So Damn Close

Beaver

The calendar lies. It speaks of Spring and that bullshit about out like a friggin' lamb but the thermometer is spot on. Thirty-two degrees and heading south.

I was tricked into feeling the joy of the coming season last week. When I left a meeting Wednesday night fat rain drops were steadily falling. I was almost giddy with delight at the absence of gently swirling snow. Over the next few days air temperatures taunted my misery melting the last of the snow cover. Piles still sit below the eaves and in places where the sun can't burn it to nothing but the end of grubby snow is here.

Except for tomorrow. One last jab from the menace.

Two Saturday's ago I swung a purple Wooley Bugger in muddy flow. The melt had just begun and road sand coupled with farmland tailings made it difficult to see much of anything beneath the surface. It was one of those days that less infected individuals were sitting by the fire. But I am deeply affected and tired of sitting. I inhaled deeply the odor of the striped one and was as satisfied as a mad man.

Suffering through the week's toil I escaped on the Sabbath for something that my hopeful brain phrased a scouting trip though I knew it was more. The muscles of my forearm had forgotten the pressure applied through three yards of graphite and I desired a refresher. 

I hiked water I had not fished before spying those places we all recognize. This thin ribbon on a map, no more than three strides measured by cleated boots, displayed little though I did catch glimpses of a few sleek objects balanced on splayed wings edged in white. They knew my game and were not playing.

Twenty degrees. And falling. I can feel the freezing water. In my bones. At the bottom of the stream, anticipation. Ready to spring forth as soon as the unknowables align.

This shit has to stop. Soon.