We'll get by, though we're in for a tight stretch. Guess now I'll have to eat these words.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Joining the Ranks
Kristine was laid off on Friday. Her company may be about to lay down for good.
We'll get by, though we're in for a tight stretch. Guess now I'll have to eat these words.
We'll get by, though we're in for a tight stretch. Guess now I'll have to eat these words.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
A Long Way to Go, Part 2
May, 1991
My excursions later in the week played out more or less like that first day on Bear Creek. I tried the Little Manistee and Claybank Creek besides heading back to the Bear a few times. I probably spent as much time driving around, guided by my AAA map, investigating different access points on the streams, as I did fishing. (Surely, I thought, there had to be a spot where the fish were abundant and eager.) Tire hiking, I called it, as I still do. I think I coined the term on that trip.
I honestly can't recall if I caught a trout during the first four days of the trip. If I did, it made less of an impression on my than a steelhead that exploded from the water five feet in front of me when I put a toe into the water on a lower stretch of Bear Creek, then again a moment later thirty or forty feet upstream. That felt slightly humiliating. It was as if the river was taunting me with my quarry. I could look, but not touch.
However, the final outing of the week would put a little slime on my hands. I set out for Pine Creek near where it angled across M-55 by the town of Wellston. A rough trail leading south from the highway brought me to a pulloff overlooking a beaver pond--the first beaver pond I'd ever seen, actually. And it was the most pleasant a day I'd yet had, near sixty and sunny.
I cast a spinner across the center of the pond, letting it sink for several seconds then slowly retrieving. No luck. I waded in and worked toward the pond's inlet, which looked very promising: a narrow chute, knee deep, guarded by overhanging alder limbs and sunken brush along its margins. I pitched my lure into the top of the chute and about a second after I clicked the bail I felt a shaking on the end of my line. Not a throb that nearly pulled the rod from my hands or made my drag scream, but resistance enough to give me ten or twelve ecstatic seconds before gold flashed in the water before me. I whipped out my new net (the fish didn't actually require it, but I'd be damned if I didn't get some use out of it)
and scooped up a brook trout. Laying it on the bank, I measured it at a hair over ten inches.
Maybe that was a moment I should have savored, but I quickly unhooked and released the trout and cast into the chute again. I had a lot of fishless hours to make up for. The second cast brought another strike and another brook trout, this one a little smaller. I continued fishing the chute and managed one more strike but no fish that stayed one the line. I waded upstream from the pond, working under the alders and along tangles of brush. I took a third trout quickly, but then fished for over an hour before another came. The last two were actually quite small, six or seven inches, though I did fight for them. Above the pond the creek was no more than ten feet wide. Many of my "casts" amounted to popping the spinner through a small gap in the alders, and I didn't wade so much as I ducked and crawled though the brush, sometimes in the stream and sometimes along its banks.
With my luck waning and the confines of the creek tightening I called it quits on Pine Creek, and on the week. I would be leaving that night, and I needed time to pack my bags and shut down the trailer. And trying elsewhere else and getting skunked (an all-too-likely prospect) might have erased my already fading satisfaction in the day. Driving back to Manistee I felt ambivalent. Catching those trout did bring back a measure of the hope I'd felt as I set out on the trip, but they still were a small payoff (in more than one sense) for a week of fishing well-regarded trout waters. I thought the unthinkable: maybe I really wasn't cut out to be a fisherman. Or at least, maybe I'd be happier sticking to pursuits that didn't involve persuading someone to accept a dubious offering ( a suspicion that came to me often during my years as a sales rep). Maybe I ought to stick to hiking, which required only looking at the scenery. I knew that fishing was about more than catching fish, but I wanted the fish to be more than anomalies the process.
I'm prone to quitting things too soon, to fixing on the mote of failure in my successes.
I really did consider hanging up the rod, but that decision wasn't for then and there. I was taking that trip to the UP regardless.
