GALWAY GIRL

My opening day is not dictated by the calendar, but rather by temperature. This is because the state’s official opening day applies to streams stocked with hatchery-bred trout and not those where wild fish live out their secret lives, streams like Bonnie Brook, the little rivulet flowing a few miles from our home located in the foothills of the Kittatinny Ridge. Even so, the temperatures for most of March have remained in the mid-forties, dropping down into the thirties each evening. For this reason, I grab the sweatshirt from a rack on the wall while passing by the tube leaning in the corner behind the door, the one holding a fly rod, with cane the color of caramel constructed by Tom Whittle, the Pennsylvania craftsman and artist.

My jeans, work gloves, and duck boots are lined with flannel, my watch cap weaved with wool. It’s Easter Sunday, but the clouds, dark and foreboding, make it feel more like Good Friday. Once out the door, I lower the watch cap over my ears and raise the hood on the sweatshirt. Crossing the yard, I open the door of a small shed beside the lean-to where rows of billets are neatly stacked. Inside, I grab a maul. On one side of the shed, in front of the lean-to, a mountain of split-wood towers over an old stump. On the other side are logs waiting to be split.

Standing a log on the chopping block, I stand, legs apart while swinging the six-pound maul. One half of the log falls to the ground while the other remains on the stump. Swinging the maul, I split the half into quarters. I grab the other half, once more swinging the maul. Bending forward, I chuck the billets to the top of the mountain and then repeat the process. 

Two hours later, I’ve removed the sweatshirt. The watch cap is raised above my ears even though my daughter says wearing it this way makes me look like Papa Smurf. The wood I’ve been splitting is mostly white ash felled because of the damage caused by the emerald ash borer. The infestation has forced me to take down more trees than would be required to burn in a single winter. Ash are one of my favorite hardwoods. They split easily, burn well, and make good kindling. While culling one or two trees each winter, I’ve always made sure to leave many more standing. According to Norse and Celtic legends ash trees are sacred. The ancient Greeks believed wood nymphs, known as Meliae made the trees their home. I will miss these trees that have graced our woodlot and now follow the Meliae, who according to Greek mythology suffered the wrath of Zeus and were destroyed in the Great Deluge. 

Although I’ve heard them calling from the lower field, phoebes have yet to return to the nest under the eaves of Trish’s potting shed where they’ve raised a number of families over the last few years. Blue jays and cardinals have remained throughout the winter while the first robins recently returned. A few weeks back, during three days of on-and-off icy rain, a pair of purple finches swung onto our back porch. They perched on pegs holding a rusted watering can and wicker creel, their breast feathers puffed out. After a number of minutes, first the rose-breasted male and then the brown-streaked female flew across the lawn and into the naked branches of a dogwood tree.

The following week, a pair of wrens began building a nest in the creel. For the better part of a morning, I tapped out an essay while watching them flitting back and forth with twigs and twine in their beaks. Sometime before lunch, they departed and have not returned. This morning, bluebirds checked out the wooden house nailed to a cedar post in our vegetable garden where the previous spring they raised three fledglings.  It was the bluebirds that got me off my ass and out to the woodpile while Trish cooks annual ham dinner with all the trimmings and before I pick up my mother-in-law .  

The low hanging clouds fail to dampen the spirit of songbirds chattering in great numbers from the highest branches of two cedar trees standing like sentinels above the mountain of firewood. The radio is tuned to the NPR station out of Philadelphia. Chickadees and titmice add their voices to those of finches, nuthatches, and white-throated sparrows, forming a chorus behind Steve Earl as he sings about his Galway Girl, who it is said was not from Galway, but rather from Howth, east of Dublin.

 Leaning the maul against the stump, I slump into a plastic chair, my legs stretched out, one boot on a log, the other tapping against the sawdust sprinkled across the soil until my Galway Girl calls from the door. It’s time to pick up her mother.

– MY TWO GALWAY GIRLS

A FAMILY AFFAIR

They arrive on the earthen dam, the well-nourished female the first to climb up the ravine, nose in the air, white tail up until she feels safe enough to saunter toward the pond that remains at its summertime low. She takes a few sips, her ears twitching, hindquarters quivering from the flies and mosquitoes that will continue to plague her until the first hard frost. Our neighbors have named her The Moocher because of the big doe’s habit of striding toward people, hoping for a handout. She has been known to take a slice of apple from an outstretched palm or nibble on cracked corn out of a bucket. This is as the result of our neighbors’ efforts to feed deer throughout the winter and their continued efforts during the spring, summer and into the fall.

Although only seven-fifteen in the evening, long shadows are already stretching across the little pond that is located alongside the woodlot behind our home. Although each day of summer ends sooner than the previous one, it seems more pronounced as autumn approaches, the change of season much more apparent when daylight saving time comes to an end in another five weeks.

