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.
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