It’s 9 PM on a Saturday and one kid is here behind me sleeping after reading through a compendium of Tolkien-related paintings and interpretation. The other kid is downstairs trying to hold some juice in his system after puking at least 12 times today. In fact: a housekeeping note is that at this very moment there is a pile of red puke on the floor right by the table and I don’t really care all that much. Many, many things were covered in vomit today. There were also pools of human feces to clean up. Fucking place has some lingering odors. As you might guess. Man oh man. So at this point, I just finished a John Henry 3 Lick Spiker Ale (9.1%). My good neighbor, who is pictured in the photos below, was good enough to share this with me – knowing that after a day of cancelled itinerary and stomach-acid-mopping I might need such an elixir. He was right. And now I’m chasing it with an IPA I guess. Out of a Chuck Foreman pint glass. He was number 44, as you probably recall. Maybe strong brew is my muse. I’d be good with that. Hell, I just sat outside in my backyard and looked at all the plants that hung in stasis over the winter, waiting to burst forth and show. Looked at our grapevines that have recently revealed just how many bunches they will offer up: probably ~40 lbs worth. Looking at the walnut tree showing some compound leaves now. Looked at hostas and bergamot and bee balm and lemon balm and monkey flower and blazing star and speckled trout lettuce. All as night came on there under the walnut tree. Hens cooed a bit. Lay some fucking eggs I said in reply. Read The Week and got informed re Bin Laden’s porn stash. He’s like everyone else I guess. Drank that John Henry and ate popcorn popped in a popper that was given to us for our wedding. The popper is made in Monon, IN. For anyone who has viewed the movie Hoosiers, that should ring a bell: I’ll hide-strap your ass to [something or another] and send you down the Monon Line. Well this product from Monon is a good one and I popped some corn in it using canola oil that has been soaking with hot chiles for ~ 1 year now. The popcorn is so fucking hot you can’t really eat it. I chomp a few pieces, cry a bit and then drink beer. Fucking stuff is hot I say. But the only way you can really get going on this blog, after thinking about the various contradictions floating around out there, the various problems with fucking keyboards and monitors and man’s dispositions and that other shit, is to drink in excess and then take to it. Recall that Poe’s character loved animals all his life and then he hung that fucking black cat Pluto. Drove him nuts. I’m not driven nuts yet but I can’t bear to look a computer in the face without being (1) at work, or (2) chemically altered. Poe’s guy hung that cat and then that cat came back and really did him in, didn’t he? I read that story some years ago; then listened to it while driving a month ago; then read it again last weekend. The gallows. They were coming alright.

So there have been all kinds of thoughts and things bouncing around with kids, family, fishing, etc. I’ve been thoroughly attached to the kids lately and I’ve been enjoying that. The plain truth is that now that they don’t fill their pants and need constant attention, they can be companions in all sorts of ventures. It’s highly pleasurable to be at home or out and about with them.

Just drank the last swill of IPA. Going to crest this high and come down in a hurry so better get on to narrative that is pertinent here.

Fact of the matter is that my friend and neighbor conceptualized a great day: long walk on the wild side. Hell with road crossings. Let’s get deep into the wild for a bit here and see what happens. So we did that. Dropped a car, drove downstream and started upstream. In at 7:40 AM. I think we came out just shy of 9:00 PM. To a full moon seated just on the crest of the horizon. Very full moon. We adopted a calm but steady pace for the day: fishing properly but not too intensely. We could have pounded some water but we only tapped at it and then moved on. We took in a lot of experience. We learned that the good water keeps on coming. We saw many good riffles and talked of “if only there were bugs now” etc. etc. Many good corner holes. Many good slow reaches full of fish. Not complete solitude (we ran into two parties), but pretty close. No road crossings. No tilled acres or homes in sight. A person needs to know he can walk a day like that and see nothing but the forest floor and the river. If you don’t have that all your daily life is changed in ways you can’t readily notice or understand. But you’ll be crankier and more ready to get pissed at someone. But if you know that there is a walk out there that is close to the walk that it’s always been before Europeans rolled in here and gummed things up a bit…. You’ll have some underlying peace. If you can look up at cliff faces, and see only river up and down you’ll have that peace. I don’t know why that need is there but it is surely there. Go read The Peace of Wild Things maybe – that could be it, summed up in a poem by a prophet.

[first four pics are credited to my neighbor]



Must pause and say that this is new favorite pic of mine. Regardless of who it is... we're looking at a ninja-like persona there, deep in the wilderness, battling a potential meal with an apparently very flexible fly rod. If that isn't what we're after... who knows what we're looking for then.














Just a couple more things to say here. First: we found some forgiving fish that ate traditionally-hackled flies in dead glass water. We were putting Adams and EHC on them, and they were taking them readily. In an aquarium. Sweet.

This fish came as evening set: prospecting with an Adams in a big and broad western-style riffle. Came in from the side and crushed the fly... all visible and beautiful in the action. Closed out a memorable day.