THERE AND BACK AGAIN

(This essay appeared on December 22,2021 in the online fly fishing magazine, MidCurrent)

As a young man, I read Hemingway and Steinbeck, Harrison, and McGuane. Along the way, the fly-fishing raconteur, Richard Brautigan, brought tears to my eyes while the rabid environmentalist, Edward Abbey, had me raising my fists in outrage. I took to heart the words of Gary Snyder, the acclaimed poet-turned-Buddhist, found in his thought-provoking book, Practice of the Wild:

“The wild requires…we learn the terrain, nod to all the plants and animals and birds, ford the streams and cross the ridges, and tell a good story when we get back home.”

Over the years, I’ve tried to follow his advice, attempting, from time to time to tell a good story when returning home from the Rangeley Lakes Region of western Maine where my wife and I have owned a camp for nearly forty years. It is a part of the country that has not changed much over the years. The rivers, streams, and ponds surrounding our cabin are about the same as Johnny Danforth and Fred Baker found them when they decided to spend the winter of 1876 hunting and trapping the land above Parmachenee Lake. The fish are still here. On average, they are not as large as they once were, but a sixteen-inch native brook trout is not uncommon and landlocked salmon remain as wild as the moose that sometimes plod down to the river’s shoreline to muse over the mysteries of the forest.

When we first arrived in the region, I’d cast large streamers and weighted nymphs in a manic pursuit for ever-larger fish. I wore a vest with more fly boxes than Samuel Carter had little liver pills and a pack heavy with reels containing lines that sunk at different rates and clothing for the constantly changing northern New England weather. Such angling requires time on the water, especially after the spring thaw. This is when smelts, the region’s principal bait fish, leave the lakes to make their spawning run up the larger rivers, with brook trout and landlocked salmon following closely behind. In the latter days of September, the trout and salmon once again swim upriver, this time on their own spawning runs, providing a second opportunity to take fish measured in pounds rather than inches. In rain, and sometimes sleet, and even snow, buffeted by bruising wind and under blistering sunlight, harassed by black flies, mosquitoes, and no-seeums, from first light to dark, I’d swing a streamer or drift a nymph, addicted to the tug.

But there is another type of fishing, one that can be employed on the many tannin-stained brooks that slip across the Canadian border–streams that bend and twist through balsam and spruce for mile after mile, some of them headwaters of those larger rivers where the majority of anglers continue their search for trophy fish. Along these secret rills, I can cast to brook trout without coming upon another angler. To be sure, the fish here are diminutive compared to the trout in the big rivers, a few no larger than my pinkie, the largest fitting snuggly in the palm of a hand. In these narrow ribbons of water, hidden under shadows cast by a vast conifer forest, I’ve come to appreciate what Thoreau described as “…these jewels…these bright fluviatile flowers, made beautiful, the Lord only knows why, to swim there!”

On the losing side of middle age, I now seek out these waters too small to gather serious attention from other anglers; forgotten places, where trout live out their lives in the lee of boulders, under conifer branches or as they sometimes do, in a set of sunlit riffles. These are fish that have rarely heard the splash of an artificial fly.

This type of fishing requires an angler to heed the words of the legendary American naturalist, John Muir, who wrote, “Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness.”

No longer do I feel compelled to wing heavy nymphs past my ear, or make sixty-foot casts until my shoulder aches. Instead, I carry a single metal tin that fits nicely in the pocket of my canvas shirt. Once holding cough drops, these days it contains a handful of flies. There are pheasant-tail patterns, ones with parachute wings, maybe a few elk hair caddis or black ants if fishing during the summer months, and fixed-winged and soft-hackled hare’s ear wet flies for when I work my way downstream. While casting a rod constructed by the late George Maurer, my mind is free to be in the moment as a six-inch brook trout rises through the surface.

With less distraction, this uncomplicated method of fishing allows me to enjoy the creatures found along the edges of running water—the colorful flash of a tiny warbler or the song of the secretive thrush. I’ll catch myself smiling at the splash of a frog or while staring into the eyes of a bashful toad. These moments, like a Basho haiku, remain frozen in time.

