Hopefully, this simplistic explanation of the art to angling will enhance someone’s 2023, maybe just encouraging that someone to open the back door, pole in hand, and make for the crik down the hill. You may be amazed at what’s waiting for you.
Read more "In Pursuit of Fish and Simplicity"“It’s just much, much too cold. The valley never warmed this morning and the trout are really, really put off. They’re just not eating anything,” Nigel consoled and rationalized for us both.
Read more "State of Mind"Walking can be thought of as the basis of almost all your further activities in the wild.
Read more "Walking"So, on October fifteenth, my packed-to-capacity Kia Soul merged onto the Pennsylvania turnpike, headed west. Susan was in the passenger seat and Washington State lay somewhere out on the horizon.
Read more "Back Out West"So, I’m turning over a new leaf today, at least for a while, and writing a series on the basics – how to get started outdoors from square one, from venturing out your back door to pursuing fish to survival.
Read more "Welcome to the Forest"Why do we put so much stock in the prognostications of the modern augurs who tell us what the future holds for us? Look at your own life and think about how little of what’s befallen you could have been forecast.
Read more "Didn’t See That Coming"And maybe it’s also all about learning to appreciate the things that aren’t morels – aren’t the most glamorous, desirable, well-publicized organisms out there, the stuff that’s often walked right past, crushed into the ground below our heels as we keep up a good pace to the morel patch, checking again today for first signs of disturbance in the thin leaf litter.
Read more "Before the Morels"Catfish were simply the most likely fish that were in season, were probably waking now from winter semi-dormancy and could be found close to home. I knew the kinds of places one would set up for catfish on a typical summer night but these weren’t likely the right venues for tonight.
Read more "The Catfish of Affirmation"On October 22, 1853 Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal, “As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth.” It sounds nice but isn’t this merely the rumination of a 19th Century […]
Read more "Crippling Complexity"I’m back in Export, Pennsylvania now, a quiet place just outside the Pittsburgh metro area. I’m still trying to, in a sense, get back to normal after a long walk across the continent. I don’t really think most people would find my life very “normal” in the conventional sense (no climbing of the career ladder, […]
Read more "Just the Fundamentals"
the dying fish 