Snow fell today. Yesterday was my 34th birthday. It rained in the evening as my gorgeous girlfriend Katie and I drove home from Bar La Grassa in the warehouse district of Minneapolis. We are at that time of year that when snow falls it is not instantly recognizable. After a summer of rain and prodigious production of fauna of all types many things were flying around in the near constant storm fronts. Cotton (0f the cottonwood tree) was big in June. There were many mayflies in the spring and early summer on my trout waters. Caddisflies and midges abounded. Sunlight fell in what appeared limited quantities. In September there was the Perseid meteor shower, as I understand lasting for days and weeks when the earth in its rotation around the sun intercepts clouds of galactic dust. It doesn't sound like much, but matter the size of a pea can make for quite display as it burns through the earth's atmosphere. These are frequently misinterpreted by people as UFOs or by a paranoid (and Republican) neighbor of my parents who during the eighties while viewing a large meteor ribboning across the sky claimed that Gorbachev had launched an ICBM against Reagan and the U.S. of A. My dad told me that growing up in the lily white suburbs of the Reagan era was much the same as growing up in the lily white suburbs of the Eisenhower era. Both of our youthful memories consist mostly of adults coming home from work and then sitting on the porch or in the back yard in lawn chairs and getting shnockered on cocktails. It's true. What I remember is the overly loud, ginned talking of housewives and the whiskey laughter of men. I vividly recall men bending down to rub my golden head and speak softly with bourbon breath.
My dad was a huge astronomy nut. He still digs it, but he doesn't host "star parties" like he did at one time. My mom recalls stories of pocket protectors and tortoise shell glasses (back when they were not cool) and men who had trouble talking to women. I recall twenty five telescopes of myriad power and price pointed heavenward and many "gee-wizzes" uttered over glimpses at the Crab Nebula. I only recall seeing bits of fuzzy light through pin-hole sized eyepieces which I had considerable trouble viewing because the one eye I could shut is my good eye. It was another episode of pre-adolescent difficulty and I still had my adolescence to go. Hubble images sent from space have made star parties irrelevant. I think those same men now sit ever more alone and philosophize over pixelated grandeur gazed on the interwebs. When I see deep space images of a gazillion galaxies sent to us from Hubble, I think of cinnamon roles.
The first time I saw serious "stars" was at night in the wilds of Yellowstone, later near the Boundary Waters. The first time we traveled the Yellowstone I caught my first cutthroat trout. It was 17 inches long and taken in that broad tailout immediately above the LeHardy rapids on the Yellowstone river. I haven't been back to Yellowstone since 2001 and I wonder with the lake trout situation being what it is if anyone fished that stretch of the Yellowstone any longer. There is a theory floating around that lake trout were introduced into Yellowstone Lake by helicopters that loaded their tremendous buckets in Lewis Lake during the fires of 1988 (which contains purposefully introduced lake trout from Lake Michigan) and were, for one reason or another, dumped into Yellowstone Lake. I suspect some angry bastard dumped them in there via a bucket. There were rumors circulating about an angry ex-park employee. I dunno.
On that first trip to Yellowstone, while fishing the aforementioned stretch of river, a sudden lightning storm blew in from the west and I was struck by lightning. I don't remember much. I remember drooling a lot immediately afterward, having the sensation in my face of having received a ton of dental work. Before being struck I noticed blue sparks on the end of my fly rod dancing as if tiny galaxies fleeing the Big Bang. The bang came. Then all was black. I came to running. I had thrown my rod into the river and ran to the bank. I was told this by my dad who was furious that I had just tossed a Sage 590 RPL into the river. There was a nasty, blistered burn on my casting hand. A similar burn was on my foot.
I am at Bar La Grassa, I am staring at that same foot. Embarrassed. My mother is showing my girlfriend pictures of me naked in a bath tub with my grandmother's dog. It's still my 34th birthday and I thought about all night that when my dad was 34 I could remember him being 34. I was eight at the time. I was in the third grade. I had a teacher who was 34. I was shocked when I found that out. He seemed so much younger than my own dad. He was way into the Boundary Waters and the Voyageurs and fur trading and canoes and in the spring of that year he took the entire 3rd grade class of the Southview Elementary to the North West Company Trading Post were two guys calling themselves Renee and Jacques spoke to us in terrible French accents and smoked constantly from 18th century style porcelain pipes. We all ran around like headless hunchbacks for one single night, slept in tents with our school buddies, pushed each other around, said things like: "whataya gonna do?" ... "whata ya gonna give me?". We kicked, poked and pulled the hair of girls we liked, and since this was May in central Minnesota we were preyed upon by thousands of wood ticks and descended upon by trillions of mosquitoes. Some kids were so bit-up their faces swelled. It was a tremendous experience in working-class Minnesota education. One parent of a particularly whiny boy brought and lavishly bragged about his shiny new Beta video camera. It must have weighed 25 pounds. The entire episode of third grade merriment was recorded, edited, transferred to VHS and then shown to us post-trip one hapless Friday afternoon before the year ended using the school's only VCR. They were $700 or $800 at the time. On numerous occasions I viewed myself on tape. I could not have been more uncomfortable, and wished I had avoided the father as he crouched down to my level and directed his lens in my direction.
Discomfort like that comes when the snow flies. Traffic paranoia sets in. People have this constant fear that every car within a half-mile of roadway will suddenly devolve into a complete self-destruct and that will result in a 1500 car pile-up which will kill all of the women and children and lead to a life of complete paralysis within an iron lung for the men. By February everyone is traveling bumper to bumper at 85mph while engulfed in an Alberta Clipper of Ice Age proportions. But, when snow first fell it was not so recognizable and whenI saw it for the first time last night I immediately thought "mayflies." I longed for the tiny little brook trout creek that occupies my reality in the winter and my life in summer. From November to late March of every year my thinking resembles chain-smoking, black-clad French cafe denizen who obsesses over Sarte, Beckett, and the films of Cocteau. My mantra on a cold Wednesday night becomes: "everything is a dark shithole of despair!". It's as if I am on a cold street corner waiting for some guy who will never show. Everything is meaningless. I look around: from the great pile of mid-twentieth cinder blocks that is the High School I teach within to the sidewalks of my neighborhood decorated with cryptic to absolutely obtuse poetry, It's just a city. It's the sort of place where if you don't check your email after significant snow falls they will take your car and charge you $225 to get it back. They also make you get up at 7:45 to move it 15 feet. But, the plows must get through.
During this time of year I yearn for a meadow blooming with the rich smell of cow shit--something entirely fresh and terrestrial.
Here's a link to hear what this thing sounds like. It is beautiful.