Western Maine remains an escape from the madding pace of modern life that has allowed me to trod a trail less traveled—the one alongside a stream where brook trout are willing to play tag with a bit of feather and fur—and return to tell a tale or two.

BLACK FRIDAY – SORT OF

I’d like to thank all of you, who have pre-ordered RIVER FLOWERS, my newest book, a collection of stories about wild fish, the places they can be found, and the men and women who seek them out. Primarily set in northern Maine and New Hampshire, there are a few detours to New Jersey and Maryland. As she did for THE RIVER KING, my daughter, an accomplished artist, Emily Rose Romano, was kind enough to provide the cover art. This time around, she has added a number of watercolors to complement the stories found in RIVER FLOWERS.

I also want to thank Jerry and Rick Kustich whose company, West River Media, published this book. Both are well-known for their angling accomplishments over many years—Jerry, as author and bamboo rod maker, Rick as author, instructor and expert on fishing for Musky and Steelhead.

I look forward to catching up with those of you whom I’ve met in the past and meeting some new readers as I appear at various fly-fishing shows, T.U. Chapters, and fishing clubs to help promote the book. If you haven’t already done so, you may wish to consider taking advantage of the pre-publication offer that will expire on December fifteenth.

SEE YOU AROUND THE NEXT BEND IN THE RIVER

BOB ROMANO

NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

I have two SHADOWS IN THE STREAM and one NORTH OF EASIE available for sale. If interested, email: magalloway@mac.com for ordering and price information.

SILVER TROUT

The skies have remained gray all week. They match the landscape as well as my mood. Juncos flit among the cedars like the first snowflakes of the winter that looms ahead. A few sparrows shuffle over the lawn. They’re searching for seeds scattered by the chickadees and titmice visiting the feeder that hangs from a metal post outside my window. Even with the window closed I can hear their chirps as they complain about the cold, damp weather. The bird song lures me away from the warmth of the woodstove, and after gathering my fishing gear, I find myself making the short drive to Bonnie Brook.

I roll down my window upon approaching the narrow bridge that spans the little stream and watch the current slide over fist-sized cobble in colors that range from dun to cerulean and from sienna to rust.   A doe and her yearlings graze in a meadow beside the bridge. When I pull the vehicle off the road, they look up, the young deer sidling closer to their mother.

The pin oaks and beech trees still cling to their withered leaves, but those fallen from the maples and silver birch, hickory, and ironwood crunch under my wading boots as I amble down the narrow path that weaves through the forest. During that first season, I’d tramped along the tiny stream’s banks while rarely finding evidence of fish. There was that set of ripples spied from the corner of my eye, and the occasional streaking shadow as I waded around a bend, but not much more to verify their presence. It took an entire season before meeting my first brook trout, and although I made the acquaintance of the rainbows soon thereafter, it took a few years before the first brown introduced itself.

Over time and with much patience, I eventually learned that although the stream’s ankle-deep riffles are shallow, they provide aeration for the slightly deeper runs, where palm-size brook trout may seize a wet fly drifted with care, and if a dry fly is cast with skill, a chunky rainbow might splash through the surface. Then there are those few thigh-deep pools, dark enough for a resident brown trout to spend the daylight hours brooding over its future.

This afternoon, the stream is dark, cold. It does not beckon. I’d hoped for a mid-afternoon midge hatch, maybe a few blue-winged olives, perhaps some late-season stoneflies, but the caddis larvae lie snug within their stick houses while mayfly and stonefly nymphs have burrowed deep into the bed of the stream.    

I knot a soft-hackled Hare’s Ear pattern to the end of my tippet. After a short cast, the fly sinks from sight, tumbling soundlessly around a boulder, its shoulder mottled with bright green lichen. Although I imagine hackles undulating enticingly as the pattern drifts naturally with the current, the trout are unimpressed.

Working through a set of riffles, I pull back, but feel only the lifeless tug of a submerged leaf. Without a hatch the trout remain lethargic, unwilling to come out and play. Even so, what is fishing if not an exercise in hope.