My excursions later in the week played out more or less like that first day on Bear Creek. I tried the Little Manistee and Claybank Creek besides heading back to the Bear a few times. I probably spent as much time driving around, guided by my AAA map, investigating different access points on the streams, as I did fishing. (Surely, I thought, there had to be a spot where the fish were abundant and eager.) Tire hiking, I called it, as I still do. I think I coined the term on that trip.
I honestly can't recall if I caught a trout during the first four days of the trip. If I did, it made less of an impression on my than a steelhead that exploded from the water five feet in front of me when I put a toe into the water on a lower stretch of Bear Creek, then again a moment later thirty or forty feet upstream. That felt slightly humiliating. It was as if the river was taunting me with my quarry. I could look, but not touch.
However, the final outing of the week would put a little slime on my hands. I set out for Pine Creek near where it angled across M-55 by the town of Wellston. A rough trail leading south from the highway brought me to a pulloff overlooking a beaver pond--the first beaver pond I'd ever seen, actually. And it was the most pleasant a day I'd yet had, near sixty and sunny.
I cast a spinner across the center of the pond, letting it sink for several seconds then slowly retrieving. No luck. I waded in and worked toward the pond's inlet, which looked very promising: a narrow chute, knee deep, guarded by overhanging alder limbs and sunken brush along its margins. I pitched my lure into the top of the chute and about a second after I clicked the bail I felt a shaking on the end of my line. Not a throb that nearly pulled the rod from my hands or made my drag scream, but resistance enough to give me ten or twelve ecstatic seconds before gold flashed in the water before me. I whipped out my new net (the fish didn't actually require it, but I'd be damned if I didn't get some use out of it)
and scooped up a brook trout. Laying it on the bank, I measured it at a hair over ten inches.
Maybe that was a moment I should have savored, but I quickly unhooked and released the trout and cast into the chute again. I had a lot of fishless hours to make up for. The second cast brought another strike and another brook trout, this one a little smaller. I continued fishing the chute and managed one more strike but no fish that stayed one the line. I waded upstream from the pond, working under the alders and along tangles of brush. I took a third trout quickly, but then fished for over an hour before another came. The last two were actually quite small, six or seven inches, though I did fight for them. Above the pond the creek was no more than ten feet wide. Many of my "casts" amounted to popping the spinner through a small gap in the alders, and I didn't wade so much as I ducked and crawled though the brush, sometimes in the stream and sometimes along its banks.
With my luck waning and the confines of the creek tightening I called it quits on Pine Creek, and on the week. I would be leaving that night, and I needed time to pack my bags and shut down the trailer. And trying elsewhere else and getting skunked (an all-too-likely prospect) might have erased my already fading satisfaction in the day. Driving back to Manistee I felt ambivalent. Catching those trout did bring back a measure of the hope I'd felt as I set out on the trip, but they still were a small payoff (in more than one sense) for a week of fishing well-regarded trout waters. I thought the unthinkable: maybe I really wasn't cut out to be a fisherman. Or at least, maybe I'd be happier sticking to pursuits that didn't involve persuading someone to accept a dubious offering ( a suspicion that came to me often during my years as a sales rep). Maybe I ought to stick to hiking, which required only looking at the scenery. I knew that fishing was about more than catching fish, but I wanted the fish to be more than anomalies the process.
I'm prone to quitting things too soon, to fixing on the mote of failure in my successes.
I really did consider hanging up the rod, but that decision wasn't for then and there. I was taking that trip to the UP regardless.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Proof Positive of Insanity (but not mine)
An unlikely feature from the Travel section of Thursday's New York Times:
BLACK shapes bobbed on big waves out from shore. Through the pine trees off Stoney Point Drive, past parked cars idling with their heaters cranked on, the surfers of Lake Superior waited to catch a wave.
It was a Sunday morning north of Duluth, Minn., and a blizzard had overtaken the region. The surfers — apparitions in black neoprene, floating in mist far offshore — paddled and stood when a wave began to break....
