The October Storm

          

  It was just two days ago: A golden afternoon in the mid-seventies, when I found myself with a couple of hours free in mid-afternoon and could not resist the temptation to spend them outdoors. So, dinner would be late. I had not had a single fishing outing in my beloved Pennsylvania Wilds this year, except when guiding other anglers. I yearned for the soothing solitude, the music of running water, and the beauty of wild brook trout and the autumn woods. There was an urgency to my need to get outdoors, a sensation with which I am all too familiar. Is it instinct, experience, or a combination of the two that tells me the October Storm is coming?

I passed up the nearby spots in favor of my favorite stretch of Kettle Creek, a good half-hour’s drive beyond the asphalt. I was not going to compromise quality for quantity, either. I rigged up my locally-crafted split bamboo rod and tied on a favorite attractor dry fly. Time was suspended for the next hour and a half, as I hiked in to my favorite spot, stalking with care, casting with delicacy, and being surprised with two spawn-ready male brookies in the twelve-inch class in addition to my usual seven-inchers. Beautiful, beautiful trout with bright colors overlaid with silver, muscular and glistening in my hands as I slipped them back into their natural element to continue replenishing their rare and precious kind.

            The sun slipping behind the south-western ridge signaled the end of this glorious interlude, but I treasured every minute of the hike out and the drive home, amid the fall colors I sensed would be fleeting indeed. It is an uncomfortable talent to have, the ability to know that something is ending. Sadness, bitter-sweet, colored my entire afternoon, as I appreciated what was both my first and final solo fishing trip of the season.

            Late that night, the October Storm blew in; literally, ripping down my birdfeeders, support cable and all. Soaking rain has continued ever since, lightning illuminating a landscape being stripped of its color. The temperatures are gradually dropping, and for the first time I saw the snowflake icon on the day-by-day weather forecast. They say the rain will end sometime tomorrow, to be followed by our first temperatures in the 20’s this year. This is it: the October Storm, the one that ends autumn and begins winter here in upstate Pennsylvania.

            That’s all it takes here, one storm, that always comes sometime in October (usually earlier than this year). One day, busses of “leaf peepers” cruise the local roads, stopping here and there to snap pictures, taking home a lasting memory of beauty. The October Storm hits, and the day after that, the trees are all but bare, the muted duns of the hillsides broken only by the occasional stubborn birch late to turn, or the candle-flame shape of a tamarack.

            As I gaze out the window at the downpour, I am struck, as I always am, by the ephemeral, fragile nature of beauty. One storm, and it’s gone. My comfort is that it is followed by a different, subtler form of beauty, there for those who can appreciate it. Anyone can see the gaudy glories of autumn’s peak, but the true artist also values the quiet, soul-soothing shades that follow the October Storm.

Summertime Blues

I remember, as a child down South, lying in my underwear on the upstairs landing floor, under the six-foot-wide whole-house fan, panting. Theoretically, the fan was set to suck air out of the house and into the attic, thus out the vents, keeping the house cool. In practice, it just moved hot air out and hot air in. But at least the stifling air was moving, evaporating a little of the sweat from my suffering body.

You see, I sweat. Not the ladylike slight sheen of moisture, but great trickling runnels of perspiration that soak my hair and clothing. I hate it. Hate sweating, hate the enervating heat and the mental and physical torpor brought on by high humidity. I’m just not a summer person.

Admittedly there are good things about summer. There are fairs and festivals; lakes that invite people to swim, fish, or kayak their waters; fresh fruits and veggies in season including home grown tomatoes, thus BLTs a-plenty; ice cream; flowers, birdsong, and young animals; that most under-rated pleasure, porch-sitting; geocaching; and my heating fuel usage drops to zero, although the budget payment keep on coming. Roads, even the most obscure dirt ones, are free of snow cover and drivable, except for areas under construction. But these pleasures are only enjoyable to me when temperatures are below 80 or so.