Ninety minutes later I remain chilled despite a flannel shirt and wool vest. My joints creak, muscles burn. I follow the stream’s course as it falls in a series of plunge pools surrounded by a forest populated primarily by hemlocks. The tops of a number of these stately trees have split from their trunks creating a hodgepodge of timber scattered across the forest floor. I’ve read that the wooly adelgid is attacking these trees that have sheltered the upper reaches of the stream for generations.  If not brought under control, the exotic pest will be the demise of the forest. As the hemlocks go, so go the trout. For its the shade that keeps the temperature of the stream cool enough through the summer months to sustain the population of wild fish that inhabit its waters.

It’s impossible to navigate through the spindly branches of the fallen limbs and I’m forced to hike up and around the massive deadfall. Rhododendron, and to a lesser extent mountain laurel, spread down the sides of the hills as I pass farther down the stream.

After more than forty years, I’ve come to know this brook as well as an angler can know such things. Six miles from its origin, a pond nestled in the foothills of the Kittatinny Mountain Range, to its terminus at a well-known river that drains four states, the little stream flows down the hemlock-studded mountainside, eventually passing through fallow fields once farmed by colonial farmers, then falling faster through a forest ravine, its current slowing through the final mile or so as it follows a serpentine course through swampland before flowing in the big river.

I remember a time before the fall of the hemlocks when its headwaters remained cool through July’s heat and August’s humidity. Barberries and brambles, wild grape, and rose bushes sheltered its banks as it passed out of the forest and through fields of high grass and meadows brightened in summer by daisies and black-eyed Susans. The untamed tangle of thorny branches and vines held the sides of the stream in place, the bushes discouraging erosion, and yes, made my backcasts a study in frustration. But over the last few summers Bonnie Brook has seen less rain than in past years followed inevitably by excessive flooding that has scoured the banks, causing them to collapse. Once unheard of in the northeast, mircrobursts have leveled sections of the stream bed, lessening the ability of the brook to hold in water deep enough to sustain trout.

Before entering the swamp, the current twists through a narrow flume where it falls from a height of more than twenty feet into what had once been the stream’s deepest pool as a result of an oak tree that had fallen across the back of the run, its massive trunk creating a formidable dam. Now, as the afternoon’s muted light wanes, I stare down from the top of the falls to find that the pool is less than half its normal size.

Although sometimes difficult, I’ve learned to accept change when caused by the natural course of events, but descending into the ravine, I discover that the ancient tree is gone. Looking closer, I find marks where a chainsaw has scarred the remaining portion of the oak’s trunk. I ask myself, why? (Upon coming upon a park ranger later in the week, I’m told there was fear that if the tree had been swept away, the resulting downstream discharge could cause harm to those who frequent the trail leading up to the pool.)

Like wisps of fog, memories slip over the pool’s surface as wet snow drips down from the ashen sky.

There was that time I came upon a black bear seated upon a log. It was June and the trout were as frisky as fawns. I’d waded within ten feet of the bruin before looking up from the stream’s surface. The bear was seated with its broad back toward me, its legs apart while chewing on red caps plucked from a tangle of brambles. After slowly backing away, I spent the remainder of that afternoon staring over my shoulder.

I recall another time, when I jumped into the air and turned tail, all in one motion, upon hearing the rattle of a snake in the high grass of summer. There was no more fishing that day.

I’ll not forget the trout I named the Old Groaner. For many seasons, whenever I approached, the fish streaked from its feeding lane to hide under a boulder. Upstream casts failed to bring the trout to the surface, but I’ll always remember the anticipation, when changing tactics, I slipped my fly downstream, letting out line, all the while waiting, waiting, waiting, until the cagey old fry-of-a-brown-trout rose to sip in the #20 Griffith’s Gnat at the end of my tippet.