All around the Great Lakes, from breaks on Lake Michigan to western New York and Lake Erie’s shore, a freshwater surfing scene has emerged in recent years. On Lake Superior, where winds swoop hundreds of miles across open water, surfers swim and paddle year-round to ride waves as tall as 20 feet, rushing tsunamis tumbling on an inland sea.
Read the rest.
There's a love of winter and then there's batshit crazy.
Seriously, I feel respect for the people who do this. Their sport requires both smarts and guts in large measures. And they certainly can't let concerns about their equipment slide. If I have a leak starting in my waders, I might let it go for a day. For Superior surfers, that could be a fatal error.
Actually, I think I would enjoy a day of this--in the capacity of a spectator. I'd be glad to keep the coffee hot.
(a later thought: imagine "Wipeout" rendered on accordion and fiddle...)
BLACK shapes bobbed on big waves out from shore. Through the pine trees off Stoney Point Drive, past parked cars idling with their heaters cranked on, the surfers of Lake Superior waited to catch a wave.
It was a Sunday morning north of Duluth, Minn., and a blizzard had overtaken the region. The surfers — apparitions in black neoprene, floating in mist far offshore — paddled and stood when a wave began to break....
All around the Great Lakes, from breaks on Lake Michigan to western New York and Lake Erie’s shore, a freshwater surfing scene has emerged in recent years. On Lake Superior, where winds swoop hundreds of miles across open water, surfers swim and paddle year-round to ride waves as tall as 20 feet, rushing tsunamis tumbling on an inland sea.
Read the rest.
There's a love of winter and then there's batshit crazy.
Seriously, I feel respect for the people who do this. Their sport requires both smarts and guts in large measures. And they certainly can't let concerns about their equipment slide. If I have a leak starting in my waders, I might let it go for a day. For Superior surfers, that could be a fatal error.
Actually, I think I would enjoy a day of this--in the capacity of a spectator. I'd be glad to keep the coffee hot.
(a later thought: imagine "Wipeout" rendered on accordion and fiddle...)
Friday, January 16, 2009
Trip Series: A Long Way to Go, Part 1
May, 1991
I don't know why, but I've always liked driving at night, especially when driving in or to northern Michigan. Maybe because darkness screens out some of the human impositions on the land: homes reduce to lighted windows, closed stores, farms, or construction sites to shadows. I prefer to drive home from my trips in the dark, since that cloaking effect softens the impact of returning to urbanized southern Michigan. Night feels wilder, wherever you are.
Perhaps the wildness of the dark added to the sense of being freed or revived that came over me as I drove to Manistee to take that first step back into the water. I left fairly late, at almost ten, but I was more than alert. Exhilarated, even. Rainshowers had just passed, and as I drove through the Manistee National Forest on M-55, I caught a whiff of the sweet, marshy smell of the damp woods, bark and grasses releasing their scent into the mist. (Forget new mown lawns--if the color green has an aroma, that's it.) Ignoring the chill, I rolled down my window to get more.
It was after one when I got to the trailer. I hadn't hooked up its utilities in years and at that moment I wasn't in the mood to relearn. Powered by the trailer's decrepit battery, the overhead lights gave off an amberish glow that just sufficed for unrolling my sleeping bag. Exhaustion quickly dispelled the excitement of the trip and I slept.
Shortly after noon the next day, once I'd hooked up the trailer's gas, electric, and sewer and laid in a few supplies, I sat at the kitchen table to begin working on that sales report. I actually managed a couple of hours before the temptation to go fishing became too great. Consulting a county map I'd picked up from Triple A, I set off for a stretch of upper Bear Creek, hoping for the kind of small, brushy water on which I'd cut my trouting teeth.
