What a winter season we have had this year, one that honestly seems to be boiled like an owl. I sit along this creek watching American dippers jump into the cool waters of Deep Creek to feed on what appear to be stonefly nymphs. I am down to a t-shirt as the golden rays start an early farmer’s tan on my bare arms, and I question what am I doing? What is this year so far? I am out here hoping for a fish to take my fly, yet what I am truly concerned about today is finding an idea.

With a new baby coming sometime in the next few weeks, the family has been in nesting mode. Fixing the toilets, babyproofing the house, cleaning the floors and the walls and the windows and the ceiling. Bassinet here, baby monitor over here, running magnets over the carpet under my fly tying desk to pick up fallen hooks because I have been too lazy to purchase a solid floor cover. The first baby had me feeling like Henry from David Lynch’s classic film Eraserhead; this baby is making me feel like I need a little bit more Raising Arizona in my life when it finally comes to join us.

But no, I can’t just write about a baby and fatherhood and how it brings me down to Earth, signifies yet another change or another notch scratched into the desk I sit at in the lecture hall of You Are Getting Older. I mean, how can I really struggle with finding something to write here, upon the land I grew up on along the streams I still fish the same way I did nearly three decades ago: poorly but with hope. The sky is a bluebird whose feathers cascade down among the greens and browns that form the Cabinets in front of me, the lines of spined pine trees spiraling down until they meet the gin clear water where I honestly consider putting my bare feet to feel what I know best in this world: the lessons that are taught by flowing waters.

And the lesson it is teaching me today is that sometimes I don’t have a story to tell. I guess I could have a meta-discussion with someone while we are flipping beer mats about how the lack of a story, an indecision of creative purpose, the old fashioned “writer’s block”, is in itself a story. But moreover, I believe it is good to struggle to find something to write about; to ignore the idea that is always pulling at my arm to find something out in the wilderness here that would be adaptable into something that the average Joe would want to read. It is more so that I have something to write, to tell something about myself rather than worrying about catering only to those who read my articles for the fishing, the sense of place, the complaints about trash and the trash who are trying to sell off our public lands (and while burbot season is coming to an end, I am sure I will have another one of those articles coming when I head off to clean up the beach).

But I am sitting here in the unreasonably warm weather wishing that I tossed my half-pants on as well and watching how the water moves effortlessly around a rock jutting up from the silty bottom of the creek. An obstacle easily avoidable by the rushing water but one that I would definitely stub my toe on if I was up for wading around it; a curse of us solid beings and all our darn unthinking when it comes to tramping around in a creek so much that it has become habitual. It is not unlike the first few months with a newborn, what with it’s constant diaper changing and Bordreaux’s Butt Paste Spreading and it’s rocking in a chair while singing while severely exhausted and unrested to the point that I could end up doing the movements of the diaper change without a diaper in hand and possibly make myself believe that the baby had been clothed up. Not that I will do that, or have done that, but these things can become such a routine that one can get a bit lackadaisical in the mundane and repetitive. And that can transfer over to any sort of hobby or job, writing or creative ventures especially.

Sometimes the fish just ain’t biting, and I have to accept that.

And I do.

Fishing is what I go out for, but the coffee and the birds and other wildlife, the feeling of the creek, how it twists and turns and rises and lowers just like the humanity in itself is in abundance, and the natural philosophy of such things is the drive behind most everyone that goes and spends much of their time outdoors like I do. Some people probably don’t realize it, or get lost in thought over and over again about it as I do, but at least subconsciously I can promise that some sort of hidden synapse in their brain is snapping when they hear the ethereal flute song of the Swainson’s thrush along with the chorus provided by the early fall quaking aspen. I can promise that there is at least one memorable day for any hunter or angler that exists where they did not raise a rifle or see a fish rise. Out there, it is not so much the destination as it is the journey for each and every one of us. In the world at large that consists of brainrot ten second videos, reality show politics, twenty four hour news cycles, and all the information we could ask for at our fingertips, there is a reason that we still make our way outdoors away from cell phone signals and smart televisions.

But just like writing, sometimes one doesn’t need a reason to get out there other than to, well, just be out there. At times, one has to go out and find their own story. Birding, camping, hiking, hunting, angling: all very good things. Yet, next time you go out, just go out with no plan. Find a hill to walk up and see where it goes. Sit on top of a knoll, close your eyes, and listen to everything and nothing all at once. If you have kids, take them and teach them that you don’t always have to have a purpose to find a purpose. At risk of sounding like a hippie, become connected to the land around you and recognize that it would be there whether you were or not and be the best visitor that you can be.

And make sure to bring some coffee, preferably brewing your own while you are out.

Tight lines out there, friends.