This is what I know: As the earth revolves day in and day out, around the great polestar, fixed, immovable, I take my bearing on the here and now, then look forward, past autumn and beyond winter.

The autumnal equinox is no downward tumble to the solstice, rather, a momentary teetering and tipping then continuing its course. Never stopping. Never starting. Eternal revolutions are not acts of death, but renewal—making new again. And again.

“Making new” is a revising, a re-visioning. Unmasking to see what is hidden. Chlorophyl recedes. True colors emerge. A divergence where chromas eventually succumbs to chronos.

Leaves fall, piling their detritus to loam the seeds against the cold. Where they wait, while the colors flame out like so many ashes, and turn to duff—the bedding ground for spring’s genesis. Red as embers, producing oxygen that feeds a fire or fuels a cutthroat (its crimson gill plates squeezing out every element). Its fire warms me while fishing through the season. These leaves, this color, sustains.

To see, really see the enigma autumn holds, one must stand as still as Polaris and look, facing against the current like the trout:

the current of time that turns the leaves,

and leaves one turned against the current.

Perspective.

I also have a gallery of many of these photos but in much more “subdued” colors. It can be found here.

home. An environment offering security and happiness; A valued place regarded as a refuge or place of origin. (home. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved August 04, 2009, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/home)

We often think of home as a “place of origin” or place we currently live. But in this particular definition, I’m referring to one’s homewater as that place in which one finds refuge; a place where one is secure or happy. For an angler, there are several factors, one or more of which might cause him (or her) to label a place as homewater—that cause him to find refuge, security or happiness.

One obvious factor has to do with the fish. If there are usually many fish caught, or they are of a certain size, or typically put up a spirited fight, or are super-selective, or are of a particular species, or whatever criteria the angler uses, and it’s fairly consistent on each visit, this could cause the angler to find happiness on that water.

Another factor might be the proximity to the angler’s dwelling, which is most often associated with discussing a home water, which maybe should be referred to as “local water” instead. This proximity often leads to the frequency with which one visits a water, and the familiarity that comes with such frequency. However, many anglers frequent water that is not close to their permanent residence. A friend who lives in Boise, Idaho spends one month a year in New Zealand and considers the waters on the South Island his homewater as much, or more so, than those near Boise.

The esthetics of a place may be brought to bear as well. Something about a water can strike a spark within an angler, maybe something hard to put a finger on, but a spark of beauty or rightness of a place; which can be two components of refuge, security and happiness.

For me, what I perceive to be beautiful in a homewater, is what I consider as the archetypical trout stream: high mountains covered in evergreens and aspens towering over golden-bottomed rivers running through meadows of wildflowers and trees sprinkling the banks. My two homewaters fit this description and I have had fine experiences at both.

Experiences related to one or more of the above factors is what creates a homewater. In fact, I believe that an angler sometimes has a local water without it becoming a homewater because the right factors have not coalesced, on that particular water, for that angler. There are no repeating experiences that cause deep memories for the place.

It is the memories of the experiences that causes one to find refuge, security or happiness in a place. It may be memories which are old and come from well established traditions, maybe created in youth; or even recent memories created in adulthood. Whenever the memories were created, they are compelling enough o want the angler to return and re-experience them.

When an angler is removed from these experiences, whether moments away with the homewaters receding in the rearview mirror, or decades removed, he feels a longing to return to his homewater. This longing is a nostalgia for the homewater, which is often thought of as just a desire for something from the past, but this has not always been the definition:

1770, “severe homesickness” (considered as a disease), Mod.L. (cf. Fr. nostalgie, 1802), coined 1668 by Johannes Hofer as a rendering of Ger. heimweh, from Gk. nostos “homecoming” + algos “pain, grief, distress.” Transferred sense [the main modern definition] of “wistful yearning for the past” [was] first recorded 1920. (nostalgia. (n.d.) Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved August 04, 2009, website: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nostalgia)

It is the older definition, not the modern one I would like to dwell on, the one formed from the Greek nostos and algos: a homecoming of pain, grief or distress. How could such be the case, how could a homecoming ever contain one of these negatives?

When one has a homewater, there are hopes, there are expectations that the water will still resonate with the original factors that made such a place a homewater, The angler fully believes it will be so. But that’s not quite right, the angler actually fears that it is not so: there is the fear that something, whether within the angler, or at the water, has changed. Will something that factored in the original experiences not be recaptured? Will the place have physically changed? Will there be no more refuge, security or happiness there?

It is then that the homecoming, the anticipated event that should be filled with thoughts of refuge, security or happiness are overcome instead with pain, grief or distress. The full burden and weight of nostalgia sweeps over the angler.

It is so with my homewaters, the two places that I feel most at peace in, that I long for, where I am wading the cold waters of my dreams at, it is there I most fear will be lost. Lost to development, or to ATVs, or other anglers, or nonnative species. Or whatever malaise the mind can conjure. Where is the refuge in that?

Once in the cold press of water, with the weight of the fly rod in hand, I close my eyes and memories return. Then  the burden momentarily lifts and refuge comes in the hope of the conjunction of feathers and fins.

