It’s sixteen feet long and in need of some work.  Should eventually get me from here to there in style.  I’ll try to keep my progress public. 

“I, rather, with the leaping trout,
Wind, among lilies, in and out…”
-Robert Louis Stevenson, The Canoe Speaks

And the island keeps getting better.

“In the cabin the fisherman’s daughter,
The strangely beautiful fisherman’s daughter.”
-Heinrich Heine, The North Sea–First Cycle

I’ll keep taking you along if you’ll keep coming.  You’re good company, and with you, small fish are whales.  Papa needs that sometimes.  Maybe you need it too.

You bring your mud boots and those curls; I’ll bring the fishing stuff and the candy.

I’ll bring the kleenex next time, too.

I built two sawhorses in preparation for my project.  In a few days, something cool is going to start happening in the garage.

“…Which should be to the larger plan,
What the child is to the man…”
-Longfellow

Any guesses?

Since October 12, 2009, I bought this:

Which gave me a view of this:

Which inspired me to get one of these:

Who turned in to one of these:

Which meant I had to build this:

Also I managed enough of this:

To help me afford a trip or two across the island for stuff like this:

Before I had to go collect five or six of these:

To feed them:

Also got a baby boy.  See previous post for evidence.

If I remember anything else worth mentioning from the past 463 days, I’ll post it here.  If anything good happens from here on out, I’ll post that here too.

Till then, there’s a project I’m working on.  I’ll write more about that later.

Eight GBP, fourteen Aussies of true Alaska buckskin and sheep horns, born to ride the white water in search of calm water to part the deep water and clear the holding water.  An alpine crawling, muskeg slogging deer getter with a flair for wing shooting and standing dead wood.  Up in the morning to search the skyline; up at night to hear the wolves, he waits for the equinox to tip the planet so he can know past doubt that all is well.

And all is well.

Mama’s in awe; sisters are smitten; and Papa’s proud as a thundering grouse in Spring.

Welcome to the river, Son.

I love you.

“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