Spring Creek 1/26

 

    The beavers had begin construction of another dam somewhere on Spring Creek. I didn't see the dam, but I saw the cylindrical gnawing on the juvenile tulip poplars, exposing their bare orange cores to the bare colorless winter winds. It resembled a cake, a baked orange-yellow warm center showing itself broadside underneath the coating of icing sugar that covers all tulip trees. I was catching brown trout underneath a dam, not one build by beavers but one constructed much more permanently with hands instead of teeth and stone instead of wood. I've read somewhere that the soft whisper of running water shrieks like nails on a chalkboard when falling upon beaver ears, and so they desperately plug it up with any available organic matter within a tooth or tail's reach, anything to make it stop. Are we like that as well? Our race of dam builders? I've always loved the sound of running water, heard it inland miles away when I close my eyes and drift through hallways facing upstream like a trout in a riffle. I suppose they hear nothing BUT running water. I don't think our species is like that. I don't thing we process beauty or pain very well in the moment, not until long after it's gone. When the Klamath River fell and Celilo Falls was buried in silence, it was done so without a second thought, until the deed was already done. I think my theory was corroborated in iron when at my next fishing spot, a set of railroads slashed deep along the banks of the creek, rails built to carry coal out of the hills, now enjoying very little use with no one to dig and no one to sit in the conductor's chair. The beavers are still here though, provided they last the winter. I think they will. Upstream facers tend to do well. 

 

Penn-siberia

 

    Upon looking at a supposedly "spring-fed" local trout stream completely iced up from the pools to the rapids, with the soft white aura of anchor ice along the bottom, I immediately began to wonder what crimes I've committed to deserve exile in such a frigid, unforgiving environment. I then decided that was an overly dramatic platitude and that considering the absurd amount of blue lines on the map where I live in Pennsylvania, It was within the realm of probability that I could find some open water and willing fish. 

    Luckily, true spring-fed streams won't ever ice up, not even in the most cold and crystalline temperatures they'll stay wide open from the fired warmth of the center of the mountains and the springs that reside within. I drove East away from the river of slush and eventually ended up on a picturesque PA spring-fed stream without a lick of ice on the surface. 

    Spring creeks are true trout factories, especially here in the limestone belt where the low pH cooks up a delicious batch of scuds, mayflies, caddis, stoneflies, and a smorgasbord of other aquatic macroinvertebrates moving slowly along the buffet-line right into the hungry maws of fattened brown trout. The laziness is part of their trade-off, with spring creek fish becoming much more technical and picky with your presentation. 

    I started off with a black stonefly under a bobber, ticking it through a deep boulder-strewn pool. It dipped, I lifted, and was soon connected by the magical thread of a fly line to a decent brown trout. 

    However, as this was a Friday evening, post-class, Alan-avoiding-personal-responsibility-to-fish type of outing, I was soon limited by the waning daylight as it sunk into that golden hour. I rigged my streamer rod up and began to throw a twisty-tailed brownado, smacking it against every piece of available structure. 

    I chucked my streamer underneath a bridge from which I've narry seen a trout over 12 inches. My first cast, a brown trout I'd estimate to be well over 20 follows it back, tracking my fly in a streamline all the way to the bank, where I proceeded to completely whiff my shot by flipping my fly upstream, getting my line tangled around the two hooks, when which the trout then realizes its folly and spooks off. 

    A few casts later under an overhanging bush, a 20 inch rainbow whacks my fly with the kind of vigor expected from a fish half his size in water about 20 degrees warmer. I barely even needed whatever panicked spasm passed for a hookset before I brought the fish to hand after a short battle. 

    After wetting my hands to land that fish, my fingers soon lost all connection with their central nervous system and failed to serve their motoric functions. I tapped out, called it an evening. The fish still need to eat though, so go out and ramble yonder in the cold and the snow, up and down the mountains trying to fool the denizens of traveling water. 

Wintertime Blues?

    

    "Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does. I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there is no courage and without courage all other virtues are useless." - Ed Abbey 

    It's been difficult to see the beauty in winter lately. The New Year came and went, leaving nothing but skid rows and gunpowder burns on the cold, dark pavement. It's gotten cold, bitterly cold, a white cold that leaves the cheeks red and fingers purple, a shade mixed of hot and cold colors just like the battle between life and cold happening between them. I'm back in the mountains again, and these vast limestone ridges trap that cold much more effectively than the rivers and woods and rolling hills that I come from. Limestone holds onto the cold, doesn't let go no matter how much it shivers or squirms. 

