You Won't Remember This

This has been a great year, except for the heat. I don't do well with heat. My ancestors come from a place where they raise reindeer and wear curly-toed shoes. Well, at least they did until they were introduced to Minnesota-made Sorrel boots and Polaris snowmobiles. I'm not talking about elves--they're still rocking the curly boots--I mean the Sami. A group of people who live way the hell north of the arctic circle in Norway and Sweden. This summer's tropical-like dewpoint made everything that much more miserable. The two times I did get north I felt relief, then I had to venture back to the twin cities of Congoapolis and Thai Paul. Sadly, other than some sort of primitive, heat-repellent genetic memory, I can't recall what it was like for my family to be of the Sami culture. That history was lost due probably due to anti-immigrant, anti-ethnic feelings at the time.

But, regardless, the streams were flush with water; however, if you saw the Rush recently you know that picnic tables stuck twelve feet up into trees is a sign of too much water. You'll remember that. I'll remember that. Ten years from now I won't remember the heat. The years to come, they say, are just gonna get hotter. But, I will remember a few of the nice browns, smallies, and brookies that I caught. All is right with my life if I can manage a few of the above each season. Hell, if I get out it's good. It gets harder when you get older.

About ten years ago when I got out of grad school (for the first time) and landed a pretty good job and had few bills and cheap (though dumpy) rent I had cash to burn. The idea of saving had not yet occurred to me. I didn't think about the future, save for the big browns I might catch. Anyway, I bought three Sage XP fly rods and three Ross reels. They were the "bomb" back then, so was that expression. I still fish those rods. When I lived on the North Shore I beat the hell out of the 7wt on the upper shore rivers and the Brule fishing for steelhead. There are scars on that rod for which I can recall their origins clearly. The grip has teeth marks from when an ice jam broke loose on the Baptism River and I had to scramble up the steep gorge to avoid being swept to Sault Saint Marie. I squashed a guide on my 5wt after I tripped over my own feet in the dark on the Rush a few weeks ago. That memory will probably fade. I am happy to let that one go.

I teach a lot of Shakespeare, unfashionable as it is. I've taught Hamlet many times and the poignancy of "adieu, adieu...remember me" when the ghost of the king leaves Hamlet in the forest is, well, haunting. The old king has this fear that, other than not being revenged, he will be forgotten. Shakespeare argues that we live on through memory and that perhaps the "undiscovered country from which no traveler returns" can not be relied upon to provide adequate immortality of sorts. But, the real tragedy, to me, is not to be found in that play. King Lear is the real monster.

There are a few lines that for me bring about feelings of sympathy, fear, anger, and sadness. There is nothing good in Lear. But these lines, the words of King Lear himself, read as such:

Pray, do not mock me:
I am a very foolish fond old man,
Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;
And, to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
Methinks I should know you, and know this man;
Yet I am doubtful for I am mainly ignorant
What place this is; and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;
For, as I am a man,...

My grandfather is currently in stage five Alzheimer's. He doesn't know that I am his grandson. He doesn't really know his children. You can remind him, it will click momentarily, but then it will be lost again. But, what he does understand is that his mind is failing him. He is extremely self-conscious about it. Like Lear he knows that he is losing his memories and he does know what he has lost. They are gone. There is the darkness of a lost past and he knows just how dark it is. I fear that I am not in my perfect mind. Therein lies the tragedy. Is this the promised end?/...or some vision of that horror?

There are the memories of my now lengthening relationship, those of big browns, of holidays, dead relatives. There are the broad memories of vast Montana valleys where the valley floor grasses and sage run right up to the spruce and lodgepole blackened foot hills that leap into collections of peaks with names like the Absarokas, Beartooths, and Gallatins. Broad rivers cut their middle. And, there will come a time when all of that is swept away by the darkening currents of living emptiness.

Gather (release) ye brown trouts while ye may.