ODE TO FALL
Fall – the word paints an image that flickers across the synapses in the tangle of nerves crowded in the gray matter within our skull. It creates a visual image; an image consisting of a kaleidoscope of colors; reds, oranges, fading greens and vivid yellows. It’s an image of a blue sky so vivid that it hurts your eyes, and low scudding clouds so dark that they invoke images of the coming winter. The coolness of the early morning sends a shiver over your exposed skin and adds urgency to your haste as you step outside to retrieve the paper. Soon the white hoary mantle of frost will glaze the grass and the first icy fingers of ice will rim the edges of your favorite stream. The sun is slow to arise and hangs lower in the sky each day; its once overbearing heat has been tempered and now we seek it rather than the shade. Fall is a celebration and a melancholy all rolled into one; a final garish party marking the end of summer.
In the local rivers the cooler water temperatures stir the latent memory of leaner times instinctively creating an urge to feed with somewhat reckless abandon. Brown trout, butter fat from a season of feeding, move toward traditional spawning areas. The native Brook Trout becomes even more colorful as the day length decreases, and like the brown trout their thoughts turn to seeking a suitable spawning spot.
As the Harvest Moon rises migrants from the far north trace their paths through the night sky as they head toward their wintering grounds. The haunting sound of migrating geese fills the night air, and more silently groups of songbirds, tiny balls of feathers join the parade. On a still cool autumn evening all of nature seems to be on the move, hurrying away before the first fierce blast of the coming winter.
In the high mountain meadows bull elk gather harems, and Bull Moose thrash the brush polishing their broad antlers in an attempt to impress the coy cows. Mule deer on the ridges and white-tailed deer in the bottoms are sporting impressive racks as they spend the last few days of plenty feeding up for the coming rut.
In the midst of the golden glow of a fine autumn day the angler turns his eye skyward to watch a red-tailed hawk trace spirals in the clear blue sky. Like a finger tracing an increasingly diminishing spiral the hawk rides the invisible column of rising air until it appears as a dot against the expanse of the heavens. The wind ruffles the stream side trees sending down a shower of golden leaves; they settle on the water and twist and turn in the currents floating away like the vanishing dreams of the warmer days of summer. The angler turns toward the stream and drops his streamer against the far bank and follows the drift with the tip of his rod. Deep in the pool a brown trout turns and slashes the offending intruder and reacts to the resistance he feels as he turns back toward the bottom. Moments later the angler slips the hook from the corner of his jaw and holds him gently in the current until, with a flick of his tail, he disappears back into the depths. A fitting ode to fall.