I rigged a rod for my dad, just as he used to do for me when I was a kid with my Free Willy Zebco and nightcrawlers. You start knowing where they like to hide, just like you know a runaway dog always goes to the neighbor who has the best scraps. But you come to know the game pretty well after a while-come to recognize the patterns of inlets, outlets, and structures sticking up like icebergs. The questions of what might be and could have been are mutes, looking back in reflection. And I breathed a deep thanks while looking at new water, which always secrets away what you might see. In Colorado, trail-miles and elevation bring the solitude… not friendly farmer connections and a short walk from a Toyota sedan. Longer than any of my heritage has been in one place. Sometimes they even have an “established” date engraved or burned into the wood. Generation after generation, like the headstone to a family plot, dreams tilled and planted, year after year. Funny how everyone here knows everyone else, yet those signs remain. A sign out front of the house displayed the family name. The next morning my dad and I drove to the farmer’s wedding pond, under an eggplant prairie sky that grew like a welt, maturing into a bruise of a thunderstorm later in the day. It’s an expectation of sorts, like soggy casseroles at a potlatch and having children before you’re out of your twenties. There’s a whole list of excuses, of course: crazy relatives, work and pets and vacation time, memories of a happy summer and broken marriage.īut I gathered myself, packed my fly rod, had a stiff drink before hopping on the Amtrak, which arrived into Lincoln, Nebraska hours late and in the rain, as all trains should. I don’t particularly like weddings.įarmer Nick says any time, he emailed later. He showed me a photo and all I could say was, Papa, I want to fish that pond. On the peninsula of the family’s farm pond under a gazebo festooned with well wishes, they took their vows.
White silk blowing east, the veil flying like a ghost. He’d married the farmer and his bride on a windy May day.
It doesn’t matter what you want, he says. For those who have to keep on long after you’re gone. For those who need closure, to accept truth. Funerals are for those remaining, my dad says. He stands upright and does his job with compassion, knowing we’ll all be in that place sooner or later. He’s not a preacher in the traditional sense of the word, although he does minister-honoring the life of people who didn’t claim a religion, the vows of those who have no “church home.” These beginnings and ends have rites around them-traditions sprung from trying to create meaning and memory. But people lose life more often than they find love and so it goes. I never had reason, being more concerned with gaining access to ride the grass edges and terraces of their cornfields than the fish in their waters. No one expects deviance from a girl with her hair in two braids.īut I never asked. Being an innocent-looking female can work in your favor, at least sometimes. If I’d asked farmers for permission, they’d have thought- no threat.
I bottle-fed and cuddled them in my sleeping bag under a heatlamp while rats ran on the barn rafters like old folks going round and round on the track at the local YMCA, always holding hands. Some died, some didn’t, but I tried my best for them all nonetheless. The farmers all knew me: I was the sucker who took care of their motherless calves every spring. Even though my family was a suspicious lot to locals-city transplants for the love of horses, thanks to my dad’s long-suffering of our obsession. The one regret I have from childhood is not taking advantage of the ponds dotting farm country like zits on my adolescent face.