My favorite season is coming to a close. Though this summer has not been the kindest, nor most productive, nor even the most comfortable of those I have enjoyed since my retirement, I still feel a touch of melancholy as these last days pass. In truth, none of us ever know if we will remain to enjoy another.
It is not that I do not dearly love the autumn or the springtime, for each of these are truly sportsmens’ seasons, it is just that I find these Catskill Summers uncommonly sublime.
Our great drought brings a second wave, and there seems no relief upon the horizon. The wide Beaver Kill has shrunken to a warm trickle, the flood of July nothing but a memory. The river’s bones bake in the sun, and I wonder if her trout can even survive much more of this.
I spend many happy days along the river each autumn, but last year left me wanting. The large, wild trout I meet there made no appearance, not even when the crispness of the air and cool autumn rains bade them to come home. Would that I could spare half the high flow in her sister river and shower her gravel with that gift of cold, clear, lifegiving water!
My thoughts look past the glory of autumn, for there is a fear growing. I try to distract myself with the culm of Lo o bamboo which waits for these old hands to split, plane and glue. JA loaned me his copy of the bible, A Master’s Guide To Building A Bamboo Flyrod, to prepare.
Imagine me, tasting the last draughts of summer and thinking toward winter! Too set in my ways perhaps, too comfortable with familiar summer patterns to embrace the variety of a difficult season.
I keep hearing the same line, hatches and rising trout at evening, but it is an old song. In spring certainly, dusk brings a whirlwind of activity, but I have spent many summer evenings along these rivers with little for company save my own thoughts. I hear tales of the afternoons too, yet the great river I walked last week revealed little.
I should look further, deeper into Nature’s farewell to the season of warmth and plenty, yet memories pull us back to old haunts by their very existence.
Part of me wishes to survey miles of river from the seat of my drift boat, to float easily upon summer’s last release, search the riffles and pools for some spark of life. I don’t trust that pinched nerve in my neck though. Still hearing it’s murmur, I know this is not the time to challenge low water with a solo float, despite my longing.
Bright Waters Catskill 