What Economic Crisis?

“My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer…”
-Robert Burns, Farewell to the Highlands

This week my family ate salmon from our home river marinated with the berries we picked while fishing for the salmon. Tonight we’ll have venison that’s never been packaged, frozen, processed, or touched by anybody other than me. Next week we’ll thaw halibut or crab from the bay and eat it in a home warmed by wood fire and an intense love for each other and the land that preserves us.

It’s not just a good way to live. I’m starting to believe it’s the right way.

Fly

“When the trout is rising to the fly, the salmon to the fall.”
-William Allingham, The Winding Banks of Erne 

The salmon come here following some genetic impulse.  The trout come following the salmon. 

You know why I’m here.

Rainbow Variations IV

“In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
-Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Water rises from the ground,
Mist to quench the dust;
And falls like manna from the sky–
We fish because we must.

Rainbow Variations III

“…pleasure is a wanton trout…”
-Robert Burns, Song–Gudewife, count the lawin

There were bigger fish in the little creek.  I know because I hooked and lost three of them.  Biggest trout I’ve ever seen.  I’d like to say my problem was all the bears, but really I think the fish just out-played me.

Somehow I’m okay with that.

Rainbow Variations II

“I don’t need to know what trout taste like. There’s enough salmon here for me and the bears.”
-J. Andrew Warren, Unnamed Alaskan Trout Streams

Catch and release:
Try to count his spots. Come up with a name for the color in his cheek. Guess how long he is. Then let him go, and spend the rest of your life trying to catch him again.

Rainbow Variations

“What is it about fly fishing for trout that makes me never want to stop?”
-J. Andrew Warren, Unnamed Alaskan Trout Streams 

We write a new chapter every time we fish new water.  This one’s called Big Fish in Little Water.      

Cutthroat Variations

When the cut-throat isn’t occupied in crime,
He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling…
-Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, The Pirates of Penzance 

I’ve been thinking about the slash.

Maybe it’s about dominance.  Or attraction between the genders.  Or identification. Or a warning.  

It’s not camouflage.  It can’t help the fish swim faster or find food more efficiently.  It doesn’t mean they’re poisonous.  It’s just a striking pigment variation that occurs beneath the gill plates which underwater would never even be seen by other fish.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the slash exists for me.

 

 

 

 

Mystery Picture

First TMF open post.

What is this?

 

Mother’s Day Prayer

 

Thank you for her life today.

Though they may be far apart, make them wake up together every day.

Make my daughters to be like her someday.

 

 

Finally

“Cutthroat, yes; cutpurse, no!”
-Victor Hugo, The Broken Pitcher 

Finally picked the right spot at the right time of the right day.

Although it took a few tries to pick the right fly.

photo #2 credit