Luring Lovers

'or things we might not realize'

Overcast skies prove it wise that I didn’t go to the San Mateo Sports Show this year. I sit here looking through my study window, across my land through air, colored gray. A mist drifts by and although one cannot see the rain, a wet, iceberg sleet make the trees drip, and old crab apples hang on from last fall, brown, forsaken and alone. Even the deer won’t touch them anymore.

This is weather only a steelhead could love because it keeps the weak and faint hearted fair weather fly fishermen inside and away from river banks. Clear shadows shift on the river’s surface and the mirror of the river slides like mercury, this way and that. Slow boils, side shifts of light, slick illusions hiding secrets - flow north - cold, impersonal and alone. Beneath this river’s blanket, lurk steelhead, adventurers from thousands of miles away and I muse among the underwater boulder fields, crevices, and snake like weed beds, quietly contemplating.

Today is the beginning of the first, pre-spring rains. Thick drops of water are falling. The thirsty ground is taking them in after a long drought, and once sedated, the rain that follows flows toward “the river of no return,” adding, one by one a singular molecule, scented now with the minerals of earth . . . the call to the wild, the awaking call and scents the steelhead have been waiting for . . . "pause," and then a tail fin starts to move.

I am a man of the past. I have traveled to many headwaters of life and I have seen the parents of these smolted children who come here now . . . but know not why. It's a singular song that calls to them and as I gaze quietly into my river, flowing slick and silent . . . on the other side of the mighty Snake River of Hell's Canyon a fish boils. It seems to mock in merriment. I don’t wish to move from this place but “I must.” So I nod and look upriver, to the south and I think of the old redds now long gone waiting to be rebuilt. The cradles of the past consumes the souls of these denizens, now huge in size and they continue to come. “Their prehistoric past has branded them to mate, and so, the river calls.

The high canyon walls of the Snake River are begin to change to darker, wetter hues. The old grasses lay flat, protecting the steep angles for the new, sweet grass seeds now filling with water. Soon, these will burst and bring forth the greens of late fall into spring and a soft glow of chlorophyll rouges will blanket anew all things to the very rims, high above. That, is yet a week away, but it is marvelous, this thing called “thirst”. It is the trump card all things look for in life's games and the seriousness of love. Thirst, of the body and the soul, is more than water, it is life's magic wand that brings purpose to all things living!

I see afar, a forest tunnel of pine, carved by a stream long ago born from the weight of mountain snows demanding relief. No barrier in nature can prevent its coming. Rocks, long dry are slowly reclaimed and submerge, one by one, to enjoin underwater views. There! Against the great agate stone, rests a female, breathing softly, resting, wondering why she has no sense or need to swim farther. “Why,” her instincts dode, “Am I here? Why am I so alone?”

I see afar, in a place painted with the brush of memories a singular bare limb on which a king fisher sets, preening itself, watching the his water world below. It focus's upon the great hen, so beautiful, so bright, a bit red in the morning sunlight along her gills and side, waiting. She has been here for days now. The tuxedoed King Fisher fluffs itself, spies a small muddler and falls off the limb in vertical free flight. “Kaplush!” and he is gone.

The river Snake, will not return to its lowest levels for the rest of the year. Daily, the drops of rain re enforce the mineral codes of what, when and where to these ancient ones hiding under water yet a thousand miles away. They are being summoned by every fiber of a river’s being. Winds, from the four corners of the earth brush across the river’s face, fluffing it, dissolving and melting into it -sweet things from the great canyon walls, but the cold wind, a hard wind, chills the river cooler . . . and another fin moves.

I am a man of many seasons. I will not fish anymore this river's cradle. It is time to let her enjoy a solitude, long earned. I am the man of reverie and I understand she, is waiting for something. She is alone in the watery crib of the uplands. I sit here still, staring out across the river . . . and once more, a great fish swirls, with a large lower jaw ~