Streamer Junkie

Leaves crunch under the felt soles of wading boots. It would be all but silent out here if it weren’t for the leaves underfoot, and the wind ripping through the tree tops sounding like a highway filled with semi-trucks flying by at ninety miles an hour. A blue jay sounds its high pitch call as it crosses the trail in front of me at lightning speed. Its blue is a stark contrast to the ground covered in dull curling reds and yellows and the grays and browns of the naked trees. I don’t know how many times I’ve walked this trail now, but it’s more than the fingers and toes I have I’m sure.

I rolled over and closed my eyes again, not really thinking I should go back to sleep because I wasn’t awake enough to actually rationalize, but then the thoughts entered my semi-conscious brain. It was before sunrise…You’re awake early enough. You should probably go fishing. I reached over and blindly felt for my phone in the dark. What time was it? When the screen lit up in front of my face it was blinding. My eyes struggled to bring anything into focus, but there was a message. Check out this video of Greenland.

But as he handed me the rod back I felt a hand on my elbow and turned to find an older gentleman in a wheelchair with his daughter behind him. With a stubby unshaven face of light gray and tinted prescription glasses he looked up at me with a smile and tried to say something. “I’d like…” He didn’t finish his sentence but nodded his head positively. “You’d like to try?” He smiled bigger and nodded some more. “Yes!”

There’s a lot to be said about a cabin with nothing in the middle of nowhere. The drive in on an old two track, splashing through mud holes and puddles is only the beginning. There’s no pavement to make the ride smooth. No white lines to stay between and no yellow lines to keep you on your side. It’s up to you to pay attention, to pick your safe speed. To avoid the rocks pushing up from below and the deep mud holes that threaten to hide bad situations in beautiful places. The trees are what keep you on the road, not paint. The road in ironically is actually your way out.

Finally the fisherman stood up and stretched his back, dumped out his worms, reeled in his line, and headed for his old Crown Vic with the fading navy blue paint and vinyl top. I stepped out of the Jeep and he gave me a nod. “Good luck, I give up.” I couldn’t tell if he said it as if he didn’t think I could do any better, or because he figured I’d go out there and catch what he couldn’t, but I’ve never seen an elderly guy toss a lawn chair in the back seat and peel out in a cloud of dust from a gravel lot in quite such a perfectly miserable… Well, if a car can have body language, it said he was done fishing. Forever.