There have been many fish, some big, most small. All brought me joy, but there’s was one that stands out among all the others. It was a brown trout, one that I stalked over two seasons. It resided under the falls, its domain the pool that before the amputation of the log had been the widest and deepest of the entire stream. I remember losing that fish when it slipped the hook, my line springing back in a hopeless confusion of tangles as a wood thrush called in the gloaming, and how the following year, on a warm evening during the first weekend of summer, with caddis swarming over the pool’s surface, that fish once gain rose to grab my fly from under the fall of water. How we fought, holding my breath when it streaked back under the foam caused by the falling water, cursed when it tangled my line in a pile of submerged branches, and again when water slipped over my hippers as I slid my arm down to dislodge it, and how near the end, as darkness fell, I muttered a desperate prayer, until the two of us lay exhausted, the fish finning in the shallows, me lying upon the damp cobble.

Although wild places have a way of jealously guarding their secrets, I’ve

listened carefully whenever the little brook whispered in my ear. Of all the lessons learned, perhaps the most important is the fragility of the fish struggling to survive between its banks. It would be easy to remain in the past, but I fear for the trout of this little mountain brook. The damage its sustained brings to mind Harry Plunkett Greene’s evocative Where The Bright Waters Meet. Like the trout of the River Bourne, I worry that the wild fish of my little stream will succumb to events beyond their control.

In his book, Greene describes how his “silver trout” thrived during the first few years of the twentieth century until they were unwittingly crippled by the introduction of hatchery fish, soon thereafter to vanish altogether as the result of overfishing and the runoff from tar and salt “needed” to maintain the local roads beside the chalk stream.

Now, I’m an angler, at my best when wading through running water. There will always be drought and flood. The life of a trout will never be an easy one. But if it will give these audacious fish a fighting chance, I’m all for reducing fluorocarbons, fighting the infestation of imported pests, and at the very least, leaving streams and their inhabitants to their wild nature.

As I trudge back up the trail, the snow continues to fall, a bit harder now. It turns to ice by the time I reach the truck. The deer are gone. Beside the meadow across the road, the branches of a dogwood tree appear to shimmer like so many silver trout captured for one last moment before passing into time.

BEND IN THE RIVER

Seated on a log beside my favorite stream, cushioned by moss that has crept across the bark, I wonder why it is that I tend to gravitate toward these little ribbons of water. Although the sun shines brightly on this afternoon in late September, it’s lost most of its heat. The leaves are turning the distant hills into an autumn palette. The brook trout that I’ve been teasing with a wet fly over the last few hours are also decked out in their autumnal attire: flaming bellies of golden orange, dark backs, and red-in-blue dots along the flanks—the reason old-timers call them speckled trout. These are small fish, the largest fitting snugly in my palm. Like me, they prefer the solitude of the deep forest to larger rivers that are more readily accessible.

A number of years back, Trish and I spent two weeks along the western coast of Ireland. Our daughter had spent a semester at the Burren College of Art in County Clare, and we’d traveled there to fetch her home. The plan had been to tour the countryside. While the ladies snapped pictures of an Abbey built for the Augustinians in 1120, l unpacked my fly rod.

Located in County Mayo, the village of Cong is where The Quiet Man was filmed. For many of us who grew up in the States during the 1950s, this movie, starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, remains synonymous with St. Patrick’s Day. Now, I must be getting old because back home there wasn’t a single person in my office who’d heard of The Quiet Man.

“John Wayne? Wasn’t he that guy who played a cowboy?” my secretary replied when asked if she knew of the movie.

On that day, the wind had picked up by the time we took the turn at a wooden sign with the words QUIET MAN BRIDGE painted on it. Above the little stone bridge was a slow-moving stream surrounded by a wild marsh of grassy hummocks. Below, the current quickened as it flowed through the bridge’s stone arches.

After tramping through tall reeds, I stood where more than sixty years ago Barry Fitzgerald carried John Wayne to his ancestral home on the back of a one-horse cart. I was about to cast a tiny pheasant-tail nymph into the current, when an old man humped over the muddy lane that led down from his white-washed farmhouse. His threadbare coat was buttoned to his chin, his hands sunk deep in its pockets. Wisps of white hair danced around the wide-brimmed hat he wore low on his brow while a cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. By his side, a dog of unknown origin snarled until the old man kicked him with a rubber boot.

