Once I was big enough and strong enough to work the gates it was like I’d become an adult. In my young mind, being trusted enough to keep the cows where they belonged, and taking the place of my Grandfather at the gates, I was a man. It’s really something to look back on a grandfather getting older and letting you do the work because you are too, and to realize now that you didn’t realize then, it meant you were both getting older and that all things pass with time, including us.
I told him that I tried to live my life the same way I organized my fly boxes… With good intentions. But that just like the fly boxes, good intentions are only so good and last only so long, and that sooner or later you go to the box to find a specific fly that will change your luck for the better and find only an unorganized mess. Chaos was probably the better word. Just ask my ex-wife.
The creek out back. That’s how I refer to it most of the time. It’s got a name like most creeks, but to me it’s the creek out back. Why? Because that’s where it is. The name isn’t important on most days. Less and less becomes important to me all the time the older I get it seems. And what I hold onto as actually important likewise becomes more important the older I get. The creek is important. Its name, not so much as its location. Out back.
When I’m on my death bed, I don’t plan on reminiscing about how perfect the grass was. I plan on telling about how every time Carter would hook a decent fish when he was a young boy that he’d always turn and look at me with disappointment on his face and tell me “I’m snagged on something,” and gesture to me to take the rod and unsnag it. Only for me to feel the rod shudder and hand it back to him in hilarious excitement, “You’re not snagged, it’s a fish. Reel!”
. I could, and should be working in the house right now. But when I looked out the window and saw it snowing I figured how many times do you get the chance to fish in the snow on April 29th? It was a thought heavy in sarcasm, but an excuse to wet a line all the same.
Standing on the bridge, looking down at the tannin stained water coursing through the white terrain, I couldn’t help but think it was a sight something like this that brought the necessity for the word contrast in the human language.
Twenty something years ago I was on the shore of Lake Arrow Head in Texas. A foot away a small fire was burning in the middle of a likewise small ring of rocks, a pile of scrounged wood, most likely mesquite from what I could tell was gathered off to the side. It was cold, and I knew there was never going to be enough wood to keep the fire going through the night. I rolled up in a wool blanket that I’d pulled from my dorm room closet back on base and covered my face with a nit hat. I remember thinking how much warmer my own breath felt on my face trapped under the blanket than the fresh night air.
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