First one and then the other of this year’s fawns follow their mother onto the dam, striding with confidence built up over the four months since their birth. We first noticed one of these scamps lying in Trish’s flower garden in amongst the iris and day lilies. At first, we mistook the white spots on its tawny coat for dappled sunlight, but something seemed off and upon closer examination I discovered the little sprite curled in a ball, eyes open, head leaning on one shoulder. Trish and I did not wish to disturb her, the fawn remaining perfectly still as we backed off.

The following afternoon Trish shooed a fawn she found nibbling on the leaves of a prized rose. Not sure if it was the same deer, a few days later we discovered the twins, as we came to call them, dining together on an azalea that was given to us by a friend and has survived for more than thirty years in our back yard.

Over the next few months, we watched this season’s offspring accompany The Moocher on her daily rounds, the two reavers becoming more and more independent as the summer progressed. While still only a few weeks old, they appeared unfazed by the intermittent electrical shock that deters their older brethren from passing through the metal strands of a fence that protects the interior five acres of our property from browsing deer. Brazenly standing their ground inside the fence, the two little fawns would sometimes remind us of their mother, advancing in our direction, coming within a few feet before springing this way and that like two jumping jacks, mocking our efforts to preserve the many plants and bushes we have cultivated with care over the years.

A few moments later a second doe, a bit smaller than the first, climbs up through the ravine and onto the dam. The yearling is a familiar sight, seen often by her mother’s side since her birth two seasons past. The Moocher stamps her front hoof, her daughter approaching cautiously. Trotting over to her mother, she begins licking the inside of her ear. As we watch the doe pay her respects to the matriarch, a third fawn crests the hill, zigging and then zagging over to the twins. None of the three have “buttons”, the tiny stubs male fawns develop in their first year, the smaller females racing around the edge of the pond like three banshees blowing through a Connemara graveyard.

Last to appear are two young males, like the adult females, their coats are mottled, the rich chestnut color of summer slowly giving way to dull gray hair that is longer and more hollow providing greater insulation that will keep them warm throughout the winter. We rarely encounter bucks, but have seen these two during the latter part of the summer, appearing almost always together, never far from the two does and their fawns.

About the same size, the antlers of one have formed into a single set of spikes indicating that he may be in his second season while the other has four points that should make him at least a year older. When the one with spikes saunters over to The Moocher, they touch noses.

In early June, after fawns are born, a mother will ignore her yearlings that return in a few weeks, after the fawns have become more independent. Both males and females then come together, the extended family grazing and grooming similar to the one we are watching on the dam.

Like all families this one cannot remain together, the young having to make their way in the world, the old having to struggle to maintain the place they have carved out for themselves. Sometime in November this extended family will once again separate, the males going into rut, competing with other males and perhaps each other before mating, the chances of either surviving hunting season slim. The young female, if pregnant and surviving the long winter will give birth to another generation, the fawns doing the same the following season while hopefully The Moocher will return to lead another generation into the future.

This essay was printed in the autumn 2014 issue of Skylands Magazine. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, who’ve been so kind to encourage my writing over the years.

A TW0-HEARTED TRADITION COMES TO MAINE

Western Maine is a land of deep forests, mysterious bogs, and wide lakes. Its rivers are unrestrained, as wild as the moose along their shores, with rapids willing to sweep an unsuspecting angler off his or her feet and moods that change as quickly as a salmon slips a hook. Dark pools hold char, commonly known as brook trout, called speckled trout or squaretails by old-timers, fish so large they’ll steal an angler’s breath away.

Palm-sized brook trout, as bright as a handful of marbles and as pugnacious as a prize-fighter, can be found in smaller streams. Native to the region, these trout are the progeny of fish found by the ancestors of the Wabanaki when they followed the woolly mammoths across what the Paleolithic people called the “Land of the Dawn.” 

Wading through the free-running rivers and paddling across the wind-swept lakes. I’ve discovered something more, something intangible, but enduring. For this is a region steeped in sporting history. A tradition of self-reliance, yet one willing to offer a helping-hand, rooted in hook and bullet. A tradition handed down from guide to sport and from father to son, generation after generation. 

         It has been more than forty years since my wife and I purchased a camp overlooking a quiet cove where each spring loons return to raise their young. During that time, I’ve grown to appreciate this tradition. Perhaps that is why my eye was drawn to an advertisement for The Two-Hearted Fly-Rod Case found while I perused Trout Magazine.

Painted with an antique black paint and re-varnished, this wooden case was advertised to contain either a two-weight 7 ½’ graphite fly rod, a reel loaded with a double taper line, and a pearl maple fly box. The ad also stated the box had additional compartments to keep other fly-fishing essentials. 

