A Pause

It is Sunday evening, the ninth of July, and it is 68 degrees in Crooked Eddy. A gentle rain has fallen intermittently throughout the day, a far cry from the storms predicted. This morning’s forecast called for a stormy day and night, continuing tomorrow, and some two and a half inches of rain. Such weather would have changed our rivers violently. Most of us here are happy to avoid the flash floods, and I and my fellow anglers would gladly bow to Mother Nature bringing perhaps an inch of rain over that same period; gentle and continuous, the lifeblood of our rivers.

I was sitting on the porch just now, the grill crackling as I watched the mist wraiths glide o’er the slopes of Point Mountain. I thought of the rumbles of thunder heard a couple of hours ago, and how close we might have come to those flash flood inducing downpours. The gentle rain is soothing, the cool dampness a welcome break from ninety-degree heat. We are two and a half weeks into summer by the calendar, closer to a month as measured by the moods of the trout and their rivers.

I am dreaming of light line rods, tiny mayflies and terrestrials, of bright sunshine and clusters of sulfurs sought by large, wild brownies often too cautious to take them. Good times lie ahead: warm bright mornings stalking trout in the mist, gatherings with the Fly Tyers Guild and Summerfest; perhaps another Rodmaker’s Gathering. I saw my first trico the other day and my heart jumped a bit hoping its the first of many!

If you asked me I would tell you I wished a Catskill summer might last half the year, for it is my favorite season. Though perhaps really having no greater duration than spring, summer has a permanence in the absence of the wild blustery weather that springtime brings. Sun one day, and snow the next – is it April? May?

I wish too that I might be allowed to program the rain: a quarter inch every two nights, taking the weekends off, should do quite nicely! Imagine how bright, lovely and cool our rivers would run!

I’ve a puck full of flies tied during this weekend at ease; ants and beetles, crickets and more, and there are lovely old rods waiting for their next opportunity to grow their histories. Though I do not know their past, it remains a source of wonder and content as I build upon their secret, individual legacies.

Will tomorrow bring rain or shine? I will greet it with a smile no matter how it dawns, for I rejoice in the opportunity to live another day among wild trout, bright water and the challenge of Nature’s magic!