It’s The Little Things

Sometimes the recollection of our boyish sports comes back to us after manhood, and one who has been “addicted” to fishing relapses into his old “ailment”; then angling becomes a pleasant kind of disease, and one’s friends are apt to become inoculated with the virus, for it is contagious. This is a passage from one of my standby books; it was written by Thaddeus Norris and is from the book entitled, The Armchair Angler.

I didn’t actually mean to share this “ailment” with so many others…but in the end, I have. One of those with severe symptoms is my oldest son, Harrison. Some have told me that my two boys, Harrison along with Jonas, have little or no choice in this matter; that they have to love the outdoors as well as fishing, hunting, etc… OK, I love it that both of them do enjoy being outside with me but the truth is that I haven’t forced anything because this is a subject best left to choice or no one enjoys their time.

The first few days of this new year of 2013 were cold and snowy ones; not exactly conducive to great fish stories-but because of my “ailment” Harrison and I decided to give it a try. We parked the truck and frankly I didn’t know how much ‘open’ water there might actually be…it had been down into the low teens each of the past few nights but as we stepped down into the creek I could tell that all was good and thus we both tied on streamers and started casting into the deeper holes, one by one we let our flies drift to the bottom and then slowly, excitedly we stripped the fly back towards us waiting for any sign of a smallmouth on the other end.

It was along this path of  a couple of miles of water that I noticed the “little things”…you know the things that parents notice about their kids, the things that make a difference in life and let them know if they have done their job or not? There  before me was this grown man, casting his 3 weight fly rod with skill-but more important discussing life things with dad, knowing that these father/son times might just be more limited in the future. By the time you read this column, Harrison will be back north, he attends Lewis University and is finishing up his degree in education and by this time next year he will have a teaching degree in….yes, you guessed it, Special Education. Once again there are those who might think I have pulled him in this direction; the truth is he was pushed in that direction by his own caring and concern for others…you see he believes, like I do, that everyone should have an opportunity at an education and when you combine this with a kindred spirit, well, he was a natural and I think will make an excellent teacher. If you think this is just a chance for dad to brag…maybe, sort of, by the way Harrison was also an Academic All American last year while attending Lewis!

Sure, we were fishing and we even caught a couple nice smallies, but these few hours out in the stream, water surrounding us, birds singing, muskrats swimming, herons squawking, well this time was much more than fishing-it was time to talk about the little things in our lives because I know that all too soon he will be gone, off chasing his own life, looking and making memories and as we all know life is about the dash, the time in between, that  period on our headstone that simply reads from this year to another year somewhere in the future. As a dad I was moving into another era of my life and now I better understand how my own dad felt when I pulled up stakes and headed off to Wyoming at age 23! The truth is that the few years I spent in Wyoming were important in my development and wherever Harrison ends up will be where God intended for him to be, I take comfort in knowing that while parenting is never really over…the product that was fishing beside me, well, it is a good one, simple as that.

As the day progressed the temperature warmed and when we hit the last good hole on this stretch I asked Harrison to take my camera and film me catching a nice smallie…”Big talk from a one-eyed fat man” as John Wayne once said, but I knew this hole had a few good ones and as it turned out I hooked one of them and yes, my camera man got it all on tape and did a great job with it. If you want to watch a couple minutes of me landing a 14 inch smallie … click here.

As we hopped out of the stream and made the 30 minute walk back to the truck I had a warm glow about myself, not just because we had had a great few hours on the water, not that I had caught a couple winter trophies, but because there beside me was a man that I knew could be counted on and it was obvious that the little things that make a difference in life were all taken care of and I know that our time together, in the outdoors, were a big factor in all of this. Grab a rod or camera…or a walking stick as well as a kid and get going this year…reach out and make this a year where we all Enjoy the Great Outdoors!