January thaw on a gravel road
Photo by J. Harrington
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In anticipation of the eventual arrival of Spring, we've been reading one of the books we got for Christmas, Dave Hughes' Essential Trout Flies [ETF]. Over the years we've read a multitude of books on fly-fishing, especially for trout. ETF is the first one that presents the information in an organized way that makes sense to us. Maybe we needed to have read that multitude of other books for this one to make sense? [When the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear.] Our strategy for 2019, of focusing on bread, fly-fishing for trout, and poetry, seems to be working. We knew we had become too much like the old description of the Platte River, "a mile wide and an inch deep." In fact, that phrase and river links us to Nebraska, which links us to Ted Kooser, of Nebraska and his friend and fellow poet Jim Harrison, who had a love for the Sand Hills and set some of his fiction there. From what we've read of Harrison, Hughes and Kooser (no, it's not a law firm), they are "plain spoken" writers with a deep-seated appreciation of the natural environment. That's the kind of company we like to keep. If you share that interest, see if you can find a copy of Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison (2001) or Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry (2003). Below is Kooser's poem from Winter Morning Walks for this day in the Winter. It could almost be describing our place, if we had had the forecast light snow last night.
whitetail deer track in melting snow
Photo by J. Harrington
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january 7
five degrees and light snow
An elaborate braiding of deer tracks
close to the house this morning early,
within a few yards of our two dogs
asleep on the porch. A dozen or more
walking soundlessly east in the night,
a half moon rising before them.
I like the long deft brush stroke
as each hoof swung into and out of the snow,
and the little splash kicked out ahead
as they stripped sweet bark from the darkness,
afraid of everything but not afraid.
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