It didn’t take long for me to dial the number and within a few minutes I was speaking with Andy Mitchell, founder of J.A. Henry Rod & Reel Co. (His company is named after his two sons, Jack and Andrew, and the family’s yellow Lab, Henry.) Andy explained how he handcrafts each case in his shop located in Cannonsburg, Michigan. The case is named after his favorite stream–The Two-Hearted River, which is located in the State’s Upper Peninsula, country similar in many respects, with that of western Maine.

Although it was the craftmanship of the case that caught my eye, Andy explained, the rod it houses was designed specifically for targeting brook trout in streams and small rivers. Having built rods for more than twenty years, he decided to design his own fly rod–a seven-foot, six inch, two-weight matched with a reel and line to complement the fast action of the rod. After three years and multiple prototypes, the Michigan woodworker feels he’s perfected a carbon fiber blank weighing only 2.8 ounces. Andy says, “He can’t think of anything better than chasing brook trout with an ultra-light fly rod?”

But back to that wooden case! Handcrafted from solid white pine salvaged and planned from a nineteenth-century barn, it measures 27.5″L x 9.75”w x 3.5″h and weighs 11.8 lbs, including the rod, reel and maple fly box. The interior contains beveled compartments with hardware including non-mortise hinges. The leather handles are handmade and secured with antique trunk handle caps. Although truly a sporting work of art, the case is quite sturdy, meant to travel into those wild places preferred by brook trout. 

What appeals to me most is the top of the fly rod case. Andy can burn a design of your choice to create a personalized heirloom to be proudly handed down through the generations. In my case, I chose an engraving of the Magalloway River watershed stretching through the Parmachenee Tract not far from where my cabin is located. 

Whether you’re a veteran of Upper Dam, Maine or Michigan’s Fox River, or anywhere in between, I encourage you to check out Andy’s website jahenryusa.com for not only his rods, reels, and the Two Hearted Fly Rod Case, but other items handcrafted by this angling artisan.

SEASONS BY THE STREAM

The fall is a time for reflection. The leaves of the oaks remind me of the golden color of a brown trout’s belly. Those of maple trees, a brook trout’s spawning colors while the darker browns and tans sprinkled across our property bring to mind bamboo rods, my connection with the rivers and streams where wild creatures live out their secret lives.

From March through April, I travel more than two hours to spend days casting my line upon well-known river winding through the Catskill Mountains, a river inhabited by fish as suspicious as they are large. Tippets, delicate as the fibers of a spider’s web, are required for the brown trout in these waters to consider an angler’s offering. I carry a chest pack jammed with plastic boxes containing nymph, emerger, crippled, and dun patterns meant to imitate the different stages of mayfly and caddis. I’ve spent many afternoons casting over a single fish while mending my cast, replacing my tippet, switching from one fly to another, changing positions, all as the trout ignores my presence, methodically rising to dine on the cornucopia of insects floating upon the gentle current. If lucky, frustration turns to elation on those occasions when I solve the puzzle.  

A few years back, my wife and I traveled to Allentown, Pennsylvania where a section of the Little Lehigh River flows through a park with bridle paths and walking trails. Although I usually cast a five-weight, eight-foot, graphite rod, I decided to rig seven-feet, three-inches of cane constructed by George Mauer. George named this model Starlight Creek Special in honor of his friend, the writer, Harry Middleton, who like the Pennsylvania rod maker, died much too young. 

After stopping at a plaque honoring the master of the wet fly, James Leisenring, I worked my way along the shore without spotting a single rise. After more than hour, I spied a set of rings spreading outward upon the surface of a slow-moving run. Sliding down the bank, I entered the river forty of so feet below the rings that by then had dissipated. After checking my twelve-foot leader for wind knots, I selected a black ant to attach to a 7x tippet. A breeze had come up ruffling the surface of the run. It also played havoc with my leader. On my third cast, it returned in a mess of tangles and I decided to replace it with another, nine-feet long. Figuring the shortened leader would be easier to control, I took the chance it would not spook the fish. 

On the next cast, the fly landed a few feet above where I’d seen the rings, a moment later, I lifted the tip as the maw of a large trout rose through the surface, the ant lodged in the roof of its mouth. I worried the lighter tippet and shorter rod might not be a match for such a fish, but standing at the bottom of the run, the current worked to my advantage as the fish swam upstream. After a number of minutes, I brought the brown trout to my side. It measured twenty-two inches against the lightly-flamed, blond-colored bamboo, the largest brown I’ve caught to date.