Because of allergies as well as this sensitivity to heat, I lived and (mostly) worked in an air-conditioned environment from the age of 17 until my retirement forty years later. Any time I could afford to choose I drove an air-conditioned car.

I opted to move north after retirement. This was deliberate, because of my life-long loathing of heat. My house is almost at the summit of one of the higher parts of the Allegany Plateau. It is normally 5 to 10 degrees cooler here than in the south-east part of the state where I spent my working years. With the advance of age, the upper limit of my “comfort zone” rose from perhaps 75 to 80 or even 85, depending on humidity, which also is usually lower at this altitude than in the Delaware Valley. Who needs air conditioning in the mountains? It’s a matter of Ridge-runner pride to sneer at air conditioning. Most of the summer (at least, normal summers), I accept this policy even though I don’t exactly embrace it. I open my windows and turn on my four ceiling fans, one in each room.

Even so, there are days I still miss my air conditioner more than I can say.

This summer, as I predicted when winter lingered well into May, is hotter and dryer than is normal. My grass is dried to a tan crisp (Yay! No mowing! Well, that’s one advantage.) and I feel like I am, too. My energy meter is stuck on zero. Day after day topping 90 makes me dread getting up in the morning, and at night I lie under my slowly-moving ceiling fan, drenched in my own sweat, unable to drop off to sleep until the temperature drops to around 70. Between night after sleep-deprived night, and panting and sweating through each day, it would be a marvel if I got anything done under these conditions.

Yet there are always demands: Organize this event. Come sign your book here, or fish there. There are festivals and music events, plays and market days, that I don’t have the least inclination to attend when I’m panting like an old coon hound and sweating like a stevedore. I pray to the weather gods to send a cool front, with accompanying rain and breezes. Or whatever they can spare to drop the temperature and humidity even a little.

           Anyone know a reliable rain dance? If not, COME ON, AUTUMN!

Six Degrees of Muggles

       

Just to the left of the flag is the historical marker where I had my strange muggle encounter...

    
      March was a brutal month, starting with the death of a fishing buddy’s husband whom I considered a friend; then my housemate Maggi’s mother passed on quite unexpectedly, my pen pal for over forty years; most recently, my sister’s mother-in-law, who graciously hosted me for a number of holidays, succumbed to a fast-growing cancer. These tragedies come in threes, it’s said, and these were three deeply-felt losses. A week after returning from Maggi’s mom’s memorial service, it was an anticipated pleasure to travel for a more pleasant reason.

       The Sporting Gentleman in Glen Mills, PA was hosting the Launch Event for my book, “A Woman’s Angle: Celebrating 20 Years of Women Fly Fishing.” I arranged a couple days’ stay in the area. Part of the preparations, of course, was getting on the Geocaching website to look for caches in Glen Mills. There were two right along Glen Mills Road, one at an intersection I figured would be my turn for driving to the fly shop. I downloaded those and a few others close by into my GPS. This is standard practice for me when I’m visiting a new town, and I had never been to TSG’s new location.

      On the day of the event I gassed my car at the corner of Route 1 and the connecting road, then turned on my GPS. I had allowed enough time to grab the cache before I was due to arrive, and having the Garmin set to guide me to the intersection would help me find the fly shop. Just find the cache, then turn onto Glen Mills Road, how simple is that? 1.69 miles down the connecting road to that intersection, I noticed as I pulled out of the gas station.

       The numbers counted down as I got closer and closer to the cache. A half mile; five hundred yards; three hundred yards; two hundred feet… I could see the bridge, and a parking lot conveniently close to the cache location.

       A parking lot with a very familiar sign: What a coincidence! The fly shop was right there, when I expected it to be a quarter-mile away. A dozen folks were out on the lawn grass-casting in the triangle between the stream, the road, and the parking lot as I pulled in and turned off the car. I knew they were concentrating on their back-casts and would be totally unaware of my geocaching antics. Less than fifty feet to the cache.

