Helpful Gardening Hint; Catbirds Return.

If you rototill a previously unbroken patch of ground, you'll need to run the machine over it at least twice. Or so I find out 3 days after tilling my meadow plot once and returning the rented machine. Today and most of yesterday, I've been going back over it and turning over patches of grass that remain rooted in, which seem to cover most of where I tilled. Very slow and tedious work.

Every summer since I moved in to this house, I've seen catbirds nesting in the spruces along the north edge of our lawn...until last summer.

This year they seem to be back; at least I hear their mewling while I'm out there shoveling. They do sound a lot like a peevish cat (as if there were any other kind).

Gardening, Moveiegoing

Busy weekend. Spent the last 4 days doing one thing or another in my yard. I'm still whacking away at the meadow patch I rototilled on Friday--cleaning out the clods, digging up roots that the tiller missed. I'm starting to think I should have started much smaller...the area we want to convert to a meadow is about 1200 sq. feet.That's a larger area than my house! I really hope this meadow idea works. Otherwise, from here on out, I'm a die-hard supporter of genetically-modified, chemically fertilzed exotics, with a home irradiator and a free hand with the Roundup.

Well, no. By the way, wouldn't a GM plant be an exotic species when planted anyhwhere outside a laboratory?

It's been a pain, but I'm glad we've done what we have. The place looks a lot better. Another month and we should be harvesting our first basil for a pesto sauce. Mmmmm.... We're also experimenting with growing some pumpkins this year. Then there's the tomatoes, which will give us our wonderful homemade putanesca sauce sometime in August. I'll have to post the recipe.

Last week on my fishing trip, I did take few photos. Hopelly I'll finish the roll soon and upload them, along with some shots of my meadow-in-progress.

Last night, after finishing our gardening chores, Kristine and I went to the new Star Wars movie. I think it was a little better than the last 2, but still pretty tedious. It's supposed to tell the tale of Anakin Skywalker's fall to the dark side of The Force and his evolution into Darth Vader. On the surface, this seems like the stuff of classic tragedy, but in this film, the temptation and fall look like trivial affairs. Anakin's "struggles" with the dark side seem pro forma and mechanical. When the time comes to shift his loyalties, you don't sense that he recognizes the gravity of his choice, unless that's supposed to come across in his mild agitation and passing scowls. Rather than a gifted man undone by his desire for love and power, Anakin comes off as a callow opportunist, seeking to cut the best deal he can in a given moment. Maybe that explains why he ultimately turns on the emporer, Darth Sidious, in Return of the Jedi.

Pere Marquette, 5/23-26

Spent Monday-Thursday this week up in Baldwin fishing the Pere Marquette. A good trip, though not necessarily in the way I was hoping for.

The mayfly hatches I wanted to fish never really materialized. Flies were popping, but not in volume. A caddis emergence Wednesday night lasted about 10 minutes, and got me as close to sustained dry fly action as I would get. Of course, having gone about 3 hours without a hit before that started, I overreacted setting the hook on the first two fish that struck and broke them off. Fishing famously requires patience, and no less after the action starts than while waiting for it to begin.

Otherwise, I took a few fish on streamers each morning, and a few on nymphs or assorted dries in afternoon and evening. My best day was Monday, when I landed 10 fish on an olive Wooly Bugger between 5 and 7 PM, besides losing a few others. Did land my best stream rainbow ever, a 16 incher--at least I think it was a stream rainbow. There were a couple of steelhead getting busy on a gravel bar just below where I caught the 'bow on Tuesday morning, and I did see a few steelies here and there at other times. I might well have caught a smaller steelhead dropping back to the lake. Nice fish at any rate.

The trip probably would have been very different if temperatures had been seasonable. Each evening, large mating swarms of Hendrickson spinners gathered over the river. If the temperature had stayed above 70˚ at sunset, they probably would have fallen and stirred some good feeding. A few--very few--actually did drop on Tuesday night and I caught a couple browns on a Henny spinner pattern. Mostly though, I ended each day watching the skies in vain.

Whatever else it is, fishing is a wonderful cure for notion that the world may revolve around you and your desires.

Today, I'm tilling up the patch for our native plant meadow in the backyard. A beastly task. Be a miracle if I finish the day without a hernia.

Basket Case

The trip to Ohio wasn't all beautiful hills 'n dales. On the way to my grandfather's farm, you pass the Longaberger Basket Co. headquarters.

It cleverly compliments their business, yes, but it's an eyesore, clashing totally with the georgic surroundings. The handles are the most garish aspect. When you cross the bridge over the river heading to my grandfathers, you can see this building if you look upriver, framed by ashes and willows. Kind of kills the scene.

