January is for daydreaming

January is for daydreaming.

Looking out the window, the sunshine makes it look like a bluebird day, but it's not.  The high might reach freezing.  As a sportsman, that's hard for me to handle, because that image awakens a primitive man inside who thinks in caveman monologue: "Warm outside.  Must fish."

That's when depression sets in.  To combat this depression, I daydream about the past year's excursions.  I daydream about that trailer home-sized boulder sitting in the middle of the Conejos River that I fished around in Colorado this past summer.  Seeing a mountain rock slide at what looked like a small distance down the canyon, I set out on a sloggy trek across the meadow that found me at my destination only after my calves and thighs told me that I was past the point of no return.  In case you're wondering, I did make it back, but not before a lightning storm forced me to a little creek up in the tree line where I found an overhanging cliff and huddled for protection and warmth.

But in the forty-five minutes before that, I caught fish.  Lots of fish.  And quantity didn't even matter because of the quality of the moment.  I was fishing around this big, beautiful boulder, watching the befuddled rainbow trout swim to my nymph imitation eight feet down through gin-clear water.  Subsurface sight fishing to truly wild fish in a place that had no footprints leading up to it.  At least no human foot prints.

It was an opportunity I had to take because the lake level had dropped in the drought, and under normal conditions, I would have been standing twenty-five feet under water.  My only regret was that I had no fishing buddies with which to share the moment.  They were all back where I started, making their own memories.

This coming summer I might get bored from fishing too much.  In that moment, I hope I happen back on this blog entry and find some perspective, because summer is for fishing.