    I've also been falling in and out of REM sleep with much less forethought as of late. I've always had a complicated relationship with sleep. I was blessed by my mother's inability to sleep in, often spontaneously waking within the middle of the night and spontaneously un-awaking about eight hours later in high school Chemistry class. I've been realizing how I can consciously dream for the first few steps of lapsing out of consciousness, and have been keeping a dream journal of these escapades, for whose eyes I do not yet know. 

    Sleep's an important thing in the cold. Animals much smarter than us at thinking like mountains have come to this conclusion thousands, no probably millions of years ago. Those fall black bears I encountered what seemed like a stomachful of years ago but was in reality a few months now have their own abdomens swollen with deer and hickory nuts and acorns as they lie in the comatose of dreamers until the snows recede. Yet, for us, life must go on! The machine must be fed! Information needs to flow fast as ever in a season meant for linking what you have with those you love, in a slow and love-full manner. 

    

    My most beautiful winter moment recently came during one of the last days of open water on the river, which I spent at one of my favorite shoulder-season holes throwing a jerkbait, managing to pluck a nice walleye out from right underneath a sunken log. 

    All of a sudden, the snowglobe of the world was shook and the sky turned every color of cold, the snow came softly falling down mixing with every water laden living thing atop me and the walleyes and the river and it was so beautiful that I wanted to freeze right then and there. I thought that if I had to describe the color blue-gray to someone who was blind all their life I would describe this moment, this moment that I realized that I was the blind one and this opened eyes to the wintertime blues, let me leap from the tomb as joyful as Lazarus into that numbing sunshine and sleet. 

Some 2024 Housekeeping

    

    "There are years that ask questions, and years that answer"- Zora Neale Hurston

    It was so familiarly warm today that I could almost be forgiven into mistaking it for spring. Maybe some early shad in the Delaware Bay felt its internal clock ticking and being pulled upward by some beautiful invisible thread of freshwater and swam, swam its way up the river in late December expecting blooming cottonwood and serviceberry and was met with disappointment in bare branches. I expect my own internal shad, one that feels so at home enveloped in the harmony of spring peepers, will encounter a similar disappointment. It seems funny, ending the year expecting disappointment, like an ill-fated way to start off such an important turning of a new river rock in the freestone of our lives. Yet, as of recent, I've decided to stop separating behaviors and feelings by calendar lines. I will be more spontaneous, more explosive! 

    My family and friends have long called me a "grinch" over my general distain for the Christmas holiday season. My hatred for Christmas music has become somewhat of a bit, which is alright with me. I just have some hesitations in celebrating holidays in neon and rampant consumerism beneath the watchful eyes some CocaCola-red secular deities. 

    Still, I felt compelled to participate in some way. So I went down to the woods near my house and carefully cut a few six foot sections of wild grape vine, along with some boughs of white pine, cedar, and alder. I fashioned a wreath in my garage that smelled deeply of wintery conifers, and hung it welcomingly outside my door. 

    My first fish of 2025 and my last of 2024 were both river walleyes. I ended the year exploring the Delaware around the Lehigh Valley, coming across some very strange sacrificial structures and fascinating river characters, explored for about 5 hours whilst throwing ghostly muskie plugs and with nothing to show for it. Soon met up with Kyle downstream as the sun was going down and caught a small male as soon as I switched to walleye fishing. A few casts later, and I had a 26 inch fish up on the bank. 

    My first fish of the year came on New Year's Day, I believe the first time this has happened to me. I choose to take as a sign of good fortune to come. It was a scrappy, about 15 inch male walleye that hit a swimbait in some steadily rising canal lock. 

    The other afternoon was spent with some old friends in the Philadelphia Art Museum, a hulking pillared structure more famous for its stairs, winding by the lazy Schuylkill River. A piece of canvas lathered in the likeness of a nighttime farm field covered in snow with indifferent stars blinking above. My first thought was of the striking resemblance it bore to one of my favorite star-gazing spots in Central Pennsylvania, a spot where I've spent countless waking minutes looking heaven-ward at shooting stars and northern lights and a myriad of other wonders above. I looked at the title of the painting. The one word, "Loneliness" glared back at me, prompting a smile from me. I guess you could call it that if you so please. 

    I feel as though I've grown so much in 2024 in both confidence and ability, and I'm hopeful that 2025 is the year in which to apply this growth. I hope you all had a wonderful year and wish anyone reading this nothing short of the very best. Surround yourself with earthbound angels who encourage and challenge you to encourage and challenge yourself. Whatever you're thinking of doing, do it. Do it well. 

    Love, 

    Alan