Nearby, Longaberger has a quasi-theme park, kind of a touristy shopping center. On its grounds stands the "Crawford Barn."™

This was actually built by my great-great-grandfather for his horse-trading business. Longaberger took it down and reassembled it plank by plank on their site to house a deli and some shops. Better than another giant basket, I guess. But it's weird to see a bit of your family's history trademarked, and used as a marketing tool for pricey baskets. As it is being preserved, I probably shouldn't complain (preservation may well have been the motive for the Crawford's donating the barn). Go Longaberger!

Home: Another Take

Home now from a whirlwind visit to east-central Ohio for my Uncle Bob's memorial service. A beautful service, well attended.

I enjoyed seeing my relatives from that part of the country again. Many of them now reside elsewhere, but I still associate them with that place, where I most often saw them. Pleasant as it was, the experience was still unsettling in a way.

I'm really not that close to most of my family, even my father and sisters. I'm not "estranged" either--but with a few exceptions, I have not managed my relationships well. And those exceptions may well exist in my mind only. Gathering for the funeral and the meal afterward, though, I felt drawn strongly to my aunt, uncles, and cousins, probably from remembrance of the larger, more regular role they had in my life, albeit many years ago. They certainly didn't act as if they'd grown estranged from me. I wondered what my life would be like if I had remained closer to them.

After the post-funeral lunch, I went with some of them for a drive out to the farm where my dad grew up and to the churchyard nearby where many of his forbears are laid. My main reason for going along was to show Kristine the place, as she'd never been there, but the outing made me think of a deeper sense of connectedness.

At the churchyard, my father and my aunt told stories about some of the family members buried there, and I learned some new tidbits of family history. He mentioned that a home next to the church that now houses a preschool was where my grandfather and grandmother lived when they first married. One of my dad's cousins lived on a hill overlooking the site that is now her grave. Her husband settled down below first, and for years afterward she walked down to visit his grave each day. An adjacent field where two horses grazed was once pasture to my grandfather's cattle. Every year, my dad's family would cut a cedar from the hill across from the churchyard for their Christmas tree. Of course, there were many recollection of farm work, of neighbors, of memorable quirks in the people now six feet beneath us.

Listening to all this, I began wondering what it would be like to would be like to be rooted in a place that way, to live and die in a small, somewhat isolated area like that, and to know of generations before who had done the same. As a student of environmental thought and writing, I run into those notions a lot, and I will admit to more than a little sentimental attraction towards them. My fantasies about my future focus mostly on realizing that life to the degree I can; on living closely--in body, mind, and spirit--to some place I care about. Dwelling there, in the sense described by the philosopher Heidegger. Such ideas seemed more concrete and realistic there today than they usually do. Made me wonder if there's such a thing as genetic memory, giving me a somatic attraction to the ground where we stood. Maybe the family stories simply gave those ideas a depth they ususally lack. Whatever the reason, at least I can say I come by my desires for that life honestly. Go far enough back and we all could, of course.

The countryside around there did a lot to stoke these thoughts. Hills small and large, mostly well wooded, interspersed with pastures and crop fields. Narrow winding roads, many old farmsteads and a few newer homes, but no subdvisions. Knobs of sandstone scattered about. Swift flowing if muddy rivers, cutting deep gorges in a few spots. Seeing those things made the side trip worthwhile. Driving home, though, I thought less about the scenery than about the different shapes my life might have taken, maybe better and maybe not.

Of course, none of those rivers in the ancestral stomping grounds contain trout, more or less ruling out my settling there. If things go well, I will get somewhere for part of this next week where they are in abundance.

Home and Back

Returned a little while ago from my Kalamazoo trip. The family was doing well, though they informed me that an uncle who lived in another state had recently died. I wasn't close to him, but the rare occasions when I saw him were always pleasant. One of the most personable men I've ever met, good hearted and infallibly charming.

The concert Wednesday night went very well. My former director was caught off guard by the throngs of former students who mounted the stage to sing for him one last time. A remarkable man, who doesn't seem to have slowed down a bit in spite of a teaching career of 40 years. He even has less grey hair than I do!

Visiting Kalamazoo these days is a strange experience. I'm pretty disconnected from the place now, but when I go back, I'm reminded (acutely so on this trip) of the intimacy I once had with it. The city of the past seems close--at least to a younger self that survives only in memory--while the city of the present seems remote, though interesting enough in its own right.

Took along my fishing gear in hopes of stalking a K'zoo area creek for an hour or two on the way home, but the rain and chill of the day quashed that. Drove straight back, save for a stop at Dark Horse Brewing in Marshall for a take-out jug. That's becoming a ritual after visiting the folks.


