There was still snow out there, but really none at all if you compare it to the snow cover from just a few short weeks ago. I found myself near the stream bank, crunching over browned grass that was bent all the way to the ground after long ago succumbing to that heavy, unrelenting snow. The grass was low, long, spread out around me, mixtures of tan and brown, some pale others dark, nothing green in view except wisps of seaweed that trailed in the current, moving back and forth and back and forth, never able to be still. The sun was shining, working to warm the air even while the wind whipped through the valley, pushing that warm air against my face and hands in such a way that the air was no longer warm, but barely tolerable.
I walked for a ways, scanning the stream for signs of life, unable to see too far into the water that had been made cloudy by so much snow melt over recent days. I slipped a few times on mud that was exposed some five, maybe six feet over the surface of the stream, a sign that this little Wisconsin stream had not too long ago been violently blown out by the spring weather, just like a mountain stream might do. There was little life to be seen, excepting a few spiders that scurried over the bent, brown grass. A few turkey vultures soared over head, but looking up is not something someone does when scanning a stream, so those large birds just circled and circled, and I paid them no attention.
The line felt good in my hands, better than it felt a few weeks ago when I cast that fly line during a most brutal winter day. I worked the stream stripping my large streamers through the quick, murky water, bend after bend, riffle after riffle, dark swirling pool after dark swirly pool. Aside from rocks and trees, nothing bit. Two hours, more or less, had passed since I first hiked downstream and my fishing companions hiked upstream. I found myself back at the road, near the bridge, next to our truck that was parked illegally, as all good fly fisherman park. Show me a fly fisher that parks his tidy car squarely in a paved lot, and I’ll show you a fly fisher with a pair of clean boots, pressed waders, a neatly arranged fly box and a camera full of landscape photos, not fish photos.
I was sheltered from the wind now, and felt a slow urge to simply lie down on my bed of bent, faded grass, and soak up that spring sun. I think about things like that often, but I rarely do them, because as much as I wish for relaxation I don’t find it by being still. I pushed on, under the bridge to a slight bend in the stream, and worked my streamer upstream and across, back and forth, stripping and pausing, stripping and pausing. I missed what I thought was a nice fish, and that strike held my interest in that pool. After the near miss, it wasn’t more than three casts later that I hooked into a thrashing trout, a big, bold rainbow that saw my streamer teasing its way through the current and would not tolerate it. The fish bit, I panicked, and after a few moments I had that fish in my hands.
Winter had been long forgotten.
I struggled with what to do next. I needed a picture, but how? I would need to lay this great fish on the grass, if only for a second, so I could snap a photo or be faced with ridicule and disbelief from my fishing friends. I pulled my phone from my pouch and proceeded to drop it into the stream. Crap. I ripped it from the shallow bottom before it could marinate, and dried it on my shirt quickly. I threw it up onto the sunny grass, so it could dry. When I looked up to fling the phone to safety, my friends were approaching. I threw the phone shoreward, and held up the mighty fish. Unrepeatable words followed, along with pictures. I released the fish soon after, and it swam quickly back to the perceived safety of a cloudy bend.
I didn’t catch a fish for the rest of the day, and I didn’t need to. I simply needed to be, to stand under the sun and not feel cold. I needed to walk on dead, dull grass, I needed to soak in the sepia tone of an early spring day. And this morning, I drove down a dry road, with sun filtering through the roadside trees in a way that it can do now, but not in the summer. The light would be blocked out by then, shielded from the morning road by so many leaves, bright and green and full. I passed one or two piles of snow, hiding cowardly on north facing slopes, and I averted my gaze because after a day like the one above, and on a morning like this, I have no use for winter, and I have no lasting memory of it.
Spring is like that. It makes winter seem like barely anything at all. I cannot remember it well, and now that my driveway made the transition from ice to mud and now to dry gravel, there is little winter left to be considered. I tilled my garden yesterday, and the soil was light and dry. The slop that we needed to embrace has dried, and winter now has just one remaining stronghold- the lake. It is still covered in thick, dark ice, but it won’t be too long before it, too, has melted into spring.
I hold no animosity towards winter. I’m simply glad it’s gone, and now that it is, I have forgotten it. One day under a spring sun has the ability to erase 120 days trapped under a winter sky.