Perception - Joy

There's a small creek nearby that I often fish in the summertime.  Its not anything special, as creeks go, but something about it has always resonated with me.  Maybe its the way the willows screen the water enough to  dapple the sunlight just so, or perhaps its that particularly eerie quality the old-growth Lodgepole pines have as they stand bare, like spears, guarding the younger trees around them.  I don't know.  But it is the first stop in any summer, and even if its too high to fish until August I make a point to stop by every time I pass.

This creek has often caused me to think about joy.  Not just the joy I take from being there, but joy in a larger sense.  Joy is such a fleeting thing; even at its highest ebb it always recedes, always evaporates.  Much like this creek, in fact, joy is an unsure thing.  All you can count on, it seems, is that it won't be there for long.

But this isn't quite right.  Even in a dry September there's more water to be found in this creek than a first glance reveals.  Sometimes you have to hike a ways, and sometimes the biggest pools have turned into pockets.  

But those pockets hold trout.

One in particular held a fish I'll never forget.  It was a rainbow, resplendent in its Fall colors and fat, fat in the way only the biggest fish of a particular pool ever is.  I saw it from a distance, and was excited, and so promptly hurled the fly into the nearest bush.  Extrication took seconds, agonizing in their banality.  There floated the fish, unaware of my designs.  There flowed the water - just a trickle, but moving on, on, on with that calm urgency only a late season creek can have.  There sat the fly, wound around a willow branch and finished with a beautiful overhand knot.

My panic was, as is often the case, self contained.  The fly came loose, my cast was straight, the loop was tight, the placement perfect.

The fish was strong in that particular electric way that only a trout is strong.  The vibration seems to travel through the rod into your heart - the tugs and pulls and the ripping dives close out the world.  There I was and there was the fish - nothing else existed. 

Breathless, I brought him to hand.  

He would not have broken 12 inches.

Joy.  What a funny thing.  To this day the memory of that catch is my favorite, and the one that most readily comes to mind when pleasant thoughts are necessary to balance an unpleasant reality.  That rainbow is not the largest I've ever caught.  It is not the most wild, nor the prettiest, nor the hardest fighter, nor anything else that should set it apart.  But something about that experience distilled all the things I love about the wild into one readily available and uncommonly clear recollection. 

I've visited that stream many times since.  God willing, I'll visit it again in a few months.  There will be no monster trout.  The pool of my memories is likely to be gone, covered up by a winter's worth of sand.  The water may be too high to fish.

But regardless, I will be joyful.