Approaching the Stream ...

As we approached the stream I saw a man in a wheelchair lofting a long line across the water with his flyrod, and the fly dropping lightly in the shady water underneath the overhanging bushes. “You see him out here all the time”, my father said, “He’s 85 years old!”

Decades of good and bad fishing have passed through my life since we came upon that scene of natural beauty. It means more to me now than it did then.

Author Ray Bergman, writing of fishing in a rainstorm reminisces, “The catching of fish seems insignificant in these memories of the play of the elements. I don’t remember much about it, but as I see it now, I believe that fishing was simply an excuse to get out in the open, to breathe air that came to me directly over open spaces, to face nature when she bared her soul.“*

I am revived by rural sounds, wild foliage, and the music of a flowing clear stream. I hope they revive you.

* Trout, by Ray Bergman, Alfred A. Knopf publisher, first published 1938, second edition, November 1952, page 3.