Checking my email when I got back, I found the posting below on a professional listserv. Encouraging thoughts, courtesy of one Professor Weisberg of Portland, OR.:

Last night, I attended a lecture by Gary Snyder and the ecologist Jerry Franklin on 1980 the eruption of Mount St. Helens, whose 25th anniversary was also yesterday. Franklin's talk was particularly interesting. He said that, to his surprise, the re-establishment of plant ecology didn't come mainly from outside the zone of destruction, as expected, but began popping up from underground in midst of it. A good political lesson, too.

Bad Reporting; Good Schooling

Still would like to hear your comments on Michigan life...see yesterday's post.



Out on the discussion boards (like this one ), as well as in the media, people are heaping scorn and outrage on Newsweek for its apparently unfounded, riot-inducing report that Gitmo interrogators had flushed copies of the Q'uran down the toilet. The mag deserves it. True, they were fed the info by a "trusted Pentagon source," but an item so potentially inflamatory ought to have some solid grounding under it before it goes public. Would you announce in public that someone you knew was beating their spouse simply because the allegation of one person who had no proof to offer and was unwilling to make the charge publicly himself? I disagree with those who think Newsweek broke the story as part of a political vendetta against the Bush administration; I'd say they were just undone by the lure of sensationalism. This scandal is more a product of the current media marketplace than of partisan antagonisms.

Of course, this isn't the first recent instance where bad intelligence leads to deadly actions that are later proved unwarranted. The public at large has a right to dress down the staff of Newsweek. The architects of the Iraq war can only sympathize.


Tomorrow I'm going to Kalamazoo to visit my family and also attend the final concert of my high school choir director, Mr. Wierda. People who sang under him in the past have been invited to join the choir on stage for the final number, which is a traditional piece at the school. Supposedly, this is being kept secret from him, and I hope it's stayed that way.

Mr. Wierda was probably one of the more inspiring teachers I had. He was--and, I expect, remains--an intense personality in his own right, and obviously devoted to the arts of music and teaching. Both those facts earned him the respect of students. The combination of the man plus the subject influenced my understanding of learning in ways that continue to this day. Choir class gave me one of the rare opportunities I had then to learn actively. To participate in what I was learning instead of simply having knowledge dispensed to me in lectures. Mr. Wierda's enthusiasm and competence made it seem worth the effort to pursue excellence in performance. In leading us to sing well, though, he also gave us a sense of what it means to actively seek understanding. Good music is a kind of wisdom.

Other classes tended to present subject matter as a preexisting wall that you had to learn to climb. In choir, the ideal performance was more like a vision you tried to realize. There was an openess in the kind of education Mr. Wierda offered. Other disciplines offer possibilities for that kind of work--you can research almost anything--but that's difficult for neophytes. Music--and art, and drama, among other things--offers a kind of guided practice that leads to results relatively soon.

So choir may have been better preparation for my academic career than most of the humanities classes I took in school. It gave the confidence to study and write independently, along with a sense of what it should FEEL like when doing it well. In the courses I teach now, I try to maximize student participation; not a class goes by where I don't have students writing, reading collaboratively, presenting, or doing something other than listen to me. According to student evaluations, that participatory element is one of most helpful aspects of class.

A lot of pundits mourn the fact that few American students seem to love learning for its own sake, undermining our democracy, our culture, and our economy. If they're serious about reversing that trend, they ought to be screaming for continued and increased funding for arts in the schools.

Call for Submissions: Who are we?

One local blog I like reading is Dr. Mandrake. The Dr. shares my sense that this farming burg turned college town turned self-appointed center of facile radicalism and overpriced dining needs to get over itself, though the problem is apparently much more acute for him. When you weary of Ann Arbor's pretension and narcissism, this Dr. has the tonic you need, at least if you don't mind a spot of profanity and invective with the subtlety of a car bomb. Ann Arbor is Overrated offers a similar, somewhat tamer, perspective.

Dr. Mandrake's entry for today lashed further afield, prescribing emasculation for

The guy who invented those police pull-offs in Ohio which make it virtually impossible to see the cop until you are thirty feet away from his radar gun. I love how car commercials tell you that a car goes from 0 - 60 in 5.7 seconds when what I really want is a car that has a button I can push that will make it go from 90 to 65 in .000001 seconds. But given that the car industry in America is centered around Detroit and people from Michigan generally have an intelligence quotient slightly higher than a stone, I won't bank on it anytime soon. But how fucking lame is the guy who engineered those fucking pull offs? What kind of tool, working for the man, is he? I bet he's from Ann Arbor.

