I went outside into the night rain. I wanted to feel it on my face. I wanted to experience the soft raindrops soak into the warm dry jacket I was wearing. I wanted to wear the unpreparedness. An unpreparedness which mostly evades me and defies pursuit. The unpreparedness and chaos of experiences. Unchoreographed. Unplanned. The stuff of which memories are made. Stuff which the ordered mind can wring out of life if one is not careful.
Back inside I pick the last burrs and black jacks from both pairs of wading boots. The two pairs of boots which I alternated in the last weeks of the river season. I am careful to run the laces through my fingers to get every last one.
The season had been delayed by high water. When it did come, it was a window that was busy closing just as it started to open. A sense of desperation hung in the air. I would grab the driest of the two pairs of boots and go. As I pulled them on at the riverbank, I felt the sharpness of thorns stuck in the fabric, biting though a sock, but there were Trout to be caught and time was not on our side.
I stole a few hours on each river in turn, and then realized I had not fished the Lotheni since mid-summer. I had not given the Bushman’s its fair turn either. But a few short hours put the local river in reach more often. They were rushed affairs. Attempts to log memories.
An eighteen inch Brown on a dry the day I nearly took my sump out trying to get out before dark. The time I left my fly boxes and just had to fish with what hadn’t yet fallen out of the patch. On one foray I left the wading boots behind altogether and just plunged into the river in my good leather ones. There were Trout to be caught and time was not on our side. The hiking boots could be dried and waxed later.
It has been a few weeks now. The crisp dry winter air has been with us for a while. The wading boots on the windowsill got dry. Then I washed them, and now they are nearly dry again. The photos have all been edited. The tackle bag has had some attention. I am starting to develop an appetite for tying some winter patterns for the stillwaters which remain open.
The cold front just arrived in the night sky, and stole away the remnants of the warm drying wind of the last two days. Will there be snow on the mountains or not? A topic that hasn’t entered my mind in many long months. Long months on rivers in boots that never quite got to dry.
They will be dry soon, and I can pack them away. My wife suggested I fish this week-end. I worked instead. For long weeks I had been courting unpreparedness in my work on account of Trout distractions. For now there was some solace in it being “out of season”, and getting the burrs out of my work socks, so to speak. With two presentations and a project costing done, I answered the dog’s request and took him for a brisk walk. The banks of incoming clouds were visible to the south, and the wind had changed direction. The evidence of the approaching front was there, but for now it wasn’t actually cold. I walked in short sleeves and I worked up a slight sweat. I passed other walkers, wrapped in jerseys and jackets and beanies. They were a few hours early, I thought. The cold would find them. There was no need to go looking for it on a warm wind. One can take this preparedness thing too far, and that can make you sweaty and overly confined.
Later, as those raindrops soaked into the fabric of my jacket, I looked up at the endless inky sky. It was framed by the sticks of defoliated trees, standing sentry to the night and it made me feel small and cold and unprepared. And ready to embrace life.
There is much to look forward to. In the spring I will charge at my river fishing again. There will be tangles of nylon, and flies falling from the patch, and my camera battery will go flat again. As I pull the front door closed behind me, I think, “I will be prepared for that”.
My boots would soon be brushed and picked clean, and dry and packed away in two bags, each with a set of neoprene socks (dried in and out) and gravel guards. Plus a spare set of laces. I will be prepared. I can’t help it.
