“… I might go a-fishing. That’s the true industry for poets.” — H.D. Thoreau
To catch and release the wild fish, he is quiet on approach and works to keep himself small inside the landscape. He enjoys the solitude and prefers to keep himself less conspicuous than usual. The April sun shines on the wild leek and the spongy ground where the wood frogs chuckle. An eclipse of the sun will occur within hours, sweeping across the watershed, and he wonders how his own spirit will react to the afternoon shadowing. He abides by natural law and by man-made law where the health of wild things is considered. He does not need to catch a fish, but a holdover brown trout, taken from a pool inside the hemlocks of the West Branch Genesee, is cause for celebration. There a trout life has been shadowed, pulled out from its haunts, eclipsed like the sun. The catch is handled briefly and returned to the stream. The man and fish recover. He’s alive and shining on a new day in a new season, grateful for the waters that sustain us all.