“Tell me boyo, what might you be doin’?” He spoke without removing the cigarette from between his lips.

“I was hoping to catch one of your Irish browns to write home about,” I replied.

“A Yank, are ya, then?” he croaked.

“Meant no harm.” I gave him my best smile.

“Guess I’ll leave you to it,” he replied. Turning his back, he called to the dog that had continued to stare with bad intention.

I spent my final few nights listening to “trad” music in the pubs we found along the road and my days searching out streams that flowed under the shadows cast by the “Twelve Bens,” a series of mountains in Connemara that Oscar Wilde described as “a savage beauty.” I did so, not so much to catch fish, but to stand near the places where they were found.

Perhaps John D. Voelker said it best in his short piece, Testament of a Fisherman: “I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful, and hate the environs where crowds of people are found, which are invariably ugly…”

Voelker lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a part of the country where the rivers and rills are as wild as those found along the western coast of Ireland and as untamed as any flowing out of the mountains that separate Maine from its northern neighbor. 

If you don’t remember The Quiet Man, you probably won’t recall Anatomy of a Murder. Based upon the novel written by Voelker, this intense movie, starring Jimmy Stewart as a mild-mannered, fly-fishing, defense attorney, was also filmed in the 1950s. The money Voelker made from the film allowed him to spend the remainder of his days on trout streams that he preferred to the courtroom where he’d practiced law, first as an attorney and later as a judge.

I first discovered Voelker a few years after graduating from college. He’d written a wonderful book of stories entitled Trout Madness under the pen name of Robert Traver. It inspired me to purchase my first fly rod—a cheap fiberglass model manufactured by the Cortland Company. A number of years later, I, too, became an attorney, and even wrote my own book of stories. I now own a number of fly rods, most constructed of graphite, a few from bamboo, while the Cortland, with its chipped paint and frayed wraps, rests comfortably on the wall of my den.

On the six-and-a-half-hour flight home from Ireland, I thought of The Intruder, a Voelker tale found in Trout Madness about a stranger who unexpectedly shows up at the angler’s favorite pool. You’ll have to read it to see why the times, they apparently are not changing. Upon my return home, I took the book down from the shelf and reread it cover to cover.

Now, seated on this log, surrounded by the spruce and balsam of western Maine, listening to the timeless current pass by, I’m once again reminded of John Voelker, a.k.a. Robert Traver, who died in 1991, at the age of 88; and of my father, who at age 83 passed away after struggling for many years with a heart condition; and my uncle George, who joined him a few years later, a guy who couldn’t catch a fish if it leaped out of the water and into his arms, but who was the most enthusiastic angler I’ve had the pleasure to know. And of my best friend, Trish’s dad, who found it hard to release a trout he’d fooled fair and square, and who, later in life, after losing his sight, I’d entertain with tales of my western Maine adventures.

I remember that Irish farmer humping down the wind-slept lane to see what “a Yank” was up to, and all the other fellows, now in their 70s, 80s, and older, some still wandering rivers and streams, with backs stooped forward, leaning on wading staffs, their eyes still twinkling with mischief, their minds filled with a lifetime of memories.

I like to think of them, not as they were in those later years, but as young men filled with possibility.

Rising from my seat on this moss-covered log, I can see the next bend in the river. Perhaps that’s what best about a trout stream. There’s always one more bend to explore.

RIVER FLOWERS – TALL TALES ABOUT WILD FISH, THE PLACES THEY’RE FOUND, AND THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO SEEK THEM OUT

You may wonder where this blogster has been these many months. Well, when not doing research on my favorite trout stream, I was putting the finishing touches on RIVER FLOWERS, my latest book, a collection of short stories set mostly, but not entirely, in western Maine, where my wife and I have had a cabin for nearly forty years. An accomplished artist, our daughter was kind enough to contribute artwork for the cover as well as a number of illustrations. Due out for the holidays, the publisher is providing a prepublication discount as set forth below. ALL THE BEST – Bob Romano

ANTICIPATION

For the past week that restless feeling has returned, the one that comes upon me about this time each year. It’s a yearning to be a part of the great awakening. Although snow remains around the base of hardwoods, the signs are there if you look hard enough—bluebirds flitting about last season’s nesting box, the splashes of wood ducks returning to the pond, the first robin stutter-stepping across the damp earth, and on the stream, little black stoneflies fluttering among a tangle of leafless branches. 

