Spring musings

This fast paced life we lead has its price. It exacts its toll. It grinds on you. Wears away on you the way the rivers carve massive rocks and even wear on mother earth as she meets to kiss the shore of those rivers. But God’s creation rejuvenates each spring, the landscape adapts and makes peace with the river. If only for a season or two. So it is with most trout fisherman, Civilized life wears at us, grinds us to orneriness  and spite. sleeplessness and strife. We bare the weekdays, kinda like carrying a sack full of rocks around, totein’ ‘em here and there until the weekend comes and we can shed ‘em, if even for a fleeting 48 hours. Those 2 sacred days we call weekends are reserved for our short forays into those rivers, a baptism of sorts, the hope that somehow immersing ourselves in rivers with a fly rod in hand will replenish and lighten our troubled souls. Stress and worry have a way of leaching out our very souls, sucking our hopes and dreams. Its the River that gives it back to us, God is there, In all His mystery, granting us slivers or reprieve  filling us back up, one cast at a time. Somehow the smell of pine and forest fill our noses with memories of trails once tread.The sound of rock and water fill our ears with recollections of battles won and lost. The cast and drift, rise and set, are the cadence of our meditation. It is here in the small gurgle of the river that God speaks to us. His timeless wisdom creeping slowly in to mingle like the currents we fish. They nestle in amongst the fond memories of what we cherish most; family friends and home. Somehow it cleanses us, strengthens our resolve and provides us with the energy we need to go back to carrying that sack of rocks, Somehow that burden is lighter, less burdensome. Its His gift of water, the coursing of currents ebb and flow of tides that grant us this strength and resolve and in gratitude we dwell on this gift. It is here that we sense the love. His deep infinite caress laps at our legs as we stand in the river, the current like his wisdom pulling us deeper into life’s mystery…