whatever happened to old time values?

The dogs were unhappy about being taken for a walk in the rain. The dog-walker felt much the same, plus he's either coming down with an end of Summer cold or has managed to trigger some allergies. He'll spare you the details but note that neither a stuffed-up nose nor this weather is helping his participation in Orvis' "2018 '20 Days in September' Contest!" Once the rain stops, he expects it to take up to several days for high water to come down and make some local streams more fishable wadeable. Perhaps he'll even pack up the Jeep and drive to those streams and actually check on their condition. We're going to have a nice long talk with him about Nature Deficit Disorder not being attended to by just looking out the window, no matter how much nature can be seen through the glass.

stormy days

Photo by J. Harrington

We've been keeping about 1/3 of an eye on our Twitter timeline for tweets about the senate judiciary committee hearings today. It's been depressing watching the performances. We can only wonder if the Republicans believe the Democrats will never hold enough seats and have an opportunity to reciprocate. Much of this behavior has started us thinking that the country, and its inhabitants, would be much better served if real people behaved as if they had read and followed the ethics described by such writers of our youth as Gene Hill, Robert Ruark, and Corey Ford. A trip to Hill Country, a visit with the Old Man and The Boy, or time spent with members of the Lower Forty has always brought us versions of the golden rule wrapped in sugar coating. From the works of these writers, and others like them, we learned that there are many reasons to be polite, to put things back where they came from or leave them as we found them, and that often the best of life is what we have now.

trout parr from "trout in the classroom"

Photo by J. Harrington

The other factor we recall is that we never read a cynical thought in anything they wrote. As has been said, perhaps they wrote, or at least we read, in simpler times. Or, perhaps too many of us have let our values and priorities become distorted. We've been a member of Trout Unlimited for more years than we want to acknowledge. They've done a solid job of following through on their founding principle ... that if we "take care of the fish, then the fishing will take care of itself." The same is true, we believe, about all of our natural resources. If we don't take care of them, then we're faced with a challenge as formidable as unchopping a tree.

Native Trees

By W. S. Merwin

Neither my father nor my mother knew

the names of the trees

where I was born

what is that

I asked and my

father and mother did not

hear they did not look where I pointed

surfaces of furniture held

the attention of their fingers

and across the room they could watch

walls they had forgotten

where there were no questions

no voices and no shade

Were there trees

where they were children

where I had not been

I asked

were there trees in those places

where my father and my mother were born

and in that time did

my father and my mother see them

and when they said yes it meant

they did not remember

What were they I asked what were they

but both my father and my mother

said they never knew

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