are and how you came to be this way. You forget about doubt and regret. Forgetfulness is an asset assumed when you have a fly rod in hand and there are trout rising within the range of your cast.
So you pull a good length of line from the reel and false cast for distance, timed so that when you see the next rise you can offer the fly in that direction, keeping the faith that it will alight just so and float just so to entice a strike. You’ve not forgotten the way it is when a trout takes a high floating fly and begins to fight. You and who you were find common ground in the everlasting moment. Twilight inspires the residents of the marsh to sing more sweetly than ever. Mayflies have begun their angelic flight. Another trout rises and inhales the dry fly¾the last one you tied and named, for reasons obscure to you now, “Angel of Mercy.” You strike and the rod bends and from an elevated plane above the stream you hear the reverberations of your own voice. “I told you so!” it intones, “I told you so!”