And I found that: a clear, narrow stream flanked by alders, dotted with brushpiles and downed logs. I was encouraged in spite of the dismal weather. The skies were overcast, the temperature was in the forties, and wind howled through the tops of the pines. I saw a better omen in the slight stain left in the water by last night's rains. On the stream I'd grew up fishing, rain always put trout on the feed. It surely does on Bear Creek too, but I either missed the bite or couldn't find it. I dragged worms and spinners through the holes, beneath the logs, and around rocks for a couple of hours, but connected only with a small trout that skittered on the surface for moment before slipping free.
I was frustrated---and freezing. Jeans underneath vinyl waders weren't adequate protection against the chilly water (and I was unable to buy longjohns anywhere in Manistee that week. I had to settle for wearing tight jeans under baggier ones.)
I didn't have to deliberate long over whether to head back to the trailer. There, I heated a bowl of Dinty Moore stew and consoled myself with the thought of four more days to turn things around. The realization sunk in that if I wanted to become a proficient angler once again, I had a long way to go.
I don't know why, but I've always liked driving at night, especially when driving in or to northern Michigan. Maybe because darkness screens out some of the human impositions on the land: homes reduce to lighted windows, closed stores, farms, or construction sites to shadows. I prefer to drive home from my trips in the dark, since that cloaking effect softens the impact of returning to urbanized southern Michigan. Night feels wilder, wherever you are.
Perhaps the wildness of the dark added to the sense of being freed or revived that came over me as I drove to Manistee to take that first step back into the water. I left fairly late, at almost ten, but I was more than alert. Exhilarated, even. Rainshowers had just passed, and as I drove through the Manistee National Forest on M-55, I caught a whiff of the sweet, marshy smell of the damp woods, bark and grasses releasing their scent into the mist. (Forget new mown lawns--if the color green has an aroma, that's it.) Ignoring the chill, I rolled down my window to get more.
It was after one when I got to the trailer. I hadn't hooked up its utilities in years and at that moment I wasn't in the mood to relearn. Powered by the trailer's decrepit battery, the overhead lights gave off an amberish glow that just sufficed for unrolling my sleeping bag. Exhaustion quickly dispelled the excitement of the trip and I slept.
Shortly after noon the next day, once I'd hooked up the trailer's gas, electric, and sewer and laid in a few supplies, I sat at the kitchen table to begin working on that sales report. I actually managed a couple of hours before the temptation to go fishing became too great. Consulting a county map I'd picked up from Triple A, I set off for a stretch of upper Bear Creek, hoping for the kind of small, brushy water on which I'd cut my trouting teeth.
And I found that: a clear, narrow stream flanked by alders, dotted with brushpiles and downed logs. I was encouraged in spite of the dismal weather. The skies were overcast, the temperature was in the forties, and wind howled through the tops of the pines. I saw a better omen in the slight stain left in the water by last night's rains. On the stream I'd grew up fishing, rain always put trout on the feed. It surely does on Bear Creek too, but I either missed the bite or couldn't find it. I dragged worms and spinners through the holes, beneath the logs, and around rocks for a couple of hours, but connected only with a small trout that skittered on the surface for moment before slipping free.
I was frustrated---and freezing. Jeans underneath vinyl waders weren't adequate protection against the chilly water (and I was unable to buy longjohns anywhere in Manistee that week. I had to settle for wearing tight jeans under baggier ones.)
I didn't have to deliberate long over whether to head back to the trailer. There, I heated a bowl of Dinty Moore stew and consoled myself with the thought of four more days to turn things around. The realization sunk in that if I wanted to become a proficient angler once again, I had a long way to go.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Proof Positive of Insanity
Been cold here lately...single digits during the day, just below zero at night. Some places are colder still. Tuesday night I checked the weather for on of my favorite localities, Kenton MI, and saw they had -19. I actually envied them. I love a good hard winter. But I'll admit I did not enjoy skating home over 40 miles of black ice last night.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Pictured Rocks Get Wilder
Yesterday, the US Senate overcame procedural hurdles to allow a vote ona bill that would designate 11 million acres of federal land in 9 states as wilderness. That includes 11,000 acres in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore near Munising, specifically the Beaver Basin area, which has periodically been proposed for increased tourist development. In the early 90s the USPS was examining proposals to build a paved road through the area. There was much local support for the project, but opposition primarily from visitors and environmental advocates from outside the region--a typical split of opinion on these matters. The proposal was tabled then. Now, it or anything similar to it will be off the table.