I certainly don't feel any need to defend Ann Arbor, or even Michigan, where I am more or less happy to live, but this post reminded me of people I knew in grad school who came from elsewhere and found life in Michigan or the midwest confusing or somehow disagreeable (which was the majority of people who came from other parts of the country). People from the coasts think it's dull, and a little too folksy for comfort. Southerners think we're snobbish and sullen. New Englanders and Westerners think it's too flat (and aren't even impressed by the Irish Hills...heh heh). It snows too much, people drink too much, it's too violent, it's too dirty... I remember a conversation in an East Lansing bar where a couple of fellow students discussed with real incomprehension their observation that many Michiganders seem to like this state.

Comments like this never made me indignant, just curious. Having never spent an extended period of time, say more than a month, anywhere else, I never thought that much about what was distinctive about this area. I noticed differences when I traveled, but never gave much shape to my sense of what they differed from. I think I do have some ideas about that now, but I'd be interested to know what some others think about the culture/mindset/lifestyle of Michigan, especially if you came from somewhere else or have travelled a good bit. How would you describe the people and the ways of life here (or at least in your little corner of the state) to someone else? Granted, Michigan is hardly a uniform place, but it seemed to cohere sufficiently for grad students to diss it, so I expect we can safely engage in a little generalization here. Maybe a simpler way to pursue this is to ask, What catches your attention--good or bad--about Michgan, or at least about Southeast Michigan away from the purlieus of Ann Arbor?

Whitsun Musings

(The Day of Pentecost, rendered by an anonymous Chinese artist)

On the Western Christian calendar, today is the festival of Pentecost, or Whitsunday. This feast commemorates the coming of the Holy Spirit in the form of tongues of flame that descended upon Christ's apostles on a hilltop outside Jerusalem. An enlightenment unsought, though obliquely promised.

This day gets me thinking about the world around me as much as any world to come. By some interpretations, Pentecost fundamentally changed the world those early Christians were operating in. There was a new power afoot in creation, one that permitted them to do new things (speak in tounges, handle snakes, socialize with previously "unclean" persons) and that fulfilled the faith begun on sojourns with Jesus. Accordingly, one could see Pentecost as a continuation of the work of creation, and that is appealing in some ways.

But a question I often have is whether this event--and others in the course of "salvation history," like Christ's Incarnation, etc.--accomplished something original and unprecedented, or whether they brought our attention to what was already the case to begin with. Did they cause something new to happen, or show plainly what reality really was? Most Christians come down with the former possibility in each of these sets, though there are certainly articulate dissenters.

I'm not sure I can decide, though I'm not sure I have to either. Both readings have their uses, and if the biblical accounts can't quite agree on how the Spirit arrived, I think I'm entitled to some interpretive wiggle room. Either way, Pentecost proposes that this world is still infused with spirit, and that there is value in living accordingly. That whether we know it or not, we tread at every moment through a landscape like Annie Dillard once glimpsed:

Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused on. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance....I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

If this--or the story of the fire-coiffed apostles--conveys any grain of truth at all, we have neither time nor place for the comforts of nonchalance and inattention.
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I don't have a fishing story of my own to post, sadly, but on another site I found this one , where a man describes taking his 2 1/2 year old daughter trout fishing. Note especially the daughter's comment at the end of the story. Sappy? Maybe, but it surely wasn't for dad.

Being or Seeking?

Came across a quote by Friedrich Schiller that seems relevant to this site and its concerns:

"Poets will either be nature or they will seek lost nature."

I'm not turning poet, but I think a lot of people come to follow one or the other of these ways in their daily life and occupation. Fisherpeople certainly do. Fishing, with most other outdoor activities, is seen as a means of "getting back to nature," freeing onself from artificial and corrupting routines of industrial society (albeit in most cases with the aid of mass produced and intensively marketed implements). I'll admit that I occasionally indulge those kind of sentiments, anticipating fishing trips as recoveries of a more authentic or more full mode of living, or at least as vantage points where I might glimpse the outline of such a life. On the other hand, fishing well sometimes gives the sense of "being nature": Thinking like a river predator, being attuned to the consequences of weather and light, distinguishing promising spots from sterile ones, reading the current in order to deliver a perfect presentation to a brown rising at the edge of an eddy.

Some people claim that fishing establishes a kind of order or rythmn that suffuses and balances their whole life. An academic who took up flyfishing in midlife told me that he became a better writer and teacher afterward. Maybe that's an example of "being nature," but I can't relate. When I get back from a weekend of fishing, it's hard for me to focus on my ordinary work for a couple of days. The poet Jim Harrison, who probably fits Schilling's first category as well as anyone, contends that life properly lived becomes like a river (quote inexact). It sounds appealing, but I'm not certain what that would look like. Most of the time, my life feels more like an impondment that's growing stagnant and may be irremediably contaminated.