Before the first crocus has bloomed, a few white snowdrops brighten the soil under the leafless branches of a dogwood tree. In another garden, a yellow blanket of winter aconites provides a bit of unexpected color among the clutter winter detritus. In the lower field behind our house, among the brambles, rugosas, and barberry bushes, a woodchuck, silvery fur along its back, blind in one eye, wobbles out of the hole dug behind a slab of shale. Standing on his hind quarters, the old groaner appears to dream of bushes lush with leaves and soft blades of plantain. Soon the doe, matriarch of the little herd that frequents our woodlot, will drop a fawn, perhaps two, adding another generation to carry on her legacy. 

Looking out our window this morning, I heard a white-throated sparrow call for Mr. Peabody while watching a chipmunk, with its head raised from between the rock wall across from our front door, spread paws over its face as if to wipe the sleep from its eyes.  

It won’t be long before the phoebes return to the nest under the eaves of Trish’s potting shed. Tiny wrens will soon claim back their territory, filling the air with shrill song as they build their nest of twigs. Forsythia, and then lilac will bloom. Young rabbits will frolic among the daffodils and tulips and I will once again wade through gentle riffles to cast my flies to rising trout.

THIS MAGIC MOMENT

The temperature refuses to rise above the mid-thirties. I’m wearing my flannel jeans and an Elmer-Fudd, forest-green hunting hat with fleece-flaps covering my ears. Each time the clouds shift over the sun, the sky squeezes out a flurry of snow.

The six-foot lengths of black birch are too heavy to move and I’ve decided to cut and split them in place rather than haul the sections to the lean-to where we store our wood. I choose a chunk of the tree’s lower trunk as a chopping block. 

My chainsaw, at times obstinate, thunders to life after only the fifth or sixth pull of its cord. Forty-five minutes later the sweet scent of wintergreen mingles with that of the dust from the saw. Twelve-inch billets litter the hardened soil between the remaining lengths of wood. 

Black birch is called sweet birch by some. Others, similar to those Brothers of the Angle who insist on identifying mayflies by their Latin names, prefer Betula lenta. Small birds eat its seeds while twigs and catkins provide nourishment for rabbits, squirrels, and deer. Native Americans used the tree’s leaves and bark for a variety of ailments. Besides using its wood for furniture, past generations tapped the tree’s sap to brew birch beer. 

This particular birch had grown to a height of at least sixty feet. Over the years, it leaned over an electric fence we installed to keep deer from devouring the azaleas, rhododendrons, and other bushes and plants inside four of the twelve acres surrounding our home. It also keeps our two black Labs out of trouble. Recently, a pileated woodpecker began drilling holes in the tree’s base, sealing its fate. 

Putting aside the chainsaw, I set a radio on the tailgate of the truck and grab my maul. Trish bought me the radio a number of years ago. Although built for outdoor use, it’s engineers never anticipated the beating it would take while accompanying me into the woodlot adjacent to our home. More than once, an errant blow from a maul has sent a chunk of wood into its side. It has more dings than a traveling salesman’s suitcase and more stains than an auto mechanic’s work shirt. One year, a colony of ants found their way inside its plastic housing. The radio’s antenna is presently held together by duct tape. But like me, it abides. 

When I was younger, I swung an eight-pound maul. These days, I rely on a maul with a four-pound head. The diameter of each log is eighteen inches or more, and my lower back protests each time I bend forward to carry one to the chopping block.

I flip up the fleece ear flaps and hang my canvas jacket on the nub of a nearby spruce. A sweatshirt keeps me warm now that I’ve been working over the wood for more than an hour. Imprinted on the back are the words: Sterling College, Woodbury Commons, Vermont. I purchased the hooded garment from the college’s bookstore while attending a one-week course on outdoor writing. Its dark green fabric has faded over the years, its cuffs frayed. Unsure as to when they appeared, there are a number of small holes peppered across the front. The heavy cotton material is stained with oil and gas, but I fear it will disintegrate if washed.

