“O’Driscoll drove with a song
The wild duck and the drake,
From the tall and the tufted reeds
Of the drear Hart Lake.” 
-William Butler Yeats, The Host of the Air 

Been parting the waters with a different stick lately.  Ptarmigan, ducks, and geese so far.  I’ve frozen a few in the round in preparation for next season’s hunting partner.  He’ll change things for us.  We’re ready for a change.

This morning I couldn’t pull my wading boots out of the truck because they were frozen to the bed.  I’m proud of my wet waders.  Maybe sometime this winter I’ll let them dry out.

Just not yet.

“O dinna think, my pretty pink,
But I can live without thee…”
Robert Burns,  Song-Here’s to thy health, my bonnie lass

Pinks are back.  They brought more cutthroat and dolly varden with them.  Been fishing a lot.  Catching a lot.  One deer on the ground; gallons of berries and more to come; chicken of the woods dehydrated for the winter; three cords of firewood cut; halibut and salmon caught, fletched, and frozen or smoked; crab pot is producing well. The weather’s turned early, and we’re ready.

It’s a bounty by which we are humbled and for which we are grateful.

It also means I can keep after the trout, at least until the river busts.  

Photo Credit: The Chindo

Photo Credit: The Chindo

“Are you not afraid that one salmon more will sink your boat?”
-Victor Hugo, The Closet 

Trout fishing has slowed way down.

Thank goodness.  

photo by fullcurl

“That all the woods may answer, and your eccho ring.”
-Edmund Spenser, Epithalamion

Fishing’s been strong lately.  Strong enough to let me stop and have a look around now and again.  

Be outside.  Sit and watch and listen.  

Be still and and be quiet for a time.  There’s more beneath the surface than fish.

But don’t stop fishing.

TMF

"Bring with you all the Nymphes that you can heare
Both of the rivers and the forrests greene...
The silver scaly trouts doe tend full well..."
-Edmund Spenser, Epithalamion

This dark water--
the trees on trees--
these days of light
and of returning
to natal streams,
to pools of glass and light reflected,
to river's edge,
to hand and back--
this world of living water,
let it flow. 

photo credit

“Thou art thy mother’s glass…”
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 3 

You want to be with them, our daughters;
They want to be you, Belle Etoile.
In their faces shines your face–
Their souls, your soul.
What they want
Is what I want. 

Happy Mother’s Day

“But, too, the world is shut out. The paradise is yours. In it are trout and deer and grouse and bear and lazy happy days.”
-Stewart Edward White, The Mountains 

Trail’s still deep with snow.  Lake’s still covered with ice.  Outlet’s still full of trout.  

And no footprints in the snow but ours.  Snow’s too deep.  Water’s too cold.  You’d have to be mad.  But those fish…

It was a long winter.  Or it wasn’t.  Doesn’t matter anymore.  The outlet’s still full of trout.

photos by fullcurl, with respect.

Must we, supplanted by ourselves in the course,
Changelings, become as they who know at last
A river’s secret, never having cast 
One guess, or known one doubt, about its source? 
-Henry Charles Beeching, Knowledge after Death 

My neighbor moved off the island today.  He spent last night warming in the day’s last sunshine and freezing in the Thorne’s black water.  I hope if I ever have to leave I’ll have fished as much as he did.  

And that I spend my last night freezing in the Thorne.

How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
-W. B. Yeats, A Prayer for my Daughter

She has ten fingers, ten toes, and two chins.  And she smiles when she’s at rest.  And she’s loud. And her sisters are beaming.  And her mama’s resting.  And her papa’s in love.  

Tess Elizabeth: God’s promise for a good harvest.  

Sleep tight for now my love.  You’ll be on a river soon.  

Let the sea resound, and everything in it, 
       the world, and all who live in it.
Let the rivers clap their hands, 
       Let the mountains sing together for joy.
-King David, Psalm 98:7&8 

Thanks for fish and fishing,
For wool socks and gloves,
And tin cups of coffee,
For hunting and fishing partners
Like W.L. Gore, A.W. Danner, and C.C. Filson.
For rutting bucks and bulls and full curl rams
For mud flats, flood plains, rim rock, and ridge tops,
And alpine meadows and muskeg bogs,
Headwaters, tributaries, tailouts,
sloughs, seams, pockets, and pools,
And high tide and low tide and high tide and low tide…  
Thanks for roe and redds and riffles;
Spring migrations, Fall runs, 
The light in June,
And the night in Winter.
For tannic lakes and glacial lakes
And phosphorescence in the bay,
For cedar, spruce, and hemlock–
Ancient giants still alive– 
For the Aurora and thunder
And the rain that brings the river back to itself.
Thanks for safe passage overland,
For birds in the hand,
Fish for the pan,
And wood for the fire.

Thank you Lord for this life,
And for giving me
The need to fish
Until my arms can’t hold a rod,
To hunt until I cannot see to hunt,
And to watch and walk
Until I reach Your shore.

*This updated post appeared in its original form here two years ago.