Yesterday was the 4 year anniversary of the day we moved back to our home state. This rainy, cold weather has really been weighing on me lately. I was thinking this morning about a fishing trip I took one time. We lived in Bend, OR at the time so you could actually count on sunny days in the summer. It was the 4th of July and I got up at 4am so I could be on the water before the sun was. It was already warm out and the smell of smoke from recent local forest fires still hung faintly in the air. I decided to fish an area of the Deschutes river that during our time in central Oregon, became my favorite place in the world. This particular spot was just above Benham Falls but below the footbridge. I turned onto the forest service road as the sun was making it's appearance through the Ponderosa pines. Since it was summer, I had the top down on the Jeep and the mixture of pine needles, Juniper pollen and forest fire smoke filled the Deschutes National Forest. I had just received a copy of Jason Upton's album "Faith" and was listening to it while I drove. If you've ever heard the title track from that record, you know the part where he says, "Because I'm learning to trust that it's not you that hurt me, I'm learning to believe that it's not you that deserted me, I believe that you still love me, brokenness and all." When I heard that, something inside of me broke and I began to weep. It was a bit of a spiritual re-awakening for me.I pulled up and parked, got my waders on, strung up my rod, and began to walk the trail up to the footbridge that at one time had been a railroad grade. I got on the water and found a spot where the reeds were tall and right against the river. I knelt behind them and pulled some line out of the rod tip and gently dropped the fly onto the surface of the slow moving water. Since the reeds were so tall, I couldn't see my fly. After a few drifts and no action, I began to wander mentally. I was admiring the trees, the birds, the sunshine and I was so enthralled by nature that I was startled by the splash of the fish that had come up and crushed my fly. I felt the weight of a bigger-than-my-average fish on the end of my line. I had been so shocked by the disturbance of my quietness that I was not in the state of mind to actually play and land a fish and as suddenly as it had made it's presence known, it was gone. The price of barb-less hooks.
I fished a while longer once my hands stopped shaking from the adrenaline, and about 9:30 am, I called it day, fishless. I drove out the forest service road, onto the highway that connects Bend to Mt. Bachelor and drove home. Even without ever seeing a fish that morning, it had been a great excursion and I knew that I had been changed as a person and that I would remember that morning for the rest of my life.