The opening bars of a tune draw me away from the cordwood. After leaning the maul against the side of the truck, I turn up the radio.

“The Mississippi Delta

Was shining like a national guitar…”

Raising a tin cup to my lips, I savor a mouthful of syrupy, nearly frozen, Coca-Cola as sweet as the image conveyed by Paul Simon’s unmistakable voice.

Seated on the tailgate, my legs swing with the rhythm of the music.

“I’m going to Graceland, Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee.” 

A flock of juncos rises from the feeders around our house. They sweep over the tops of the trees as a beam of sunlight breaks through the clouds, and in that moment, all of the illness, isolation, and strife of the last year fall away. Tears fill my eyes. 

“Going to Graceland, Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee.” 

From the step outside our door, the dogs see me moving from side to side. As they race up the dirt drive, I slip off the tailgate, my feet hip-hopping toward the gate of the electric fence. I hold Finnegan’s front paws, the two of us dancing between the gate and the truck. Winslow Homer barks excitedly, waiting his turn. Tears are now streaming down my cheeks.

“Whoa, oh, oh 

Graceland, Graceland, Graceland

I’m going to Graceland.” 

A small family of deer stares from between a stand of beech. A breeze rustles the trees’ tan leaves that are withered, but still cling to the branches. As disapproving as any schoolmarm, the family’s matriarch, a well-groomed, good-looking doe, stamps a hoof while staring in our direction. A second doe, a bit smaller, probably her sister, stares in our direction. Behind the two adults linger three fawns born this spring. The smallest of the trio suddenly jumps straight up in the air. She kicks her back legs outward and then races in one direction only to veer off in another. The Matriarch turns her head in the direction of the little buckin’ bronco. The dogs look up at me, not sure what to do. Wondering if the little deer has diamonds on the soles of her shoes, I let out a laugh. The dogs wag their tails. The deer continue to stare.

As the final bars of the song lower to a whisper, I wipe the tears from my eyes. Like shadows under a full moon, the deer slip farther back into the woodlot. After ushering the dogs behind the gate, I return to the chopping block. 

CASTING FOR RECOVERY ANNUAL AUCTION

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For details on this offer, as well as many others that you may find interesting, check out: https://www.biddingforgood.com/auction/item/item.action?id=342270621

GOLDEN AFTERNOON

On this afternoon during the third week of October, the hardwoods along the banks of Bonnie Brook create a golden canopy over the little stream.  Each time the breeze sweeps down off the surrounding hills, I hear the tick, tick, tick of leaves that flutter down through the branches of the trees, many gliding along with the meager current. 

It rained briefly last night. Enough to fill the air with the pungent smell of wet leaves, damp bark, and summer’s decaying vegetation as I hike along a deer path that follows the contours of the little brook. Batches of purple asters provide a bit of color among the tawny blades of tall grass that flank the forest trail. The sun slips in and out from behind a fleet of fast-moving clouds. The temperature, somewhere in the mid-sixties, is quite pleasant. I disturb a flock of robins exploring the far bank for worms. I hear their calls as they sweep up into the branches of the trees. 

After a while, I come to a stone bridge that marks the lower stretch of water where I intend to fish. Tying a #16 ant pattern to my 6x tippet, I try a few upstream casts. The fly rides upon the current, each time passing where I’m crouched, floating under the bridge. I’ve taken a number of spunky rainbow trout this way, but on this day, the fish ignore my offering, preferring to play a game of hide-and-seek rather than one of tag.

