Sixty Days

It is the fifth day of February, and it is one degree below zero here in Crooked Eddy. Sixty days of winter and waiting remain until the dawn of a new dry fly season, though this is measured solely by my own hopeful reckoning.

Another push of arctic air is headed across New York and New England for the weekend, bringing snow and dangerous low temperatures. Funny, but that seems a lot like our average daily forecast.

I have been working through this parade of frigid days with a good book, and half a dozen fly hooks that I choose to bring life to an idea. My tackle room remains cold enough that I don an insulated overshirt, with a blanket splayed over my lap and legs. My favorite coffee mugs have been replaced by a new Yeti which is half mug and half thermos. Welcome to winter in the Catskills.

Were I a younger man, it might be fun to strap on a pair of studded boots or cross-country skis and wander the mountains, but I shan’t try that today. Instead, I surrender to the inevitable and the truth, that all of my equipment has, rust.

Wealth might find me off to a Caribbean island with a heavier rod and bonefish flies or, since I am enduring the cold anyway, I might easily succumb to the enticements of British Columbia and her famed steelhead rivers. Such magical escapes require significant wealth though, and my humble accounts won’t allow any of those dreams either.

Catskill winters are the trade I offer for Catskill springs and summers and, though I doubt the bargain here in the middle of another ice laden blast, I am glad I made it. Angling gives me a great joy, a fulfillment of spirit. I shall rely upon that as I count these sixty days…