Salmon

The severe chill of the morning is but a memory when the line goes tight.

Once the thirty-pound Salmon jumps your frigid fingers warm and your ears stop tingling from the cold. All is forgotten for the next forty-five minutes except the thought that perhaps one of the carefully tied knots is not quite as perfect as you hoped it was. The next hour is spent wondering if the fish is heading for some hidden watery sanctuary he/she can pinch the line and be set free. The next hour is spent wondering if perhaps you nicked your line when you tied that last knot. Ever present is the thought the next little slip on the very next rock could throw you into the boil.

Why would I put myself in such a worrisome state? I suppose it really depends on your point of view; it truly is a trade.

The next hour or so is also spent free from all the thoughts that plague time off. The next hour is spent free of all the thoughts of if IBM received their goods, or Lockheed, or Wal-Mart. The next hour is spent free of the thoughts of wondering if you left things as well as you possibly could have back at the J.O.B.

The next squeal of line then removes the last thought of Iraq, and Iran, and of gas prices.

The next short blink of time makes your mother’s recuperation from surgery fade and your Uncle’s illness from someone else’s greed so many years ago momentarily mute. Your mother-in-laws’ illness is at least for the moment, numb. Your child’s battle through the turmoil of life seems a little less. Just maybe the next few moments release you from feeling your wife’s pain of worry for all those she loves. The next forty-five minutes or so remove all the worldly thoughts and feelings except the purely selfish feeling of bliss.

I know not how to describe the place you are transported when the line goes tight.

The tightening of the line perhaps was nothing more than a snag, nothing more than a fall leaf your hand-sharpened hook happened to get just a little too close to in the flow. Perhaps your hook just grabbed a branch you didn’t happen to see dangling over your head when you cast your line; it doesn’t really matter… IT TRULY DOES NOT MATTER.

Perhaps by some strange gift from God the tightness truly is a fish. Perhaps you really are sprinting down this raging river trying to save just one more yard of line your adversary has so savagely drawn. Perhaps your twelve-pound line really held. Perhaps your adversary has weakened. Perhaps… you have won.

Perhaps you then triumphantly wrap your free hand about your thirty-pound trophy’s tail. If you truly are so lucky the world suddenly is moot of any and all concern. All of a sudden you have one of God’s magnificent creatures totally within your grasp. You have won for the moment. For the moment the world is nearly perfect.

The one last piece of perfection under your control is to release this wonderful piece of life. The one last thing you can do is… to let her go.

Many folks truly wonder what is so great about a hook and the fool casting it to the wind. In my little way I have tried to explain.

This is one of the few things I truly know for sure in life… Everyone needs their own feeling of the hook and the line and most assuredly… of the release.

May your lines always be tight.

Foosis