Some days insight fills you like helium does a balloon. You float along with a merry lightness of being. And sometimes the signposts of life light up in bright neon and suddenly you know where you are going and why you are here.
Sadly, my tale today describes the other sort of day. The one where you are lost, dazed and confused. Where you finally realize you are mortal, your days are dark, aimless and possibly numbered.
It started out looking fine. By early afternoon, a bright sun toasted the crisp fall air to a comfortable 65 degrees. A light breeze blew out of the south. Trees swayed with a lazy carelessness. And the river ran ominously high but decidedly fishable.
My Mom brought us to the baptismal pool because, you may find this hard to believe, I have never fly fished before. She of course ties her own flies and is known as a trout whisperer. Old timers round these parts say she can talk the spots off a brown brook trout. And, hell, even the color off a rainbow. Anyway, she had begun to teach those gifts to my son.
Me, I was a hopeless cause. As an unabashed spin caster, I had always looked down on my cane pole whipping, fly tipping brethren. As opposed to tricking them with fake, manmade womanly wisps, I preferred to lure my fish into my possession with brutal honesty and real manly bait.
Anyway, all becomes clear on the river, or so they say.
I wandered out to some rippling rapids where the trout loved to frolic and cast up into the froth and let my fly float down aimlessly. On my inaugural cast I landed a huge red maple leaf then broke out into a frighteningly loud rendition of ‘Oh Canada.’
By my third cast, I had tangled my line and began cursing. By my forth, I had hooked myself and nearly fell in.
I noticed the water running swifter now but lazered in on my goal of catching Old Nellie, the spotted brown trout everyone round these parts dreamed of catching.
Then, yoo hoo, I got a nibble. Reeling it in, I realized I had caught an apple. I mean, really, how good do you have to be to snag fruit out of a raging river?
Finally after what might have been the 10,000th lame cast something came after my fly with a vengeance. I heard the reel scream as she took the line out hard. I fought to regain control. Then she turned on me like some sort of shark trout. Old Nellie for sure! As I labored to reel the line in, she wriggled off.
Then I suddenly realized the water seemed to be rising with a purpose. Some gosh darn engineer up river must have decided hours earlier that he or she wanted to make some piddly electricity and put me in grave mortal danger. There I stood in the middle of the river, like a gosh darn fool. My Mom and son hugged the shore a few hundred meters, or was it yards, away. Unlike me, they knew and respected the fickle nature of nature.
With the water now threatening to sweep me away I made a beeline for the shore. I screamed and waved but they thought I was just being right neighborly and waved back.
I could have sworn I saw Old Nellie eyeing me hungrily as I almost slipped once or twice on the slick rocky bottom.
Well, needless to say, I made it back to tell this tale. But I wonder if I’ll ever fly fish again. Too much realization of mortality in too short a time span can bear down heavy on a man.
What mundane activities spawn high drama for you?
Have you ever been fly fishing?
Or in grave, mortal danger? How did you escape?