Writhing in Mud

No peeping yet, but the light has changed and crocus are poking up. In a few weeks I'll be lathered in hot mud and consumed by gyrating, horny worms.

Here's a very short film to watch when you're on your own.





Jonny

Mailing Cutlery

We've been taking pictures of frozen water and assorted animals, instead of fishing. Others are ice fishing, or fly tying, or sitting by fires writing about ice fishing. We pick up and play with whatever comes to the hand that gives us pleasure.

My Dad was a strummer. He grew up a working class Liverpool kid, one of 4 who slept together with a newspaper-wrapped hot brick to keep out winter chills. Though he opted for the financial sector, the family business was Atherton's Typewriters, servicing the many machines that came in off the transatlantic ships in one of the busiest ports in the world. He made his first bikes and guitars, then saved the cash to buy one: a Hofner "Senator", purchased in the early '60s at Hessy's music shop, Liverpool; the same shop where 4 other kids bought their kit and went onto good things. My Dad's Hofner was a semi-acoustic. It had cello or "f" holes that I "mailed" things into when I was a baby. Cutlery mostly. The guitar would rattle when Dad picked it up, as he did most evenings after dinner. My son did the same thing to my guitar, mailing spoons and forks into the round sound hole. I can tell you, when your dad leaves, these details are everything.

Dad's Hofner

English Senior, when he was junior (on left).

A young Jonny looks on as Dad strums.

Jonny's favorite corner,  with added Taylor. 

With the Hofner always there, I became a strummer. It was a whore to play, which I guess may have helped me learn. I've long known that I can't dance for shit, but I can strum a guitar, and no more. Rather than make my own, I recently convinced my beloved to invest in my passion for a quality stringed instrument. Tommy B told me I should get a Taylor, an America guitar - like he knows shit. But he chose well.

If May is the finest month in new England, February has been the worst. So I pick up my guitar and play.

Funny thing. As a kid my Dad went to the Cavern Club to watch the rag-tag bands play, but my Mum's parents were proud - it wasn't the place for a daughter. So my folks played out their courtship ballroom dancing. My Mum was a hairdresser in Liverpool's Penny Lane. She cut George Harrison's Mum's hair, but told her she didn't much care for the Beatles.



Funny how shit pans out.


Jonny

Nothing is hatching

There's just nothing to do right now.  The cold has been brutal.  Today we approached 30 and I ran outside like there was a Hendrickson's hatch or something.   Snapped some photos too.

Kingfisher

Eastern Bluebird

Carolina Wren

Red Squirrel waiting for spring

Reminds me of a Chatham painting

Coyote

Mallards

Mallard

Pileated Woodpecker

Red-tailed Hawk

Song Sparrow

Sycamores

American Tree Sparrow

Since the original post, I've added a handful more...

Joe Lentine

Joe would talk about the pains of his country and comparisons to Britain. Was it better there? He liked Scotch and Scotland. I don't think he'd been, but he knew the difference and liked the warmth and the taste of salt. Ardbeg was his latest. He couldn't believe how good it was - it was just so remarkable - and I smiled and agreed. Fifty years in a smoke shop, always impeccably turned out, little was new to Joe. He would ask me if America was on the right track, only ever motivated to hear my guess, never for the sake of conversation. He already knew.

Joe was a worldly man, much more than someone who stayed in one place might be. Always more than a master of tobacco for all this time. He cut my cigar and called me by my full name like my mother.

New Haven should lower its flags. Joe Lentine has left the Owl.


Jonathan

Who cooks for you?

Ben and I successfully failed to catch trout again.  Even with the discharge pumping out shad, we couldn't connect.

Ben stares down his fly box.

Try a shad pattern?

We watched Todd catch three.  He's been fishing this water for a decade. 

Todd knows.

Brayshaw the Younger got a new bow, so I dug mine and dad's out of the closet too.

Shooting Dad's old bow, an early 1960s Bear Kodiak Magnum, 45 lb pull.

The old Bear, and my 20 year old Damon Howatt Mamba (55 lb pull). My shoulder aches.

Not bad, if you consider it's been twenty years.

The snow came today, and I took another walk.  

I found a barred owl. What was particularly satisfying about this bird was that I had gone to that particular part of the park precisely because I thought there was a chance I’d find one, or maybe a hawk.  The trees are larger but there’s enough open space to see a distance.  My father called to tell me he was coming home from the hospital this afternoon, and while chatting with him I was staring off into the distance and saw the owl’s silhouette.  Some hikers scared it but I watched where it went, and when I got off the phone I changed lenses and slowly walked into that area until I saw it.  I followed it as it moved from tree to tree and took about 20 photos before I finally moved on. It doesn’t happen like that often, by which I mean you devise a plan in your head beforehand, and then what you think could happen actually does.  It’s sort of like looking at a map of a stream, and then devising the entire plan about what kind of big fish will be where, what it will be feeding on, and when you get there it is.  And you even have time to tie on the right fly while the fish waits.

The barred owl calls "Who cooks for you?  Who cooks for you all?"

Make no mistake though: I want to see green leaves, yellow birds, and white bass.  I'm just biding my time.