HOST) Commentator Willem Lange has been thinking about what emerges from the snow as spring arrives.
(LANGE) The snow retreats from the dooryard at last, and our sins begin to emerge from hiding. The wood pile reveals an unsightly sag. I was a dozen sticks short of completing it when hunting season arrived, and by the time that ended, it was too late. I’ll get at it in a few weeks.
The dog’s sins, of course, are the most obvious and most in need of redemption. Mother does get upset when unsuspecting guests fail to notice the mine field in which they’ve parked. So each above-freezing day I go at it with my long-handled shovel, converted in my imagination to a lacrosse stick. I can only speculate what the forest creatures think as my missiles sail into the woods.
Only the downtown parking meter guys and I know this, but there’s money to be made along Main Street when the snow melts. People feeding the meters drop quarters during winter storms and can’t find them. So in about a block of walking head-down I can score a week of coffee money. Same thing in our dooryard in the spring: pocket change everywhere. The other good news is there’s hardly ever a cigarette butt anymore.
Back in the Adirondacks, this was always an anxious time for us. The winter work petered out in mud season. Unless we had a caretaker job, there was nothing in the pot till spring construction began. That’s not the case here. Our towns are growing like mad and there’s more work to do than people to do it. It’s a lovely situation.
Spring is doubly lovely for its air of anticipation. Here in the office, I can smell the adhesive bonding a new fly line to a hundred yards of backing. Only once in my life has a fish taken out all the line and all the backing. But it’s for moments like that – like a hole in one or a twelve-point buck – that we fish all our lives. The huge trout that can do it again is at this moment waiting in one of the places I’ll be fishing this summer. It’ll be in northern Quebec, beyond tree line, with black flies chewing at my ears.
The rivers are open. In a few weeks, we’ll drive way up the Connecticut and spend a few days paddling on one of New England’s best-kept surprises. The ospreys and eagles will be nesting. The mosquitoes won’t be out yet, and if the usual rain and headwinds don’t give us a break…well, those days on the river will still be better than most days anywhere else.
The old dog knows that fishing equipment means a boat ride. She sits a few feet away, watching, her tail wiggling. “All right,” I say. “You win! I’ll tell Mother we’ll be back in a while. We’ll take the little canoe. You can sleep, or watch the ducks. This’ll all be ending one of these days, you know, so let’s enjoy it while we can.”
This is Willem Lange up in Orford, New Hampshire, and I gotta get back to work.