       I casually walked towards the bridge, spotting the historical marker mentioned in the cache description on the far side. A quick check for traffic, and I jogged across the narrow bridge. There was a crude pull-off by the sign, and I walked back and forth checking the bouncy coords, then stopped to consider possible hiding places while looking intently at the sign as if reading it. In the stonework bridge balustrades? Stuck magnetically to the bridge framework? Under the bridge itself? A well-worn path led in that direction.

       A car horn made me pause, then a sedan pulled into the pull-off. Nothing to do with me, I thought. It’s probably a fisherman, overflow from the shop’s parking lot. A guy got out and walked towards me. Rather than continue towards the cache and possibly reveal its location, I paused and looked at him approaching. He looked vaguely familiar.

         “Do you remember me? It’s Dan, Maggi’s cousin.”

       My head spun. I had met this fellow briefly at her mother’s memorial service; we’d had a discussion on minimum-flow regulations on the Upper Delaware River and I’d gotten the impression he was a resident of the Hudson Valley north of the Catskills. He’d bought a copy of my book. Maggi and I had spoken of him afterwards: the ‘family oddball’ of his (and our) generation, never married, just the sort of guy that I would normally find attractive. No, I’ve learned that lesson. Besides, I’ll never see him again, I had responded to her teasing. Yeah, right. And here he was, a week later.

      I don’t know what expression was on my face when I made this unlikely connection. It must have been favorable, because his eyes lit up and he gave me a hug.

       “What are you doing here?” I couldn’t help but blurt out tactlessly.
       “I live here. I shop here at this fly store.”

       Say WHAT? I didn’t say. Instead, “They are holding my Book Launch Event today. That’s what I’m here for.”

      “No kidding! I’ve been flipping through your book, reading whatever caught my eye, and I really love it.” The conversation went on, and I learned that he’s on the watchdog council for the Chester Creek Watershed. He gestured at the creek beside us as he enumerated its problems.

       About then Christine came across the bridge, having noticed us there.
       “Here comes the boss, I have to go,” I commented.

     “Chris!” he greeted her. “I love my Filson fleece vest! It’s the best ever!” He posed in model position.

       “I’m so glad, Dan,” she said. They were obviously old friends.

     My brain felt like it was replaying a scene from the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Improbability sum complete, a nasal computer voice said complacently in my head as I followed Christine over the bridge and, behind me, Dan’s car pulled out.

     Was it Karma? Was Maggi’s mom looking down from Heaven, rolling on a cloud laughing, the first-ever Catholic angel Yenta? Was this (horrifying thought to my happily-single self) destiny with violins and a shower of paper-heart confetti? Will I ever hear from this guy again? Do I want to??

     I’m certain of just one thing: I never had a chance to find that cache. I was muggled, perhaps the strangest muggling experience I’ll ever have.

Damn You, Fish Commission!

Sunny, 65 degrees, and I was driving to town when I noticed coltsfoot blooming on the road verge. This may not seem like world-shattering news, but to a fly fisher, it means the Blue Quill Mayfly, the first significant hatch of the year, is now occurring. This marks the beginning of trout fishing.

Or it would, if Pennsylvania’s fishing laws were not stuck in the 1950’s. Despite shifting demographics, public demand, and scientific study; in the face of falling license sales and decreasing revenue; Pennsylvania’s Fish and Boat Commission clings to stocking hatchery “catchable” sized trout during a month-long closed season so they can profit from the brief, ever-decreasing spike of license sales just before Opening Day. Never mind that their own studies prove that most of these trout disappear within days of stocking, either via downstream migration, predation, or poaching. The one-weekend-a-year anglers gripe about lack of trout when it is merely bad management.