Maybe the key word in Harrison's quote is "becoming." Perhaps "being nature" isn't something that arises from a flash of insight or determination to live a certain way, but an outcome from a long endeavor of mind and soul. Just as spectacular landscapes are the result of protracted geologic and climactic processes,and even of human inputs.

One thing I'm pretty sure of, though. "Seeking lost nature" is bound to be futile. You'll run in circles after something that never was. The illusory goal does seem attainable and near, though--we know what it will be and what it will do for us (we've been told so by thousands of books and TV commercials and travel brocures), which argues that there's something un-natural about it. Being nature probably begins with an openness to change. Where it ends is anybody's guess.

Just some cloudy thoughts befitting a cloudy Saturday.

Just for John

They say he yells at people and throws things, but John Bolton is apparently going to be our next UN ambassador. No quick fix for his personality, I suspect, but the administration could take one easy step to assure him greater respect on the UN floor--dye the mustache!



Oh well. Bolton may well bring the UN more excitement than it's seen since Kruschev took off his shoe.

If Rock Stars Used a Thesaurus

For example, "Rock and Roll" by Led Zeppelin might have been rendered:

It has come to pass an extended era from the time when I swayed and revolved,

It has come to pass an extended era from the time when I performed the leisurely walk.

Ooh, allow me to obtain it in return, allow me to obtain it in return,

Allow me to obtain it in return, little one, where I approach from.

It has come to pass an extended era, come to pass an extended era,

Ensued an extended isolated, isolated, isolated, isolated, isolated occasion. Agreed it has.


This traduccione by Christopher Falvey. A few more mangled classics here.

I could see using this in writing classes to demonstrate what can go wrong with careless thesaurus use. Of course, it might have the result of discouraging use of one altogether. Why risk losing your cool?

Ypsi Rock-a-Birthday

Last night, Kristine and I ventured to Ypsilanti's Elbow Room for a combination end of school year/birthday bash. We met our friend Scott, who introduced Kristine and me back in college and who we've kept touch with since, or tried to. Had not actually seen him in 3 years, nor exchanged more than a sporadic email in that time, even though he lives in Jackson, maybe 40 miles away. Still, when we do get together, it doesn't seem like we have trouble connecting, or that he's become a stranger to me.

Scott's 40th birthday is later this week, and he proved last night that the occasion doesn't have to be a dismal one (reassuring, as I'm facing my own later this year). He had come to Ypsi to see Big John Bates and the Voodoo Dolls.



They're a band out of Vancouver that he follows and actually knows somewhat--they were spending the night at his place after the show. Scott has an uncanny knack for ingratiating himself with an incredible range of people. The band was very good, as was one of the lead in acts, a solo guitar player named C Gibbs. I guess I'd describe Big John's music as a kind of thrash rockabilly, what might result if Mötörhead tried to cover Link Wray. During about every other song, a pair of burlesque dancers (the aforementioned Voodoo Dolls) flounced around. Kind of a humorous shtick, though I don't think the show would have suffered without them. The original plan was for Scott to strap on a guitar and join the band for a number, though a late start scuttled that. Then he was supposed to introduce the band...but John lauched the set while Scott was walking toward the stage, confusing the rest of the band a bit. John apologized for it later, though I don't think Scott minded. He was still in his element.

By the end of the night, there might have been 15 people in audience, a fact which the band commented on with good humored disappointment. They still played their hearts out. Big John commanded those of us who were there to go forth and announce that they kick ass. So here it goes--they kick ass. No lie. They'll be in Grand Rapids tonight, and if you're in those parts, I don't think you'll find a better night out. Especially if you're not old and don't need to get up early tomorrow morning...

Some housekeeping on the agenda for the rest of the week, including, hopefully, this blog. I've been meaning to post some new links, and take care of a few cosmetic things. Now in the market for a digital camera in hopes of livening this place up with some non-pilfered photos.

Cloud Creek, pt. 2

Sunday evening had all the appearances of being a slam-dunk for fishing, with ideal weather conditions: warm and still. In May and June, nights like that will find mayflies gathering over streams in mating swarms. After they've mated and laid their eggs, they fall to the water and the trout gorge. This is known as a "spinner fall." Driving out there, I felt viscerally tense with anticipation of the first good spinner night of the year. Not that I ignored the apple and dogwood blossoms on roadside trees, as lush now as they're likely to get.

