Stirrings...

Well, hello. Its been a while. Over four months since I last posted anything here at The Clearwater Chronicle. I have my reasons, but then again they don’t amount to any sort of real excuse given how much satisfaction and peace I find in writing about this thing I love; this fishing and the places where it takes me.

Lately, there’s been a lot of real life going on. An elderly parent in the midst of a precipitous decline in health and now placed in a nursing facility. The Holidays and all the traveling and shopping and the wonderful time spent with friends and family. A suddenly fallen ceiling in the dining room and the resulting extended spell of grappling with insurance companies and quizzing experts in the ways of roofing and drywall as to what all needs done. The doldrums of a winter away from the stream. The physical distance from my home waters, both in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and the way it often seems to leave the well of inspiration dry and hence, the words unwritten.

So, I’ve been away.

But you know, last night I woke up from a sound sleep in the wee hours of the morning with a single thought ringing like a fire bell in my head: I wonder if I have enough #18 ringed-eye dry fly hooks to tie all the Blue Wing Olive parachute dries I’m certain to need in April on the Spring Creeks of Southwest Wisconsin. Immediately after this thought came another: I’m really looking forward to getting back on the water. It won’t be long now. All the signs are manifesting themselves once again. The catalogs chock full of pages and pages of rods, reels, gear, feathers and #18 ring-eyed dry fly hooks are starting to arrive in my mailbox. Its still January and it gets dark around here at 5:30PM.
But only 30 days ago, it was dark at 4:30. The sun is on its way back and so am I. It won’t be long now until I go down into the basement and begin the annual clean, sort and re-filing of the shapeless heap of feathers, furs and sharp metal implements I call my fly tying area. And not so long after that, I’ll begin my daily checking of the Accuweather forecast for places with strange (but to me holy) names like Viroqua and Boscobel and Wautoma, waiting for that first three day window in March of warm south winds and blue skies so I can load up the station wagon and head once again for the water.

The new season with its possibilities and yet to be known adventures is just ahead and just as it has always been, for as long as I can recall, there is a stirring and an excitement in me that is hard to contain. I can hardly wait.