Fishing - Visiting old friends

It had been about twenty years since we last hooked up. I, if the mirror is
to believed, have......um.......matured somewhat in the interval, but he
hasn't changed a bit.

I looked him up because a dimly perceived something twitched an old memory.
That sort of thing happens to me a lot at this time of year when a peak out
the window at a sun-drenched landscape stirs desires that are impossible to
satisfy for some months to come.

He said:

....That pool belongs to my son. It went to him when he was very young and
before he had made a mark with a fly.
One evening at the lower end I watched him casting a rise at the tip of
a log just below the riffle. Broad circles spread out from the log toward
the center of the pool, and for the moment my own fishing was forgotten. I
was a boy again with not a thought in the world but the wonder of watching a
good trout rise to a fly. That boy standing there at the upper end was me.
Suddenly there was a shout, and I jumped to my feet.
"Bring the net," he yelled, "I've got him."
I needed only a glance to know that he was fast to one of the real trout
of the Isabella. Scrambling madly over logs and windfalls and through the
muskeg, I finally reached him. I waded out into the pool and, when the
trout was close, slipped my net under the biggest fish either of us had seen
for a long time, a squaretail fourteen inches in length, full-bodied,
clean-jawed, and well-colored. We stood there together, neither of us
saying a word, just looking at that trout, listening to the whitethroats and
the music of the rapids.
"Red Ibis," said the boy. "Took him on the way down, just like you
said. Should have seen him when he broke."
His face was beaming, and in his eyes was a glory that comes only once
in the lifetime of a boy, when he knows that he has measured up at last...

And:

"...But the old man wasn't listening, nor was he watching the rise. He was
seeing the river as it used to be.
"Where we're sitting right now, there was a stand of pine four feet
through at the butt, so thick you could barely see the sky through the tops.
No brush then, not a bit of popple or hazel except in the gullies, now
windfalls or blackberries either--just a smooth brown carpet of needles as
far as you could see. Could drive a two-horse team anywhere through these
woods."
His face was light with his memories, and his blue eyes looked past me
down the river, took in the pool, the riffles below, and a whole series of
little pools for a mile downstream. I followed his gaze and for a moment it
seemed as though I had never seen the Manitou before. The old stumps
blackened and broken by fire and decay became great pines, and the
brush-choked banks were clean and deep with centuries of duff...

And:

"...Then there is a glimmer of light through the trees: the lamp in the
kitchen window. I begin to run, calling as loudly as I can because I know
she must be worried. The door is open, and there she stands, waiting for
her adventurer to come home from the wilds. I slow to a walk, adjust my
creel strap, put my hat on straight, try to appear unhurried and nonchalant.
She must never know I ran.
As I step into the circle of light from the doorway, I throw open the
lid of my creel. "Look, Grandmother," I shout, and hold it toward her. She
takes a long look at the prize inside, sniffs the wild, sweet smell of trout
fresh from the creek, helps me take them out and lay them on a while
platter..."

Sigurd F. Olson is not a name that comes readily to mind when thinking of
fly fishing or trout. But anyone who loves the places where they (and he)
live would do well to stop in and visit from time to time.

The selections above are taken from "The Singing Wilderness".

Wolfgang
who, finding himself with a bit of time on his hands this week, may just
drop in to see what Edwin Way Teale, Norbert Blei, and Aldo Leopold have
been up to.