All that nervous energy seemed justified at my first sight of Cloud Creek. Peering over the bridge at my favorite access point, I could see a commotion in the water. Not a rising trout, but two sizeable fish apparently chasing each other. I wasn't sure what they were. Carp spawn about now and make a lot of ruckus doing it, but the few glimpses I got of them told me they were not carp. Too bright, and I could swear I saw spots. Probably a couple of wizened holdover browns. With their adrenaline hiked, they likely would pounce on any thing that drifted their way. I cast a small olive wooly bugger streamer where it could drift into the fray, animating it with what I thought was a tantalizing twitch. Nothing. The submarine duel continued, neither fish concerning itself with the intrusion. After a couple of drifts, the quarrel subsided--maybe my line had spooked them. I sat under the bridge watching the now-still water, until a large swirl appeard about twenty feet downstream. That was definitely a feeding trout. I tied on a dry fly and let it drift down the main current seam. On the third drift, the fish took it...and let it go. Not even a moment of tension on the line. Subsequent drifts got no response. Stocker fish that hardly ever see dry flies aren't supposed to be that selective, or so I thought.

Soon I heard a splash behind me and turned to see the ring of a rising trout under the bridge. I fired a cast just above the fish and immediately got a take...and another rejection. It looked like a smaller fish, I thought. Maybe it couldn't get the rather large fly I had on in its mouth. Tied on a smaller fly and tried again, but got no response. No matter, I told myself. I just got on the water and I've already hit two risers. I had never even seen fish feeding on the surface here before.

I worked my way down with various dry flies and got similar results for the rest of the night. Cast to a feeder, and get a short strike or none at all. Adding to the frustration was the fact that I wasn't sure what they were feeding on. There were several kinds of mayflies on the wing, but no large number of any. I could see a few black caddis, too, but my caddis patterns went ignored. As darkness fell, no spinner cloud gathered over the stream, so I was left to continue the entomological guessing game. I continued to lose. Went back to the car a little before ten pondering my first ever Cloud Creek skunking.

Like I said yesterday, these trout don't play by the rules. Stocked fish ought to eat nearly everything they see, but these guys were selective. On warm late spring nights, even sophisticated wild trout will often pounce on a large, juicy dry fly gliding into their zone, regardless of the lack of insect activity on the stream. When actively feeding, all but the most pressured trout will usually hit a fly more than once. But the Cloud Creek browns were doing things their way, not the way of Au Sable or Muskegon trout, and sure as hell not mine.

That's what I mean by fishing as an act of penetrating some collective wisdom. Fish in various waters have their quirks about hitting or not hitting in different situations, and it can take a while to discover that the quirk exists. Figuring out how to respond to it may take an eyeblink, or a lifetime. At Cloud Creek the other night, the fish were feeding on something that they could see and I couldn't, in a manner that made sense to them. And they all appeared to be working on the same plan. It wasn't a plan forumlated by long experience in those waters (most of the fish there were probably in a hatchery tank a month ago). Whatever the situation was on the water that night had called it out of them. I was working by a different plan, drawn from fishing in similar conditions elsewhere. And I was shut out of the action.

I've since had a few ideas about how I might "crack the code." Hopefully I'll get back soon to test them out.

***************

In other news...grading, and hence my academic year, is officially DONE! I'll be hitting the town in Ypsilanti, MI to celebrate with friends tonight...

Cloud Creek, pt. 1

Sunday I made some good progress in my grading, so I made an evening run to a small stream on Detroit's exurban fringe that the state generously stocks with brown trout each year. As it doesn't need additional attention, I won't mention its common name. Its waters are possibly the murkiest of any trout stream I've ever seen, so I'll call it Cloud Creek.

You may have already suspected it isn't a hidden gem. At some point in its history, Cloud Creek was dredged, straightened, and lined with levees for "flood control" purposes. Accordingly, when it does flood, it becomes a raging trough, scouring the stream's margins of vegetation, and making them all the more susceptible to erosion when the next flood rolls through. Hence some of the cloudiness. More of it comes from new housing development in the area that pushes more dirt into its feeder streams. The creek is a pain in the ass to wade. When the surrounding land was farm country, all the farmers must have dumped stones from their fields into the stream. Wading there, you stumble across irregular, jumbled rocks, covered with slime. That is, when you're not crossing a muck bed that swallows you to your knees. Walking the banks is not much easier, as the dense undergrowth consists of pretty much everything with thorns.

But there are trout there. There are healthy hatches of caddis and mayflies, too, which indicate relatively clean water. Some of those thorny limbs on the bank are wild roses that bloom in June. I see wood ducks nesting in dead trees, as well as herons, deer, and muskrats. As few fishermen wander much past the bridge crossings, those creatures are just about the only company I have when I fish there.

Trout fishermen sometimes look down on stocked fish. I'll admit I'd rather fish for wild, naturally reared trout. Stocked fish, the conventional wisdom goes, are stupid fish that will fall for anything you throw in front of them. There's some truth to that, although stockers that make it through their first year in the stream will be as canny as any native.