I spend a good part of the season at our fishing camp located in the foothills of the Boundary Mountains separating western Maine from Quebec. It’s a region of the country where brook trout have existed since before the Abenaki tribes paddled their birchbark canoes down from Canada. The fish here are as large as you’ll find in the lower forty-eight States while the rivers remain as untamed as the moose and black bear roaming their banks. Although not as selective as brown trout, the brook trout and their landlocked cousins, will easily snap a 5x tippet.

My wife and I make the nine-hour trip to the North Woods three or four times from mid to late May, when the ice leaves the lakes, through September, after which most of the rivers close to fishing, each time spending a week or more at our cabin. This spring, I released a seventeen-inch brook trout. I’d hooked a ten-inch brookie alongside the far bank. The fish rose when I twitched the hare’s ear wet fly at the end of my tippet. The brute charged up from the depths, attacking the smaller trout not once, but three times. I released the brookie that appeared to be suffering from PTSD and switched to a soft-hackled streamer, a pattern first tied by the late Jack Gartside. On my first cast, the brook trout (It would be an insult to refer to it as a brookie.) charged the undulating marabou like a pike might have done. 

After an especially hard rain during the last week of August, I humped down a narrow trail to a stream a short distance from our cabin. On my third cast, the tannin-stained current swept my nymph past a boulder and into a bend pool where a fish struck with the type of power that cannot be mistaken. A number of minutes later, the native brook trout’s massive head filled one side of my long-handled net, the fish’s tail hanging out the other. 

This time of year, crisp mornings damp with flog replace the heat and humidity. The air is still. The only sound is that of crickets and the tick, tick, tick of leaves falling through hardwood branches. This morning, mushrooms replace bluets along the path leading to the stream. In the moment now, I leave the past behind. The future must wait its turn. Smaller than an acorn, a chocolate-colored toad appears to stare upward as I tramp past. A musky smell rises from the woodland’s duff. As I approach the brook, a frog hops from the exposed roots of a poplar tree. It splashes into the water with a loud plop. Looking down, I watch it slip under a boulder. 

            A crow calls from the wood along the far side of the stream. Another answers. Despite a recent rain, the stream is low, its current slipping around boulders rising through the surface. Tramping along the bank in hippers, I carry another seven feet of cane, this one crafted by Tom Whittle, another expert rod maker, also residing in Pennsylvania. The morning mist lifts as I wade upstream. Riffles sparkling in the sudden sunlight extend no higher than my calves. I remove a tin from the chest pocket of my flannel shirt and choose a pheasant-tail dry fly to knot to my 5x tippet.

A chipmunk scurries across an arborvitae fallen from one bank halfway across the stream. I watch the little fellow weaving in and out of the spindly branches until it reaches the very tip. The cheeky rodent stares down into the meager current as if debating whether to go for a swim, but then turns tail and weaves back toward the forest. 

I cast the fly. The current carries the generic pattern into a pool created by debris collected around the tree’s branches. There is a splash, and I am into my first fish, a brown trout that fits nicely in the moist palm of my hand. Farther along, I cast into a plunge pool where another fish jumps clear of the surface, the fly in the corner of its jaw. 

It goes on like this for the next two hours, a welcome respite from Autumn chores. Seated on a moss-covered boulder, there is a certain sadness accompanying the gradual end of the fishing season, but then I tell myself, like this little stream, all things come and all things go. 

 

FLY LINE PODCAST

I recently sat with second-generation Master Maine Guide, Michael Jones, for an in-depth interview on his FLY LINE PODCAST. Mike seems to know just about everyone connected with fly-fishing in Maine. His easy-going manner made for a fun hour. We not only discussed fly fishing in the Rangeley Lakes Region of western Maine and my books, but also how I began fly fishing, my other life as an attorney, and much more. For a change, I got to tell a few stories orally rather than scribble words across the page.

Clink on the link to hear the interview and share in a few of our family photos. I hope you enjoy:

Fly Line Podcast

NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

I recently came into a set of my Rangeley Region trilogy – NORTH OF EASIE, WEST OF RANGELEY and BROOK TROUT BLUES. The first two books have been out of print for quite some time, and are very difficult to find, sometimes selling at ridiculous prices. The set of three books sold immediately. I’ve now come into a second set that I wish to sell at a very reasonable price compared to what you’ll find online. If anyone is interested in purchasing the books as a set, please email me at magalloway@mac.com.

OPENING DAY ON BONNIE BROOK

Ask the trout of Bonnie Brook about their politics and they might tell you they are of the conservative persuasion. They’ll proudly describe growing up from eggs spread naturally by their parents. No hatchery trucks pulling up by the side of the road. No official opening day or closed season. No need for state interference.

