Au Sable Shoot-Em-Up; Blessing the Beasts

Interesting overlap of events Friday: Friday was the last day of the stream trout season. It was also the first day our furnace ran.

In need of some activity unrelated to either school or home and miminally demanding of time, I went shooting at Island Lake Saturday morning. Couldn't have hit the targets if they'd rolled to a stop at my feet: 15 and12 for 25. It felt like I was trying to remotely control some puppet who was actually handling the gun. Might be just as well that I haven't had time for hunting lately.

Speaking of guns, the Orvis ad I talked about Thursday, boasting about military technology employed for fly rods, reminded me of fishing parts of the Au Sable system that border on a National Guard training area. Occasionally you may hear bombs dropping, artillery rounds landing, or rifle pops as you cast to a wary old brown. Doesn't seem to bother the fish, and to be honest, when the fishing is good, I don't notice it either.

But it is a curious accompaniment to fishing, and more on some days than others. One July morning a couple years ago, I was fishing a trico hatch on the North Branch near the tail of a favorite pool. An older gentleman was at the top, working another pod of fish. From time to time, we heard short bursts of machine gun fire--three or four rounds, then a few moments of silence, over and over for at least five minutes. Then came a sustained burst, at least thirty seconds of continuous shooting. When that stopped, my neighbor turned to me and said, "I bet they got the son of a bitch that time!".

Wherever you fish, or seek out remote pockets of the landscape for any reason, you're going to run into odd happenings sooner or later. Certain locations seem to host strangeness of particular kinds. That was an only-in-Grayling moment.

This afternoon, our church has its annual Blessing of the Animals ceremony, in honor of the feast of St. Francis, which is coming this Tuesday. I'll be taking our cat, who, these days, needs all the help he can get.

When we drove home this morning, there was a squirrel sitting on top of the fence at the end of our driveway. I invited him to come for a blessing too, but he ran off. Maybe I lack St. Francis' legendary ability to communicate with animals, or maybe there are also four-leggers who identify as "spiritual but not religious." No matter--he and all creatures (if I may wax Franciscan for a moment) enjoy every day a full and sufficient measure of grace, even without priestly interventions. At least on a warm, mild autumn day, it sure feels that way.