A few yards above the bridge a tiny rill enters the brook. Before doing so, it forms a pool, a bit deeper than the stream’s riffles. This is the reason why I’ve hiked this far downstream. No more than three feet across and perhaps four feet long, its inhabitants are protected by brambles on either bank and the low-hanging limb of a swamp maple that extends half way across the rivulet. Using a side-arm cast I’m able to avoid the maple, but the fly is nearly caught by the thorny branches of a wild rose. A flip of my wrist rescues the ant, but it glides too close to the bank to interest any fish. My second cast places the terrestrial at the head of the little run where it enters the meat of the pool. A moment later I’m into my first fish, a wild rainbow trout that erupts through the surface, zigging and zagging within the confines of the little run. The nine-inches of zany energy seeks shelter in a confusion of submerged twigs and leaves, forcing me to lower my arm up to the elbow to rescue my leader that no longer throbs with life.

Wringing out my sleeve, I work on the ant. After cleaning off the debris, I pull a chamois cloth from my shirt pocket and dry its hackled body before moving on. The water is at its seasonal low, the riffles for the next few hundred yards no deeper than my ankles. On occasion, a shadow darts silently through the skinny water as I work my way farther upstream. 

Below a little plunge pool formed between two large rocks, a brook trout no larger than a finger rises to the ant pattern. On a long narrow run that slinks around a brace of boulders like a black snake, I once again prove that Brother Cotton’s advice to cast far and fine is easier said than performed with any sense of accuracy. 

For the next hour and a half, I wade up the middle of the stream while casting to my right and left. Now and again, the ant lands upon the bank, and with a flip of my wrist, falls into the stream. Each time I twitch the tip of flaming cane held in my right hand, the fly appears to struggle as it floats upon the current. In this way, I mange two more fingerlings and a larger rainbow that does its best to put on a show before coming to my hand.

Seated on a comfortable boulder, I take in my surroundings. A family of titmice that has flown into a nearby tulip tree are exchanging gossip. When a crow calls from somewhere farther back in the woodlot, the little birds fly off. A dragonfly, one of the last of the season, sweeps past. It does not see the tiny dun-colored mayfly that flutters upon the stream’s surface. 

A rustling among the fallen leaves draws my attention toward the far bank where a mink weaves through the exposed roots of a swamp maple. It’s dark fur glistens in the late afternoon sunshine. I remain still as the little predator raises its head in my direction. Staring across the stream though intelligent eyes, the mink’s whiskers twitch with excitement, but when I lean slightly forward it vanishes more like an apparition than an animal of the forest.

Twenty minutes later, I come upon a familiar pool. It begins with the current forming a deep slot as it slides along the far bank for perhaps three feet before washing against the front of a boulder. Over time, the current has cut through the cobble in front of the boulder, forming a deep trench. From there, it slips around the outer edge of the boulder, forming a shallow pool. 

I approach carefully, crossing from one side of the stream to the other well below the pool. Creeping through brambles along the far bank, I move into position across from the boulder. Crouching low, I wait, hoping to catch a sign, perhaps a rise or subsurface flash to tell me where a fish might be feeding, but after a number of interminable moments, neither rise, nor movement reveals the presence of a trout. 

In the past, when fishing downstream, I’ve had fair success drifting a wet fly or weighted nymph along the far bank or into the trench in front of the boulder. In this way, I’ve managed to take a ten-inch rainbow earlier in the season, and a few years back, a twelve-inch brown. Fish have never been willing to rise from either location to take a dry fly. I know from experience, the trout behind the boulder might do so, but they tend to remain at the very back of the pool, where on an afternoon like this one, they’d take the opportunity to carefully examine the ant pattern, more than likely retreating under the boulder should they spy my leader or the slightest bit of drag. With the stream as low as it is, any fish lurking in that shallow water will have already felt my presence, and if not, will surely flee before my fly hits the water.  

But there is a chance that a trout might be feeding in the current along the edge of rock where it’s a bit deeper, and after a single backcast, I hold my breath as the fly flips off the boulder’s shoulder. 

Seated here at the computer, I’m able to replay in slow motion what happens next—the maw rising to inspect the fly that swirls in the current, the worm-like markings surrounding the dorsal fin, the flash of white as the mouth opens wide. After that, the film speeds to a blur, ending with the release of a brown trout as golden as the afternoon when I was fortunate to make its acquaintance.