Also of note, the bill would ease federal acquisition of land to extend the North Country Trail, and increase appropriations for development of the Keweenaw national historic park.
The Senate and the House still need to approve the bill itself, but the chances for passage look good. From FTR's standpoint, this is a good deal all around for lovers of Michigan's outdoors.
Also of note, the bill would ease federal acquisition of land to extend the North Country Trail, and increase appropriations for development of the Keweenaw national historic park.
The Senate and the House still need to approve the bill itself, but the chances for passage look good. From FTR's standpoint, this is a good deal all around for lovers of Michigan's outdoors.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Trip Series: Getting Back
My return to fishing had more to do with attraction to a place than with any desire to catch a fish. I said above that I went to college in Upper Michigan, at Northern Michigan University to be precise. And I flat out loved it there. While I fell away from outdoor pursuits, I did love the place: the rugged landscape, the vastness of lake Superior, the slower pace of life, the typically pragmatic, earthy character of the people, the Finnish accents, the rustic little bars...I could go on. My friends may not have fished, but those I had later in my time in college were usually up for a road trip into some remote nook of the UP to soak up beer and local color. I regularly got out for short hikes outside Marquette, often along the lakeshore. And I started to wonder what it would be like to fish some of those swift rivers or loon-haunted lakes. By the time I graduated, I felt as if my life was inseparably meshed with that of the UP. Though I still had vague plans to seek a kind of career that the UP couldn't offer me, my time there did set my standards for what the good life was, and I left with the sense that any other life would be somehow diminished.
The life I lived immediately after graduation was deficient enough on its face. On the up side, I was living with Kristine, the first time in our relationship we hadn't resided at least 100 miles apart. However, my job hunt yielded only a series of disappointments. I went on interview after interview for positions I didn't want all that much, and blew an interview for one (as an editor at Gale Research) I did. I had next to no money, worked grim temp jobs for what little I had, and made my way around in a 78 Malibu that burned more oil than gas. Kristine and I didn't have the money to go out very often. The uniformly bland Detroit suburbs offered no vistas, trails, or rivers where I might escape the anxieties of my job hunt. I missed Marquette.
Things improved in June when I landed a position as a field rep for the college division of St. Martin's Press. I would promote their textbooks at campuses all around Michigan in parts of Indiana and Ohio. By summer's end I had a respectable salary, a company car, an expense account, and the prospect of summers off--since we sold to colleges, we worked on the academic calendar. And as I thought about how I would spend the upcoming summer, the idea of a fishing trip to the UP coalesced.
By April, near the end of the sales year the idea had utterly seized me. And I wasn't going to wait for June, when we were officially off the clock, to go fishing either. Our final duty for the year was to write an annual report of conditions in our territory and the results we attained. By the beginning of May I had no more sales visits to make. I would be free to write the report at home, but an even better situation for this task came to mind. At this time, my father had parked our old travel trailer on a permanent site in Manistee. So I decided to go up there to write the report and manage a few hours of fishing each day on the side. I had never fished for trout in northern Michigan. Taking this trip, I figured, would give me another taste of that more rustic, close-to-nature existence I'd had in the UP. I assumed I was on the verge of one of the great angling experiences of my life.
