The Little Bear River, the Logan River and the Blacksmith Fork River. (Most other places in the US would call these streams or brooks, but in the arid state of Utah, they are called rivers.) I cross them each day going to work. I know their rises and falls—seasons of breathing. From the shallow, steady, clear emittances in autumn, to the deep, erratic, phlegm-filled raspings of spring.

The last two weeks have seen an abrupt shift from the former to the latter. With such changes in the middle of the valley, I know that the creeks and streams I fish are spate-full in the mountains. And along the flanks of north-facing banks and under trees, are patches of snow.

Fields are springing up with the first shoots of grass hay. In a week the fields have gone from brown to green. Now the rising rivers race the shoots and overtake them in the depressions turning the fields to glossy mirrors.

It’s a waiting game with one eye on the river and one on the skies. While logic tells me the name of the game is patience, I can hardly resist ethereal tugs of invisible trout. The new waders are purchased and field tested once to verify they are indeed leak-free. The fly boxes filled with a row of midges (the  infantrymen) backed up by the heavy caissons of BWO’s and Adams. The rods and reels are at the ready by the garage door.

The geese are content, circling and landing on the acres of water that have grown seemingly overnight.

As I look out the window now, the clouds spit flakes of snow in fits and starts. The water swirls a few miles away, latte-brown, and I wait. Going somewhere else, in a few minutes I’ll drive over these rivers and be pulled in to their eddies and wonder.

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”

Anyone else feeling blue about the brown season?

Listening to Alvin Lee’s “The Bluest Blues.”

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