What they don’t tell you is, by the nineteen-sixties the stream’s native brook trout had all but been obliterated by over-fishing and environmental degradation. To compensate for these excesses, the state called upon its hatchery trucks to fill the little stream’s riffles and runs with brook trout, brown trout, and even rainbow trout. Back then, the rivulet had the same seasonal restrictions as other larger rivers and streams.

Whether it was fiscal pressures or liberal optimism, the hatchery trucks made their last deposit sometime in the nineteen-seventies. Thanks to the Clean Water and Air Acts, Bonnie Brook recovered from its previous environmental woes and those hatchery fish began to lay eggs, populating its current with their progeny ever since. State restrictions on size and number, a No-Live-Bait regulation combined with voluntary Catch and Release policies have allowed these wild fish to thrive. Opening days and closed seasons became no longer necessary now that taxpayer funds were not required to fund stocking the stream.

All this brings me to this morning. Sun was streaming through my window when I woke. After a hot shower, I brewed my morning tea. Mug in hand, I padded into what had been our daughter’s bedroom until we converted it into a library after she struck out on her own. According to the outside thermometer the temperature had broken through the forties. The usual suspects—finches, a few titmice, and chickadee were flitting around the bird feeders. In between three or four mourning doves and a number of juncos, a small gang of sparrows pawed at the ground. To my surprise, like a bright blue comet, a male bluebird streaked across the yard. It was soon followed by a female. Although it will be more than a month before the official opening day of the fishing season, this was all I needed to declare opening day on Bonnie Brook.

In a mad dash, I managed to collect my gear from the four corners of our house. I pulled a box containing a number of flies from the top of a stack that threatened to topple like the Berlin Wall. Within its plastic compartments were various patterns meant to imitate little black stoneflies. I’d spent the previous few evenings hunched over a vise, experimenting with black dubbing and dun-colored CDC puffs in preparation for one of the little stream’s most reliable hatches.

My fly rod, the shorter one constructed of caramel-colored cane by the Pennsylvania rod maker, Tom Whittle, was waiting in its wooden tube where, sometime near the end of last November, I’d placed it beside the back door along with a number of other rods, both bamboo and graphite. They leaned against the corner as if sharing the latest gossip while gathered at the local pub.

I removed my fly vest from a hanger, a brown-and-red tweed waistcoat my wife bought for me when we visited Ireland, and after a long search, found my flannel shirt crumbled up in the back of the closet. My wide-brim hat was where I set it at the close of last season, below a print of a John Swan watercolor, one that depicts a sport sitting in the bow of a canoe, his backcast rising in a tight loop over the shoulder of a guide who stands in the stern, knees braced, a paddle in his two hands while he steadies the craft. The hat rested atop a row of books, mostly about the rugged country of northern Maine, some published in the 1930s, others in the 40s.

The Orvis Battenkill reel, an inexpensive, but reliable container for my four-weight line, was where I expected to find it. Over the years, my father-in-law had become my best friend. We tramped through forest and field together. In his eighties, he continued to help with felling trees for the wood stove. Electricity and the internal combustible engine are two mysteries too complicated for me to ponder, and so it was Charlie, who wired our pole barn for lights and kept my 8N tractor running. He believed a fish fairly caught belonged in the pan and not the palm. For this reason, although we fished together on other rivers, I never invited him to Bonnie Brook. One winter, he helped me construct a shallow wooden case out of pine boards we sanded and varnished. It contains a number of compartments, with felt along the sides, each large enough to hold a fly reel. Charlie died at age ninety-three. I think of him every time I open the lid of that box.

It was nearly eleven by the time I hit the road. By then, the temperature had risen to a balmy fifty-three degrees. I drove out of town, and after a few minutes residential homes turned to farmland. The fields are fallow this time of year, the cows and sheep in their stalls.

Our home is located in the foothills of the Kittatinny Mountains, and so it wasn’t long before the road began to rise. It’s been a winter of little snow, but a few patches were visible under the dense stands of rhododendrons and mountain laurel flanking the macadam. I hadn’t seen any other vehicles, except for a few cars parked where the Appalachian Trail crosses the road. After the familiar climb, the road leveled off, revealing a vista of forested hills. The hardwood trees remained bare. When a passing cloud hid the sun, the landscape suddenly seemed uninviting.

I pumped the brakes at the bottom of the descent, stopping on the small bridge that crosses the little brook. The stream ran briskly. Above the bridge, the current swept down through a narrow ravine for perhaps a quarter mile. Falling under the shadows cast by the branches of swamp maple and pin oak, it formed a number of plunge pools. I’ve taken a ten-inch rainbow in a pool formed in front of a large boulder along the far bank only a few yards above the bridge. There’s a nice run below the bridge where two eleven-inch brook trout like to hold, but only when the water level meets with their approval.

