WONDERMENT
Wonderment – amazed admiration or awe. I thought it was a word that the Ladyfisher had made up [she has a tendency to do that] but to my “wonderment” it’s an actual word. To the Ladyfisher many things are wonderment. She has a childlike sense of wonder about everything, and it’s quite an admirable characteristic. After one of our walks where she gushed with enthusiasm over the beauty of several things that we saw along the way I got to thinking about how much we miss when we fail to develop an adequate sense of wonderment.
As fly-fishers we are immersed in the wonders of God’s creation each time we set foot in our favorite water. Whether you are a trout angler treading high mountain streams or alpine lakes, a warm water angler tossing flies to bream and bass, or a salt water type chasing bonefish across a marl flat or snook among the mangroves we are surrounded by sights that should evoke a sense of wonder.
When, if ever, have you taken a close look at a mayfly? Trout anglers have a love affair with mayflies but unfortunately, except for a casual glance, we seldom pay much attention to them. Our chief concern is the overall color and size, but there is so much more to these creatures.
Each mayfly is a wonder of creation. First, mayflies are unique in that they molt a second time after they become a winged insect. The hatching insect is called a subimago by entomologists or a dun to anglers. The word dun describes a brownish gray color and that describes the color of many mayflies when they first hatch. The subimago has functional wings but not all of the adult features are fully developed; especially the reproductive organs. Depending on the species the subimago will molt into an imago [spinner to the angler] within a few hours or a couple days. This process is a real wonderment.
A few years ago I encountered a hatch of Caenis mayflies on a local irrigation reservoir near my home. The duns were landing on any flat surface and immediately molting into spinners. They covered the hood of my vehicle, they were landing on me and immediately they were molting into spinners. Within minutes thousands of tiny mayflies had molted and were dancing over the water. My vehicle was covered with their shed husks, and later I even found some in my hair. The dense swarm of males and females rose and fell over the water and within a matter of minutes all the adults were lying spent on the surface of the water. Had there been trout in that reservoir I probably would have been too busy trying to match them and I would have missed the show. Wow that was wonderment.
Nearly 40 years ago I stood under an old metal bridge that spanned the Yellowstone River. [The bridge has now been replaced with a modern concrete structure] The deck of the old bridge was composed of planks that rumbled and clattered when a car drove across the river. It was nearly 11 o’clock at night and I was anxiously shinning my flashlight along the rocks on the edge of the river. Clambering up from the depths of the river a big Pteronarcys nymph [Salmon Fly] as big around as my little finger and nearly 2 inches long emerged from the water and began crawling up the bridge abutment. Like something from a science fiction horror movie it crawled slowly upward until it was nearly 5 feet off the ground. It remained still for several minutes before I began to notice a faint line beginning to form just over the thorax. In the next few minutes the faint line developed into a definite split and pushing up from inside the exoskeleton a winged adult began to emerge. Gradually it pulled itself free from its spent shuck. Clinging to the remains of its former self the crumpled bits of tissue protruding from its thorax began to slowly unfolding into 4 long wings. As I stood transfixed watching this transformation several dozen more nymphs crawled out of the river until the concrete surface was covered with hatching stonefly nymphs. One by one they went from a crawling nymph to a winged adult. Another wonderment.
From the wonder of a hatching stonefly under a bridge along the Yellowstone River in the middle of a summer night to the beauty of a florescent blue damsel fly sitting on the tip of your fly rod on a hot summer afternoon we are surrounded by beauty and mystery. Regrettably, in our haste to “get on” with our life we miss so much of what makes life worth living.