I keep coming back to Cloud Creek partly because its cookie-cutter, 8-inch, soft bodied stockers don't seem to play by the rules. There are times when they are easy to catch, but other times when they should be but aren't. Last night was an instance of the latter. I'll tell the story tomorrow when I'm finished with grading, but in the meantime, I'll give you the moral, which may be of use if you're heading out to a stream today: fishing isn't a battle of wits with individual creatures; it's an attempt to comprehend a kind of collective wisdom. So proceed accordingly. Let your senses take in as much detail as they can stand; store and sort the perceptions you accumulate on the water and the conclusions they permit. Scrutinize and revise these conclusions with each outing. Plenty of times, you won't need to look far into this reserve of knowledge. But the day will come when you'll be glad you can.

Payoff

Not much time to write since I got back from Akron--loads of papers to grade. And I'm behind, owing to my Akron trip last week and my fishing trip before that.

While final grading is a grind, it's also satisfying. I can see that nearly all the papers have been written with care, and show at least some substantive reflection on what we talked about. Quite a bit, in some cases. Sometimes I wonder if I'm accomplishing anything in my classes. But usually by the time we get to the end of the term, it's pretty clear my pupils are. And that's my year-end bonus.

Trout Camp=The State of Nature (& Overnight in the State of Ohio)

An idea that often appears in colonial american literature is that those who settle farthest from civilization and commerce devolve to kind of brute, bestial existence, focused on day-to-day subsistence with little concern for culture, conversation, or the social graces. It echoes Hobbes's notion about life in the state of nature being "solitary, nasty, brutish, and short." Something like this seems to happen to me when I go fishing, or at least the solitary and brutish part. On my trips, life becomes a matter of eating, sleeping, fishing, and wondering where I ought to fish next. I often bring along books to read around the campfire, but I don't always open them. I didn't on my last one. At the end of the day, just watching the campfire and making a few notes in my fishing journal seemed like culture enough. If fishing does help to clear the mind, it does so partly by forcing the mind into an extremely narrow focus for a while. That focus seems satisfying enough while it lasts, but also a bit crude when viewed from the distance of one's ordinary routine. What satisfaction it brings may well depend on having a more varied life away from the river.

Going to be quiet here for a couple days. Tonight I'm leaving for a conference in Akron, OH devoted to service learning in first-year college courses. This is related to a grant I recently won to develop...yes, you guessed it, a service learning course for a first-year writing class! Getting that course together is going to be one of my main summer projects, and I'll probably talk about it occasionally. The course will have my students studying Toledo-area waterways, their present and historic place in the community, and developing a presentation on the current ecological health of some of them. They'll present their work at a conference with local high school students doing similar projects, and take some field trips to visit streams and to interact with area conservation groups. It's an opportunity to merge my vocation and avocation. I've got high hopes for it, as well as some fears that it will crash and burn. All the same, I'd rather take the chance on something new and promising than just keep doing the same thing semester after semester.

Staying, Going, and Strange Weather

Last Sunday, that old saw about just waiting five minutes if you didn't like the weather was pretty near the truth. I also got to rethinking my usual anxieties about weather and fishing. Sunday's weather was anything but ideal for early season fishing, but the fishing was good anyway.

In the morning, I passed on the daybreak streamer mission and slept in till 7:30. After a leisurely breakfast, I broke camp, then got on the Au Sable mainstream just below my campground around 10:00 AM, throwing streamers into the brush and into what pockets of shadow remained as the sun moved high into a clear sky. I landed a couple of fair sized brown trout by 11:30 and waded back to the landing for lunch. By then, that clear sky had become cloudy, and as I fired up my stove to heat some chili, snow was falling. Soon it was falling hard, but it ended by the time my chili was hot, and I ate in sunshine.

After I'd packed up, I thought seriously about calling it a weekend and heading home. The weather forecast called for snow and rain in the afternoon. I'd already caught some fish that morning. I could go shiver in a cold current trying to catch a few more, or I could get home in time to help my wife make a nice dinner that we could eat at our leisure with a nice bottle of wine.

Well, I had seen hendricksons hatch in worse weather than this.

I drove to the south branch of the Au Sable to risk hypothermia on the chance they'd hatch today.

Got on the river at a place I call the 99 Access, a spot in the lovely but imperiled Mason Tract. Skies were sunny as I tied on a streamer and began working my way downstream. Clouds moved in, and began to spit snow. Then they belched it, mixing in rain perhaps out of sheer meanness. I'd left my raincoat in the car, so I headed for the bank and walked back up to get it. By the time I got there, the snow had changed to light rain. I retreated inside the car until it stopped. After I got out, the sun broke through the clouds one more time, and puddles of water began steaming on the roof of the car. Not trusting the break in the weather, I left the raincoat on when I went back into the river. The same cycle played out again and again that afternoon--sun, clouds, snow, rain, sun...

