Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Spring Song of the Steelheader

Give us the beautiful coldness.

Give us a cool mist passing slowly, blotting out the sunrise.

Give us a chill morning when all others lie in the indulgent trance and warmth of their beds, and give us a river whose cold water travels over our boots murmuring memories of ice.


Then, give us the silver steelhead that have dropped down like living chunks from the shattered floes, to ply hungrily the current for springtime’s little denizens; the brazen midge and swift stonefly, the timid minnow, the worm curling in futile aquatic struggle.

Give us the Battle of them!

Give us all their cunning and grace, and their indescribable beauty!

Take away your echoes of Summer, your midday sun, your blue skies and your swelter. Take away your heat.

Or delay it all, just a little, we beg. We plead with you – please! Why hurry? What necessity to push out roses, so soon after the tulips have gone? A week, a day – nay! one sweet, cool morning extemporized out of the wreck of the past season, before the coming chaos and flowering haze and heat – is all we ask.

Then, we Thankful, will seek our rest elsewhere, leave the river in peace, put the rods away, tuck our waders into closets, hang our hats and put our tackle aside.

And wait;

For the multitudinous be-speckled ardent Mykiss to return; at the Fall, when the cold breath again blows down from the eternal North, before everything must die; and we are unfurled again among your vigorous children, in your vast, scintillating bounty. 





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