Suspended

I cannot help myself from checking river gages and weather patterns. This year, the emergence of the season does not rule my fate. Other than the capriciousness of the Red Gods rule.

I saw the familiar pattern once more, the Beaver Kill dropped to kiss that 1,000 cfs threshold which fills my hand with a favorite six weight rod with a Gordon’s Quill knotted fast! Turning to the temperature page I saw the year’s first flirtation, passing the mid-forties. Yesterday’s rain and the river is rising again, and a cold day and night and those temperatures will retreat. I have danced to that tune for seven spring seasons. The grand difference is that I dictated my own terms for those seven years, able to venture forth and assessing the water flowing past my legs.

I find myself wishing for Nature and the Red Gods to delay that precious beginning of the dry fly season as much as possible.

A read through a favorite book, nor the tying of just a few more Hendrickson duns cannot quell the longing for bright water now, as March winds slowly into April.

I feel at ease at this time, sitting on a riverbank, watching the seasons from pass from winter unto spring, seeing it with my eyes and straining each speck of matter bobbing down the currents – is that at last a mayfly? Moving from my easy chair to my desk and back has no cure for my restlessness.