After clipping my hippers to the loop of my jeans, I rigged the little cane rod and set out across a pasture flanking the stream. Although the temperature had risen into the fifties, the ground remained frozen. A trio of deer raised their heads, loping away with their white tails flared in mock alarm.

 I’d been ill for the better part of the winter, culminating in walking pneumonia, and so my legs were not used to the exertion. After making my way down to the stream, I sat on a boulder to catch my breath. The current was slower in this stretch, the pools deeper.  I’d hoped to find stoneflies hovering over the water, perhaps crawling over the branches of the brambles and bushes that grew along the sides of the stream, but there was no sign of the aquatic insects. The sullen current seemed devoid of life.

It took a while to knot a soft-hackled wet fly to my tippet. Making a short upstream cast, I kept my line off the water while allowing the fly to sink as it passed along the far bank, only a few feet away. At the end of the drift, I allowed the current to raise the pattern, relying on the technique espoused by “Big Jim” Leisenring.

In this manner, I worked my way upstream. My first few casts were awkward, my legs unsteady, as they always are this time of year. There was a time when I could thread a tippet through the eye of a #20 trico pattern at dusk while my hearing was as acute as Natty Bumppo’s. These days, I require cheaters to knot a #12 fly. Worse, I wouldn’t hear a black bear rambling in my direction until it tapped me on the shoulder. So, you can understand why I worry that my motor skills, diminished over the winter, may not return. But this stream is like an old friend. Uncomfortable after being away for a time, we have too much history not to fall back into our old ways, and after a number of casts my rhythm returned while my legs slowly regained their confidence.

In this manner, an hour passed, maybe more. I can’t say for sure, for I make it a habit not to wear a watch while on the stream. During that time, the sun remained behind a bank of clouds, the temperature falling back into the forties. It felt like rain.

My mind had drifted toward thoughts of a grilled cheese sandwich and a warm bowl of my wife’s tomato soup when the little bamboo rod bent forward, bringing me back to the stream. Pulling back against the pressure on the other end, I raised the tip of cane. Swinging my quarry into the palm of my hand, I released a soggy leaf back into the current.

MARRIAGE

In a column for The Northwoods Sporting Journal, I reviewed We Took To the Woods, Louise Dickinson Rich’s book about her time living with her husband, Ralph Rich along the Rapid River. Some might say they had a pretty good marriage.

I’m no expert. Don’t pretend to be. But Trish and I have been married for forty-one years and that has to count for something. Hell, we beat the odds or so I’m told. We met while I clerked for a Superior Court Judge. She was juror number six. I later learned she had a thing for guys with beards, and as it turned out, I had grown one while studying for the bar exam. After the case concluded, I asked her out for lunch and we haven’t been apart since.

Well, that’s not exactly true. From the first, Trish was her own gal, a woman who prefers jeans to dresses and a sturdy pair of hiking boots to high heels. Before our daughter was born, we both worked—she in advertising and me as an associate in a small law office. On weekends, we went our separate ways—she to her garden, me to my stream, coming together only at the end of the day to recount our adventures. I guess you could say we gave each other space.

Over the years, my wife has acquired this marvelous collection of skulls, which she displays in a glass case in our living room. When our daughter was in high school I took great pleasure in pointing out these trophies to any boy she dared bring home, suggesting the most interesting skulls were kept out of sight in a special case.

Soon after Father Cull declared us husband and wife, we had our house built on a twelve-acre parcel of land located in the foothills of the Kittatinny Mountains. I remember the first time my father, a man who never escaped his early upbringing in the Bronx, ambled through the woodlot where I still harvest billets for the woodstove, and how he turned to me and asked, “How ya gonna rake all these leaves?”

On her Facebook page, our daughter referred to her early years as living with two hobbits in the Shire.

Emily is an accomplished artist, contributing a number of watercolors to my book of short stories. She’s spent time in France and Germany, England, Ireland, and Holland. When she was younger, we flew to Ireland to “fetch” her home. She’d spent the winter semester at the Burren College of Art located not far from the little seaside town of Ballyvaughan. During our two-week tour of the Emerald Isle’s western coastline, we stopped in the village of Cong where many of the scenes of the 1953 movie, The Quiet Man, were filmed. While there, I fished a small stream, the girls exploring a thirteenth-century monastery. Later in the evening, we sat around a table in the local pub, peat blazing in the nearby fireplace while we ate lamb stew flavored with Guinness.

THE BIG PULL – OUR RE-CREATION OF SCENE FROM THE QUIET MAN

My wife spent her childhood summers on Conway Lake, located in northeast New Hampshire. Her father, an accomplished angler, would row a wooden peapod out onto the lake, accompanied by his daughter. Now, I’ve always had the feeling my father-in-law was a devotee of Samuel Clemens’ Tom Sawyer, since it wasn’t long before his daughter was doing the rowing, working those ash oars while he cast his Hula Poppers, Jitter bugs, and Rapala lures to the largemouth bass and pickerel that inhabit the warm water lake.

