Walking Away From The River

Walking away from the river was one of the hardest things that I have had to do in quite some time. It wasn't the walking away as much as moving where I had to go. Back to work to earn my pay. I was leaving the tumbling water of the Pere Marquette river. I was vanishing from the startling autumnal color change of the riverbank landscape I had spent the day on. I no longer could feel the rhythm of the fly rod and reel and the drift of the line. No longer feel alive with tension and excitement as a salmon battled for its place in my mind. Even the day-long misting in the air that filled the day was gone. No longer drifting down the river with the current, watching the beautiful scenery of the pristine Michigan north country slowly, like slow motion, flow by. Already the memories of the salmon caught were going to start toward the distant, fading place in my mind that memories congregate. Even the sounds of the people loading boats and the generators at the campsites and the trucks pulling the boats seemed out-of-place from where I had been.

I was feeling joyous and darkly strange. I think it has to be that I am blessed with this life and able to embrace and love it. Fortunate to be in love and feel loved and to soar above pain and loss and feeling sorry for myself. I knew it was real, but it felt miraculously surreal. Dreamlike. I was leaving one moment and entering another.

But I had pictures on the camera to prove that the moment I was leaving had been real. Pictures that just hinted at the real mysterious glee that was in my heart that day. I can look to the smiles and the waders and the fish in the pictures and remember. I remember so much more than they depict. I remember.

And soon, I will walk away from work to a river again.