Rod Crossman (of Crossman Art–beautiful paintings!) pointed me to one of EB White’s excellent essays, “Once More to the Lake” that you ought to check out.

Some posts of mine that deal with the same type of topic:

Hope and Faith of a Fly Fisher

Sleepless Autumn Night

Delayed Gratification

The Return (a poem)

It’s like a sleepy calm, reminiscent of childhood—those early mornings being roused by my father then carried to the car and tucked in the backseat. Then awakening to the pop and crunch of slow tires on a graveled back road and the sun glinting into the station wagon. It’s nostalgic comfort—a “memory” that might actually be a projection of my current thoughts about past experiences.

That nostalgic comfort is how I feel as I meander up the road flowing next to the river this morning. There is also a leisure in knowing no one else will be on the river at 6 AM on a Friday morning. My usual frenetic rush to get on the water is put aside. I roll my window down and let the cool canyon winds wash the cab with river scents. The rain last night moistened the forest duff which now warms and wafts about. A cloudy sky casts everything in muted grays and greens, flattening the cliffs which usually stand in sharp relief over the river.

The salmonfly hatch here on the Blacksmith is probably over, but I’m hoping to pick up a few stragglers on a salmonfly pattern. I approach my favorite patch of river, at least it used to be until three or four miles of undeveloped river was posted a few years ago by an absentee landowner. I can legally fish it again since last year’s court ruling. I stop the truck.

In this spot, about ten years ago, I filmed salmonflies metamorphosing and mating. Quite a few golden stoneflies, not salmonflies, now clutch stalks of grass and limbs along the banks. They cluster in small bunches, mating. I take one and toss it into the large back eddy where the river zags away from the bank I stand on. It floats, flapping intermittently, four feet…flap, flap…six feet…ten feet…flap…a dozen feet…flap, flap, flap…splash! A 14″ brown comes half out of the water in a wicked strike. I throw more stoneflies onto the water. A couple struggle to a branch in the river and some make it to the shore, but a few meet the same fate as the first. A second fish, a cutthroat, slightly smaller than the brown, joins in the feast.

I hop back in the truck and continue upriver knowing that with the golden stoneflies so active their larger cousins are finished. Still, if I get high enough, there might be some action on that new struggling salmonfly pattern I want to test.

Against a backdrop of stratus clouds, cumulus skitter into view over the canyon’s southern mountains, quickly traverse the canyon, then slip over the northern edge. A few drape themselves from the highest peaks. The threat of rain seems to be with us constantly this spring, moving into what is now typically our summer.

I pass a few spots I’ve liked to fish over the years, having in mind a little reach at the upper end of a buck and rail fence. I near the lower portion of the fence and move up the small rise and curve around the the corner to the left. Is that a car? Another early morning angler? I’ll leave him in peace—the last thing either of us need is to be on top of one another when there is 20 miles of peopleless water.

I continue a bit further upriver and pull into a short pullout, wedged tight between the river and road (thankfully secluded behind a cluster of dogwood and blooming chokecherry). Although small, it is a popular place to camp. The grass is damp. I drop the tailgate and sit, carefully avoiding the sagging middle where it has rusted and split apart.

Chickadees and American goldfinch flit and chirp about. A large pool forms here, the water slows and merely burbles—an appropriate sound for this kind of morning as opposed to the rushing, tumbling sounds of other spots. I examine the dogwood hanging over the bank but don’t see any stoneflies in the brush or over the water. I’ll save this pool to finish with.

I walked downriver a couple hundred feet then worked my way uneventfully upriver. Back at the pool I throw the struggling salmonfly pattern in the back eddy on the right, which sweeps counterclockwise toward this tree:

The fly (a huge pattern, measuring two inches long and one and three quarters inches wide) gently purls along. I’ve been mentally lulled into that “no-fish” zone and am quite surprised when this 13″ brown happens to take my huge fly: The fly has two sets of wings, and is tied with the hook riding on top. I’ve patterned it after the beetles Dan taught me to tie.

It took me an hour to fish this far and I think it’s time to head back downriver. I think I’ll try my old favorite and see how it’s fishing these days. I’ll try the struggling salmonfly, but think I might have more luck with the stimulator since the golden stones are in that area.

It turns out to be an excellent choice! The river has changed quite a bit, with old favorite holes and stretches gone and new ones replacing them. There is a 50 yard stretch that used to contain a nice hole and two pools that I am especially sad to see gone. But a couple of holes that used to be small are now huge.

Within the first five minutes of hopping in I land this beautiful cutt on a stimulator: and then follow that up with a couple more browns.

I continue to catch another ten or so, but end up losing about 20, within the next hour and a half. It’s nearing 9 AM and my family will be stirring at home. We have a full day ahead: my daughter just turned 12 and my son just graduated from high school, so we have a couple of parties to plan.

The pace has been leisurely, the fishing excellent. I may look back in days to come and use this day as my new touchstone for “nostalgic comfort.”