Eventually, I figured it was getting nearly time for hendricksons to show if they were going to, so I re-rigged to fish dry flies. I threw a hendrickson pattern near logs and took one nice brookie and one small but respectable brown; lost a few other fish. By 3:30, the hendricksons were thick on the water, and when I came to a bend that has fished well for me over the years, I saw some very large fish feeding agressively. Fish like these are the reason people come to the south branch.

Not that getting them is easy, at least not in this spot: when rising to flies, fish here tend to stick very close to the far bank of the river. Trees are thick along the near bank (i.e., the only bank that offers an approach), ruling out a long backcast. Brush hangs low over the water on the far side, waiting to tangle any cast you do get over there. That's why the fish there make it to the size they do.

With some awkward flicks and mends, I got a drift in the vicinity of one of those toads (fisher slang for a big trout) and he took. After a few hard runs downstream and bulldogging me for a couple minutes, just out of net range, he came in, 17 inches of gleaming, muscular brown trout. As he swum away, I saw another nice fishing coming up in an easier area to approach just downstream. The casting was easier, but I worked that fish for more than ten minutes before he took. Once he did, he bolted far downstream, leading me on a chase through a log-strewn stretch of river nearly waist high. Tripped a couple of times, catching my balance just in time to avoid a cold swim. Once netted, the fish measured out at 19 inches.

As I waded back upstream, replaying that catch in my mind, I noticed that the mayflies were gone. My honey hole was quiet. And snow was falling once again. This time, I knew it was the right moment to make my exit.

Opening Day

Got home from my trout season opener trip last night about 9:30. I still don't quite feel like I'm back yet. Daily reality hasn't quite set in yet, though it probably will when I start grading a bunch final papers late tonight.

As far as the fishing goes, this is probably the best opening weekend I've had. Got a slow start Friday when I hit some water that's open all year. Decent hatch of hendrickson mayflies, but few fish coming up to take them. Caught a few small trout. Saturday I hit the mainstream of the Au Sable at dawn, and had the water to myself. The thermometer in my car read 20˚ just before I stepped outside. Had a few trout chase my streamer ( a fly designed to imitate a minnow), but hooked none of them. Lots of ice built up on my rod, and I spent a fair amount of time cleaning it off. Things got much better in the afternoon, when I ventured to the North Branch of the Au Sable, which may be my favorite trout stream in the world. Got on the water in mid-river about 11 AM. Picked up two decent trout and a few dinks on streamers; by 2 PM I noticed a few hendricksons on the water, so I began blind-fishing a hendrickson imitation and picked up three or four more. Around 3:30 the hatch come on strong, and fish began feeding in the quieter stretches of water. Took another ten or so trout in the next hour before the flies petered out. None over twelve inches, but all beautiful and scrappy.

Sunday was good too, though I'll save that story for a bit.

Other things on this trip weren't so good, but they didn't detract from the overall experience. Halfway to Grayling on Thursday night, I realized I'd left my waders at home. It's a little too cool to wade barefoot at this time of year. Stopped at Meijer's in Saginaw and bought a cheap pair. I was thinking about getting a backup pair anyway. Also forgot my pillow, so I improvised one by wrapping some pants in a spare shirt. I'll just say that if you find yourself in a similar quandry, you might want to try a different arrangement. And I forgot to take my camera on the stream each day, so no pictures. I'm just not used to carrying one. Very cold weather each night. My sleeping bag is supposed to be suited to temperatures as low as ten above, but I think you would need to be wrapped in a bearskin to endure it that cold. I barely managed with neck to ankle longjohns, fleece pants, double sweaters, and a stocking cap.

On the up side, I did meet Lee Faber (star of the Freep article I linked on the 28th) for breakfast on Friday morning. He participates on a fishing bulletin board I've frequented for a few years, and it was neat to put a name to a face. Also learned about a few colorful bits in the conversation with the Freep reporter that got edited out of the story, or at least revised for a family newspaper.

Opening day carries great symbolic importance for trout fishermen. Lord knows most years, we don't look forward to it because of the wonderful weather and the nonstop fishing action. Instead of trying to sum it up, I'll just leave you with the scene that awaited me at the access point when I left the water on Saturday. There must have been at least twelve cars at that little road ending, with maybe thirty people milling about after their day of fishing. Groups of men mostly, but couples, and children too, all talking, laughing, kidding around. Lots of beers in hand, and one mini keg set up in a canoe for a particularly thirsty group. Dogs chasing each other; people wandering out from adjacent cabins to join in the festivities. Life going on, and everyone there fully aware of it.