Anchored

So far this year, I've taken four float trips in the Meadowhawk, my pontoon. That doubles the usage I gave it all of last season, and I may manage half a dozen or so more floats before the end of this one. However, I'm tempted simply to leave it home on my next trip.

Not because I don't like floating in it. I love feeling the current carry me along. I see places I never would otherwise. Rowing has turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant form of exercise, and I've liked the challenge of maneuvering around snags, boulders, and logjams. It's nice to feel competent at something vaguely athletic. I've gotten used to the 45 minute setup and 30-45 minute takedown. Some people spend almost as long loading or unloading boats that don't require assembly.

What I don't like about my boat is the feeling of obligation it has imposed on my fishing life--I now feel that, having spent the money on it, I HAVE to use it. Since I have to use it, I have to fish streams that can accomodate it, and I have to plan my fishing there around concerns about ease and safety of navigation. Which, pratically, means that fishing certain favorite streams is only possible at certain water levels, and that I need to plan to be off the water before dark, or at least plan to spend the evening on water big enough so that navigation isn't a problem.

I don't like to be pinned down--especially when fishing--but in many other areas of my life as well. I like to keep my options open, and be able to choose another one at the last minute. I like to explore new experiences, and most certainly new trout waters. If I want to be on a small stream or a low-running stream, I don't want to have to fish a big one that I'm not interested in at the moment. If I want to fish very remote waters where there is no car spotting service available and which I may find impassable once I'm a mile from the launch, I'll feel shackled returning to Grayling, or Baldwin, or Newaygo (terrible places, I know!). And if I just feel like just throwing on my waders and hitting the stream, I want to do that instead of inflating a boat. I want spontaneity, freedom. Good times, no strings attatched.

Yet...I have a contrary tendency to want to fulfill obligations once I have assumed them. I can't stand the thought of letting people down, or of appearing shiftless and unreliable. I hate letting things go to waste, whether the pears I bought last weekend or an inflatable pontoon.

Over the years these two needs have left me confused, conflicted, and medicated. Unquestionably the second one has done me more lasting good, so I would like to say that the Meadowhawk represents an opportunity to cultivate that tendency in the context of something I love unreservedly. An agreeable way to anchor myself in a life of greater stability. But more likely, it will serve, for now, as another point of internal conflict.

The box my pontoon came in says it weighs 64 pounds. Whether or not that's accurate depends on the buyer.