Five years since my last post. I am older now.
In the years between then and now, I've been divorced, remarried, had two children, and moved to the plains of Oklahoma; bought a house, turned 30, and gotten some grey in my hair.
I've worked the equivalent of a dead end job (soul-deadening anyway) and come to acquire a certain familiar acceptance with own shortcomings in a lot of the areas that the 22 - 25-year old me took for granted. Maybe it's age or maybe it's just the inevitable accumulation of circumstance, but to paraphrase John Gierach, I've entered the phase of life where I am making the most of who I've become rather than finding out who I am. It could be freeing or terrifying. I have chosen to make it freeing.
In the midst of this intellectual drama I've done some fishing.
No trout stream magic here. I've cast a dry fly on a mountain stream exactly one time in three years.
No, the flies I've thrown over the last five years have been clousers and buggers, deceivers and half and halfs. The places I've thrown them have often been ugly; silty, brackish midwestern reservoir water.
I've watched alligator gar laze under my kayak; seen an enormous largemouth attack a duckling in six inches of water; pulled sand bass from water so muddy I couldn't see the fish until it was in my hand, and battled sunfish so wild that they took line from my 6 weight.
I've also pulled a bass from a local lake while my two year old son screamed, "Daddy! Can you get me a fish please daddy!" and then watched him literally shake with awe as he felt the scales of the 12 inch fish with his tiny fingertips and encountered the mystery that still captures his dad.
I am older now. In many way I am different. But the part of me that shakes at the mystery of the fish brought to hand has not changed.
