Everywhere I go I find a pal

Peter Weinschenk, Editor, The Record-Review

I stood in the water with my fly rod.

The Prairie River rushed around my legs, flowing down a rocky riffle to a slow moving deep pool.

Surrounding me was the tangle of trees, bushes and tall grass. High summer had come and gone. All was overgrown. A few red leaves could be seen. They were like gray hairs on a beautiful woman.

I listened to the sound of the water, that unending gurgle.

Then I closed my eyes. And I listened. The sound of the river was incredible. The river volume seemed to increase and I could hear all kinds of detail: splashes, hisses, pops and churning.

With my eyes closed, the soundscape was so much richer. I wasn’t paying attention to only the natural scene in front of me, but to the world all around me in the sound heard by my right and left ears.

Normally, we, as humans, love to look at water. We love to see undulating waves. We love to see the sun glint off the surface.

The sound of flowing water, however, is stunningly beautiful.

You just need to stand in the middle of a river and close your eyes.

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It is September. That means the white mayfly (epheron leukon) is hatching on the Prairie River in Lincoln County.

This is a large, white fly that can number in the hundreds at dusk. They flitter atop the water. The trout know to feed on them.

On Saturday, I fished the Prairie and, anticipating a white mayfly hatch, I tied on a White Wulf, a big white fly that uses calf hair for a wing.

The day was grizzly and gray. A few of the white mayflies were out and about. My fly stood out as a dot of white on the graygreen river.

I slid my fly near the riverbank’s edge. A major trout slammed into the fly. My pole bent right over. I managed to land the fish and release it back into the current.

Dusk was turning to night. I decided to pack it in.

It’s good to end a fishing expedition with the idea that you just might know what you are doing.

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How many apple trees have I planted over the years?

Any time I go trout fishing, I typically pack a small Nalgene full of fresh water, a Ziploc bag of peanuts and raisins and, if I have one handy, an apple.

After hours on the stream, I grab a handful of peanuts and raisins and wash them down with a gulp of water. Finding a log to sit on, I’ll polish off an apple.

Finishing the apple, I will typically fling the core into the woods.

I expect an animal to finish off the core. I wonder, however, whether any of the seeds of any of my apples have found their way into the soil and developed into trees.

Maybe none. But maybe there are trees that fruit each fall that follow the geography of my fishing exploits.

We think of fishing as a thing in the moment. But maybe each fishing trip lasts not hours or days, but centuries.