That actually was far from the truth, but my anticipation for the trip was so keen it pushed aside any thought of disappointment. I planned to leave on a Sunday night, and on the Friday before I dragged Kristine to a Dunham's in Warren and bought waders and other necessaries. I did still have the ultralight spinning rod and reel I'd used in my teens. Kristine regarded my sudden enthusiasm for fishing with the air of a confused bystander; that distraction from our relationship wasn't on the horizon when we started dating. Neither of us could have guessed where it would lead. I certainly couldn't have imagined the faltering course it would follow on the way.
The life I lived immediately after graduation was deficient enough on its face. On the up side, I was living with Kristine, the first time in our relationship we hadn't resided at least 100 miles apart. However, my job hunt yielded only a series of disappointments. I went on interview after interview for positions I didn't want all that much, and blew an interview for one (as an editor at Gale Research) I did. I had next to no money, worked grim temp jobs for what little I had, and made my way around in a 78 Malibu that burned more oil than gas. Kristine and I didn't have the money to go out very often. The uniformly bland Detroit suburbs offered no vistas, trails, or rivers where I might escape the anxieties of my job hunt. I missed Marquette.
Things improved in June when I landed a position as a field rep for the college division of St. Martin's Press. I would promote their textbooks at campuses all around Michigan in parts of Indiana and Ohio. By summer's end I had a respectable salary, a company car, an expense account, and the prospect of summers off--since we sold to colleges, we worked on the academic calendar. And as I thought about how I would spend the upcoming summer, the idea of a fishing trip to the UP coalesced.
By April, near the end of the sales year the idea had utterly seized me. And I wasn't going to wait for June, when we were officially off the clock, to go fishing either. Our final duty for the year was to write an annual report of conditions in our territory and the results we attained. By the beginning of May I had no more sales visits to make. I would be free to write the report at home, but an even better situation for this task came to mind. At this time, my father had parked our old travel trailer on a permanent site in Manistee. So I decided to go up there to write the report and manage a few hours of fishing each day on the side. I had never fished for trout in northern Michigan. Taking this trip, I figured, would give me another taste of that more rustic, close-to-nature existence I'd had in the UP. I assumed I was on the verge of one of the great angling experiences of my life.
That actually was far from the truth, but my anticipation for the trip was so keen it pushed aside any thought of disappointment. I planned to leave on a Sunday night, and on the Friday before I dragged Kristine to a Dunham's in Warren and bought waders and other necessaries. I did still have the ultralight spinning rod and reel I'd used in my teens. Kristine regarded my sudden enthusiasm for fishing with the air of a confused bystander; that distraction from our relationship wasn't on the horizon when we started dating. Neither of us could have guessed where it would lead. I certainly couldn't have imagined the faltering course it would follow on the way.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
New Year's Hike--Island Lake Rec. Area
Yesterday afternoon was beautiful, and I'd barely gotten outside during the last week, or two. It was time to stretch my legs and snap a few photos.
The Huron
Marsh near dusk. The river is down in there somewhere.
Light rain and sleet are falling this afternoon, but if work wasn't calling, I'd go back in a minute.
The Huron
Marsh near dusk. The river is down in there somewhere.
Light rain and sleet are falling this afternoon, but if work wasn't calling, I'd go back in a minute.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Trip Series: Introduction
As I said on New Year's day, I'm going to write about a few fishing trips I took before this blog came into being that I found significant for one reason or another, mostly ones that were important points in my angler's learning curve. These entries will be posted periodically over the winter, sometimes in serial form.
When I was a kid, trout fishing required only walking across the street. But in adulthood, I've had to travel to fish for trout. I satisfy my fishing jones in small doses of two, three, four days away in northern Michigan, sometimes with a single outing in the midst of a trip taken for some other reason. Most of the time, a trip will take on a particular tone. Sometimes a kind of theme emerges from the experiences of a given trip. Sometimes trips acquire an actual theme song, depending on what what stands out in my listening on the drive up, or while I'm driving around to fish. I tend to remember particular days on the water, individual fish I've caught, notable hatches in the context of trips, not as standout experiences themselves. So to tell the story of my fishing life, I need to look back on those brief packets of time. It is from the accretion of experiences in each, more so than from particular moments, that I've learned my most important lessons about the sport, or carried away my most potent memories of it.
