Last day of August, an official farewell and adieu to the waning summer as it staggers out sundrunk and tipsy on life. This was one of the hottest summers I've experienced on record, as if the sun had grown tired of our East-Coast indifference and decided to demonstrate a taste of her power in case we forgot. It seems like we've been getting a lot of these summers lately, no longer Indian but something harsher and fiercer entirely.
The weather today didn't feel like summer. A massive fog has engulfed most of State College and instead of dissipating in the afternoon it stayed, spitting the occasional torrent of rain and lighting down at us. The rain didn't dull the experience thought, but instead, served to deepen the colors of life. Stone became dull, but the mosses and lichens almost glowed a brilliant green and the late summer foliage showed off its stored chlorophyll through the mist. The occasional shelf fungus, artists bracket, and oyster mushroom also sequined the forest.
I spent most of the morning on a Central PA brook trout stream that hugged a huge swath of State Forest land. The stream still ran clear and cold and the brookies were looking up. It didn't matter what dry flies I threw, anything that splashed the surface got ate. I was fishing with mostly caddis patterns, catching natives in almost every single plunge pool I managed to bow and arrow cast into.
At one point, I came across a perfect plunge pool, breaking white water and a log condensed into a little tiny oasis. I got two small brookies on two consecutive casts. Eventually, my fly got waterlogged past the point of dessicant powder being able to save it, so I put on a fresh Adams and lay it down into the same pool. My fly drifts for a second, maybe more, lingers, then gets taken under by the nicest fish of the day, a beautiful black-mawed male brookie, not quite in fall colors yet, but getting there. Brook trout are one of the most precious jewels of the Appalachians, a place where hundreds of years people lay down their lives beneath the hills looking for fortune. The fact that a char, native to the Arctic Circle, managed to survive and hold out in mountain streams from Maine to Virginia is nothing short of remarkable. It's hard not to get a little touch of fisherman's nostalgia when you pull out a native brookie and to you and the sun it reveals all its vermiculations reminiscent of the coal-rich valleys and the spots that shine as bright as stars on a clear Appalachian autumn night.
I walked further upstream, through the moss covered rocks and ferns, picking off more brookies as I went. The more I walked, the more the sky began to darken and darken, a foreboding that eventually left me unable to see my fly. As soon as I strip my line back in and clip my Adams to my hook keeper, it stars pouring, a rain that comes in waves yet keeps the pressure on and on. I sat under a tree and breathed in. The air is so clear up in these mountains.
Eventually after the rain let up, I made my way back downstream. I stopped by a local small creek connected to a nearby lake and caught a few pickerel on an orange blossom special. Chain pickerel are another beautiful native species, but one that's unfortunately much less appreciated. The takes on streamers were visual and explosive in that trademark Esox heart-stopping eat.
I made my way to a trailhead on Rothrock State Forest. By then, the fog had rolled in and coated the landscape like a thick gray gravy. Anything 20 years in the distance may as well have been 2,000. I found an old beech with a suitable rock underneath and sat down, surrounded by greens and grays of all ilks. The greens of the ferns, mosses, lichens, leaves, the grays of the stones and mist all began to blend together until I too became something still and gray and green and could have stayed that way for a while in the precious stillness with no sound, not even from the croak of a tree frog or the whine of a no-see-um, the quietest August I have experienced in a long time.
All of a sudden, the silence is shattered by a low drumming noise from behind me, a reverberation that stirs the whole forest around me. The crack of a twig, and I turn to spook a big turkey that was striding up behind me. Neither of us knew they were there. He looked to be an old bird too, by turkey standards. He's probably been running around this mountain for the last three years, with this winter possibly being his last.
Eventually, the sun peaked out and gilded the fog, more and more until it dissipated into air and the woods started up again in it's usual summer cacophony. I had to leave soon afterwards, with a heavy heart, and went back down the mountain away from my forested precious reality through the summer waning, before fall sets these hills ablaze.
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