March

Hi folks. There are no pictures (sorry). This post is more of a rant than an update on my life.

First off: Come on, Spitzer. I am trying to show some New York Pride down here after the Super Bowl. You are embarrassing me.

Second: I hate March. If you are from upstate New York, by the end of march it has been winter for four months. I'll admit that winter has its perks: skiing, snowshoeing, and all of the other things you so on brisk clear days where the wind cuts at your cheeks and makes you feel alive. But in March all the snow either goes away or turns brownish-gray, and slush falls out of the sky for what seems like weeks. Everything floods and freezes. All exposed earth turns into sticky goop. There will sometimes be like two nice days in March. So since you are done skiing, you are thinking about fishing. The promise of trout season keeps you alive. Some signs of March include:

1) You had to buy two new fly boxes because you had no place to put all the incredibly complicated, completely unique, and totally useless flies that you tied... yesterday night instead of sleeping.

2) You honestly wonder how on earth you could have been stupid enough to get as old as you are and STILL not be a professional fishing guide yet.

3) You know which fly you are going to use first, and where.

4) You catch yourself thinking about replacing your car with a pickup... with a cap, and a hammock in the back...

5) You already bought five new leaders for the season, but have now decided it would be better to braid your own.

6) You catch yourself thinking you are smarter than the fish (ha! Fool.)

7) You had to start a new bookmarks folder on your web browser for USGS stream gauges.

8) You think the weather will be nice the first weekend in April in upstate New York.

9) Your co-workers can't wait for trout season to start (because they are so sick of hearing about it from you).

10) You know how many hours it will be until you are on-stream...

Honestly, if I could re-write the calendar, I would delete March. Now some of you might say that then we would have an extra long February and April to fill the space... which might be true. But it's irrelevant -- eliminating march is a matter of principle.

I can always tell its march because I start to feel anxious and cooped up. Every year. Some years it gets really bad. Every year at college I wanted to quit at this time of year. And every year since, I've wanted to quit my job at this time of year. Quit and do what? I don't know. Who cares. Hibernate, maybe. That's what everything else with fur does.

In fact, I vote that we as a society all hibernate. Like, I mean do nothing. We all just drink beer and pig out sometime in February, and put on a whole bunch of weight and don't feel bad about it, and then we pretty much hang out during the lousiest time of year and stew about how life is no cake-walk and just fall asleep if we don't feel like doing anything, and wait for springtime to come so there can be new life all over the place and we can get a fresh start on things.

Actually, I am pretty sure that is in the bible and it's called Lent. Before it comes Fat Tuesday, and afterwards comes Easter. Lent is not optional, folks, it's written straight into the orbit of the Earth: For the last forty days of winter, everything will suck, because you will be all cabin-feverish and trout season is not here yet. Speaking of which, it is also no surprise that Easter always lands in late March or early April.

You see, back when they were deciding on that stuff, their math was not so good and calendar use was not widespread, so the beginning of trout season was not so set. But everybody knew when it was. So they just put Easter then - it makes total sense: the first day of trout season is the "writing on the wall" for the winter blues. Salvation from the stewing mess of our own thoughts, which have been bouncing off the insides of our skulls in total disorder for months, trying to convince us that thinking about stuff is productive. Those thoughts need to be ordered, we need to get back to basics and go just DO something fundamental... like how about stand in a river and try to outsmart something with a brain the size of a pea. Now we can stop just thinking about fishing-- casting off the stale and stifling bonds of our own small-mindedness to go and do what we were created to do! When trout season starts, we can stop daydreaming and start remembering our respect for our pea-brained friends: they are wiser than they first appear, and commonly prove us to be the fools. But anyways, when they picked the easter day, they were aiming for a day which was culturally the most symbolic of new life and of breaking the rule of sin: the first day of trout season.

But I of course am in Texas, where there is no trout season. I live in Houston, the petro-metro... it's basically a strip mall the size of Rhode Island. It is flat. The nearest mountain is a thousand miles away. The streams are all man-made, and they have no trout (only alligators). Environment is not a focus for most people, because the land is so boring that it actually looks better with a subdivision on it. I will have to wait until May to play with trout this year...