The year Emily was born, we purchased our camp in western Maine. Soon afterward, our little traveling circus was commuting between “the shire” and our cabin where we spent our free time exploring the rivers and streams, logans and bogs that comprise the northwest corner of the state. By then, Trish had become expert at rowing a boat. Like her father, I was more than happy to endure the snide smiles of men passing our square-stern Grumman while she rowed and I cast my flies.

These days, Emily lives in Texas while we remain on our twelve acres with two black Labs, Winslow Homer and Finnegan. Trish still tends the gardens, taking time to skulk through field and forest while I continue to split wood with a six-pound maul, now and again carrying my bamboo rod down to a little stream where wild trout dimple the surface. Each May, we make the nine-hour drive to our camp.

Seated here in our cabin, the patter of soft rain on the roof, I look around the room. Our two Labs are curled up by my feet. The smell of their wet fur mingles with that of the burning wood in the nearby stove. By the door, a long-handled net leans against the tubes containing my fly rods. My chest waders are draped over a chair. Spread across the table where we take our meals is a novel set in France, a book of cowboy poetry, and Tom Ames’ Hatch Guide for New England Streams. Between the books are my binoculars, Trish’s camera, and the canvas pack she straps over her shoulders when on one of her adventures. Scattered among these are a number of plastic boxes containing my favorite fly patterns.

To borrow a line from Ms. Rich’s book, I suppose you could say our marriage is one “…that you can let yourself go in, a marriage in which you can put up your feet and relax.”

BROOK TROUT AND BANYON TREES

Last summer, I was seated on a bench. Not any bench, but my favorite slab of abandoned lumber located beside this little rill where I spend much of my time playing tag with native brook trout while at my fishing camp in western Maine. With a fine cushion of brilliant green moss, it’s just the right size and shape for my skinny ass to rest comfortably while contemplating a bit of this or that. Having no knowledge of quantum physics, I was ruminating on the absurdity of this rock-and-roll planet’s inexplicable ability to spin within a galaxy that like so many others in space has been expanding through the millennia. I’d been wondering too, how, in an infinite universe, with so much stellar junk floating around, we haven’t bumped into anything larger than a chunk of space-rock astronomers call meteorites, say for instance, a British police box containing a shape-shifting time traveler. But no, it seems our only visitors may be those the government has been hiding away in the New Mexico desert.

The temperature, in the mid-seventies, was quite pleasant. A woodpecker hammered against the trunk of a distant tree. Not far away, a crow cawed from somewhere deeper in the forest, another calling back. A harrier hawk swept low over the contours of the marsh surrounding the little stream. With the sun on my neck, I interrupted my cosmic wonderings while staring down on a set of familiar riffles. I was hoping to catch a sign, perhaps a rise or subsurface flash that would reveal the presence of a fish. After a while, my mind resumed its rambling, stopping to examine what might be the opposite of infinity. At first, I decided it must be zero, but if infinity has no end why would its opposite be any different? I mean, if a number can be combined over and over again, then I suppose it can be divided into smaller and smaller bits, however infinitesimal, never actually reaching zero.

As my head began to ache, I heard a rustling of leaves along the far bank. A mink stood on its haunches. Its little head popped above the tall grass, between its jaws dangled the limp body of a garter snake. I remained still when the mink’s beady eyes shifted in my direction. Although I didn’t move, the carnivorous mammal hadn’t survived that long by taking careless risks. Rather than drawing closer, it slinked down the bank and swam to the far side of the brook. A red squirrel, who had been watching from the branches of a spruce tree, chattered a complaint as the sleek animal vanished downstream.

The first law of thermodynamics states the principle known as the conservation of energy. That is, energy can change from one form to another, although the total amount of energy does not change, making the cosmos an enormous recycling plant­—Mayfly becomes trout, trout becomes mink, mink becomes man, man becomes…. You get the idea.

The second law of thermodynamics states that all natural systems tend toward disorder, a characteristic called entropy, which means that every system, including our bodies, our social groups, the very atoms comprising the universe, the earth, those galaxies I’d been thinking about earlier, are gradually dissipating.

It’s hard not to argue that everything from the tiniest sub-atomic particles to the universe as young as it may be, must someday come to an end. But to admit that we are mere stardust, poof and we’re gone, is that a bridge too far? Is the mayfly, the trout, the mink, the bear, and even the angler, nothing more than a collection of molecules that are constantly expanding, dying, changing, comprised of flesh and bone, mere containers to hold a mixture of bodily fluids?