Above I gave the impression that beginning these trips marked a transition in how I went about fishing. It would be more accurate, though to say that it marked a beginning, a restart of my fishing career. I took the first of these outings when I was 25, out of college for about about a year and a half, less than a year into my first "real" job, and about six or seven years since I'd last fished seriously. When I got into college, I got distracted by studies, parties, trendy music, and a set of friends for whom fishing was something either foreign or forgotten. When I wasn't absorbed by these things, my mind was set on some career to come, preferably in some large city. This in spite of the fact that I went to college in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan--one would be hard pressed to find a collegiate locale with better fishing opportunities. Many young people follow a similar course, actually, but not all recover their passion for the outdoors. It's hard to imagine what my life would be like now if I hadn't.
When I was a kid, trout fishing required only walking across the street. But in adulthood, I've had to travel to fish for trout. I satisfy my fishing jones in small doses of two, three, four days away in northern Michigan, sometimes with a single outing in the midst of a trip taken for some other reason. Most of the time, a trip will take on a particular tone. Sometimes a kind of theme emerges from the experiences of a given trip. Sometimes trips acquire an actual theme song, depending on what what stands out in my listening on the drive up, or while I'm driving around to fish. I tend to remember particular days on the water, individual fish I've caught, notable hatches in the context of trips, not as standout experiences themselves. So to tell the story of my fishing life, I need to look back on those brief packets of time. It is from the accretion of experiences in each, more so than from particular moments, that I've learned my most important lessons about the sport, or carried away my most potent memories of it.
Above I gave the impression that beginning these trips marked a transition in how I went about fishing. It would be more accurate, though to say that it marked a beginning, a restart of my fishing career. I took the first of these outings when I was 25, out of college for about about a year and a half, less than a year into my first "real" job, and about six or seven years since I'd last fished seriously. When I got into college, I got distracted by studies, parties, trendy music, and a set of friends for whom fishing was something either foreign or forgotten. When I wasn't absorbed by these things, my mind was set on some career to come, preferably in some large city. This in spite of the fact that I went to college in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan--one would be hard pressed to find a collegiate locale with better fishing opportunities. Many young people follow a similar course, actually, but not all recover their passion for the outdoors. It's hard to imagine what my life would be like now if I hadn't.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
New Year's Bloggolution
Hope everyone had a pleasant new years' celebration. Kristine and I just stayed in and watched a few episodes of The Wire. At least this year we didn't go to bed before midnight, like we once did.
I'm going to be doing something a little different in this space over the next few weeks/months, until I can post some actual fishing reports. While I may write the odd entry about whatever I'm thinking/reading/hearing at the moment, I'm going to channel most of my blogging efforts into some accounts of fishing trips taken before FTR came into being. I'm going to take some time with these to make them more readable than my average posting, so some time may pass between entries, but don't take that as a sign that the blog has gone into hibernation for the winter.
I want to write about some of the occasions that especially influenced my perspective on and participation in the sport. This is somewhat self-indulgent, like most memoirs, but good memoirs will leave readers thinking about something other than the writer. I hope my recollections will do that.
A good new year to all.
I'm going to be doing something a little different in this space over the next few weeks/months, until I can post some actual fishing reports. While I may write the odd entry about whatever I'm thinking/reading/hearing at the moment, I'm going to channel most of my blogging efforts into some accounts of fishing trips taken before FTR came into being. I'm going to take some time with these to make them more readable than my average posting, so some time may pass between entries, but don't take that as a sign that the blog has gone into hibernation for the winter.
I want to write about some of the occasions that especially influenced my perspective on and participation in the sport. This is somewhat self-indulgent, like most memoirs, but good memoirs will leave readers thinking about something other than the writer. I hope my recollections will do that.
A good new year to all.
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