Passing The Days

We are closing in upon the end of another year, though perhaps just two thirds through the breadth of another Catskill winter. Nature has provided a show this week, the landscape going quickly from white to dampened green amid a wink of sunshine, and back to white. Now too, the whiteness is diminished for the moment, soon threatened to return.

The Mother has brought water to the rivers once more, and for that I am eternally grateful, with hope the ice was stopped short of the sediment and the gravel.

The cold still reigns, the memories of bright moments with sunshine and warmer air still fresh as I seek the warmth of fleece and down. The trifling with tackle has begun. It stirs memories as it always does…

I made up a fresh batch of bamboo polish the other day. I have nursed a capful of the stuff my friend Dave provided for decades, and now I have perhaps a lifetime supply! The new batch was tested on my old Orvis 99, bringing a warm brown glow back to cane nearly as old as I am.

Winter days are scattered still at this season: a few hours of reading, a handful spent daydreaming memories, a quarter-dozen flies tied, perhaps a rod taken from it’s tube for cleaning, or maybe just to feel my fingers encircle it’s cork for a long moment. The tackle room was, adjusted; a new bamboo bookcase added after due consideration of location and the impact upon my crowded space. There are books upon it’s shelves, though not all that will be carefully determined to reside there. I am still a full week away from my annual countdown, the time when anticipation is allowed to formally begin.

Passing a Catskill winter, I work through many moods between November’s sense of loss and March’s feverish wont and anticipation. There are no hours to lose in the rod shop this winter, the advance of arthritis robbing me of the spark of making a second rod. No, more hours must be passed in the embrace of memory. Sixty years under the spell of waters, and still, I cannot exist without their magic!