What about that other part of us? You know, the part that while standing naked in the shower worries about what the day may bring or over previous mistakes. The part that curses when we miss a strike on an exceptionally large fish or dances with glee when we bring that fish to the net. The part that strikes out in rage or falls helplessly in love. The part of us that hums, even sings from time to time, the part that decides to sit in thought for seven weeks under the shade of a banyan tree or for an hour or so by a little stream in western Maine.

The snow melts, the rain dries, the rivers flow, the mayflies hatch, the trout spawn, our bodies shed flesh, our stomachs grow fat, our hair turns gray, (worse yet, we lose it altogether), the earth warms, the universe expands, and yes, we all die.

Rising from my bench on that early-summer afternoon, I came to the conclusion that when it’s all said and done, I’d continue to play tag with the occasional trout. Taking the advice of my favorite singer-songwriter, Iris Dement, I decided to “just let the mystery be.”

GOLDEN MORNING

Early morning fog is slow to fade as I pull the fly rod from its cotton sleeve. When the sun breaks through the shroud, leaves of poplar, black birch, oak, and shagbark hickory appear to glow. Awash in color, the surrounding hills complement the two sections of golden cane.

It won’t be long before sugar maples cease the production of chlorophyll, their crimson leaves, adding to the early autumn palette. Although the season is winding down, I hope to hold one last brook trout in my dampened palm before releasing it back to spend the winter contemplating the error of its ways.

A doe, her twin fawns, their spots nearly gone, lope into the tree line as I tramp through a field of tall grass that glitters with dew.

At the edge of the field is a narrow trail. Beads of moisture glisten on webs weaved by spiders among barberry and wild rose. Thorny branches reach out to grab the sleeves of my flannel shirt as I tramp down the path that leads to the little stream that remains open for a few more days and where wild trout can be found. The air is breathless, filled with the earthy smell of forest duff. I hear the tick of leaves as they fall through hardwood branches. They flutter to the ground like flaxen snowflakes.

Along the trail, I’m greeted by a pair of chickadees that flit from tree to tree. A white-throated sparrow calls out for Mr. Peabody.

As I approach the stream, wisps of vapor slip over its surface. A blue jay cries out from beyond the far bank. Another answers. Then, another and another, the cries dissipating as the flock flies farther into the wood. A sweet perfume rises from the delicate blossoms of autumn clematis entwined in the streamside verdancy.

Pulling a metal pill box from my shirt pocket, I stare down at the few patterns inside. Unlike brown trout, that require imitations closely resembling the insect du jour to appeal to their neophobic nature, the brook trout of this little stream are rarely selective, willing to play tag with any fly, provided it is cast with a bit of stealth.

I choose a #14 pheasant-tail to knot to my tippet. The parachute wing of this dry fly will keep the pattern afloat over the most turbulent of riffles. The calf-tail post makes the pattern easy to follow while the pheasant-tail barbules wrapped around the hook shank are sufficiently “buggy” to interest any fish still looking toward the surface this late in the season.

The bamboo rod that has accompanied me over the last few years was built by Ron Barch. The former publisher of the Planning Form, an international newsletter dedicated to construction of split bamboo fly rods, has been crafting cane rods for more than thirty years. Mine was built based upon Paul Young’s Midge design. Measuring six feet, three inches, it is the perfect tool to cast flies on this stream that is no more than ten feet wide.

For the next two hours, I cast the pheasant-tail into little plunge pools, along the edge of tree trunks fallen into the stream, in front and behind boulders, and over any water that looks “fishy,” all with no success. My legs aren’t what they once were, and after stumbling over an exposed root, I decide it’s time to call it a day.

I can’t complain. The sun has bathed the tannin-stained stream in a golden hue. Although its warmth has waned over the last few weeks, it remained sufficient for me to roll up my sleeves, perhaps for the last time until next spring.

About to turn back downstream, I feel, rather than see movement in a patch of water tight along the far bank. Was it a fin holding the fish in place or maybe the white of a maw opening to take in a nymph? When the sun slips out from behind a cloud, I spy the current moving against a shadow. In the run, no more than a foot wide, the fish, (if that is what I’ve seen) is protected by the limb of a white oak tree that extends within inches of the stream’s surface. 

After a single backcast, ten feet of line unfurls over the surface. The #14 fly flutters down a few inches from the bank where the current carries the combination of feather and fluff along a set of shallow riffles. As the pattern slips under the limb of the oak and onto the patch of water that is darker than the rest, I hold my breath, the line between thumb and forefinger of my left hand, right hand tightening around the cork above the reel. It is this moment of uncertainty, perhaps more than any other, that draws me back to these little rills, with their brambles and bushes, suspicious deer, curious birds, and wild trout.