Fly anglers have lost a third of their season each year because “approved trout waters,” meaning stocked streams and lakes, are closed during three weeks or more of hatch activity. In the warmer areas of the state, trout activity may well be over by the end of May. The closed season has seemed a prejudicial policy against fly anglers since its inception. There are some stretches of some streams open to year-round fishing with flies or other artificial lures, but they are such a small percentage of all trout waters that they are outrageously crowded during the closed month. Demands for more have not only gone unanswered, but the PFBC has persistently tried to relax or eliminate the regulations in these areas. The fact that public outrage swells each time has not seemed to penetrate their preconceptions.

The Pennsylvania fishing model revolves around stocked trout. There are many more wild brook trout fisheries in the state than the PFBC is aware of, and plenty of waters with naturally-reproducing brown trout; even more that are healthy streams for “holding over” trout that might be managed more cheaply stocking fingerlings or egg boxes. These could be managed for what they are at a fraction of the cost of stocking them with “catchables”… and such stocking just reduces the chances of wild fish survival. The Commission has taken a few tentative steps towards preserving wild brook trout water, but lags decades behind the science of watershed management in this and less pristine types of habitat. It’s my opinion that stocking all the aforementioned types of waters with “catchables” damages the resource and should be curtailed. An opinion based on scientific studies that have been ongoing (mostly in other states) for over fifty years. That’s a lot of data.

Many stocked waters get too warm for trout to survive. Why are they stocked? For social reasons: They are close to large population centers and there is some demand for stock-catch-and-keep angling there. Fine. As long as there is a demand for this, do it. But to make the best use of those expensive hatchery trout, leave the season open year-round and publish the stocking schedule (as they do now for in-season stockings) so these urban anglers can be there when the trout are. Not several weeks after sixty percent of the trout have vanished.

Ever since the “trout stamp” was initiated, every trout fisherman in the state has subsidized these truck-followers’ activities. I, for one, am willing to (reluctantly) keep doing so, but could the state make more money with a “catch-and-release” or “trout resource management” stamp and a “trout stamp” for stock-catch-keep waters? You bet they could! Especially if they could reduce the numbers of costly hatchery catchable trout by putting them only in those stock-catch-keep urban creeks. The urban anglers would even see more trout dumped in their local waters; the rural anglers would see their wild trout flourishing. It’s a win/win.

That brings us back to the closed season. As the numbers of bait fishermen continue to decline and fly-fishing rises in popularity, a trend that has gone on for twenty years, a larger proportion of the state’s license-buyers are disgruntled and discouraged by their shortened season. Small wonder license sales have been declining. Opening all trout waters to year-round fishing would reverse the trend; publishing stocking schedules for stock-catch-keep waters would make up for the loss of the pre-Opening Day sales spike… and probably a little more, with a clever publicist.

Those of us who fish “beyond the stocking truck” for purely wild trout have had a loophole in the past: Wild Brook Trout Heritage waters were open year-round. That ended this year, as the PFBC has belatedly decided to officially classify such streams for their protection. That’s good, right? Not when they also have a misplaced mania for “simplifying” the laws for easier enforcement. You guessed it… these waters are now closed when Approved Trout Waters are. Not to protect the resource, as brook trout spawn in the fall; not to “protect” newly-stocked trout, as these waters aren’t stocked. Is it to spit in the eyes of us “elitist” fly fishers and our demands for scientific, resource-based watershed management? Or is it, as they insist, to “simplify regulations?” The simplest regulations of all would be a year-round open season on all trout waters.

So it was with a sense of anger and betrayal that I spotted those blooming coltsfoot today, and realized that I would never again enjoy the pleasure of fishing the first great Mayfly hatch of the season. Not unless they hatch well in the single special-regs area near me, a 1¾ mile-long stretch of Kettle Creek that is sure to be elbow-to-elbow with desperate fly fishers. Must I give up my treasured solitude and fish for stocked trout instead of wild ones? Or must I wait through the first half-dozen hatches until the state allows me to fish the waters I truly love?