Winding my spring clock

A beautiful sunset with a big pike in hand is a wonderful outdoor experience.

There is a driving need for some people to delve deeply into their inner being, and learn basic lessons about how to enjoy their outdoor life. Everything in nature lives, and it dies, as shall we when our day comes.

Fishing and hunting has been a major part of my 71 years, and there is something buried so deep within my being that I can't remember when it wasn't there. There is this need -- a deeply felt need -- to taste the sweetness of the outdoor life as often as possible.

It's not enough for me to just go fishing or hunting. I've never had to force myself into the outdoors to experience this. My life just needs to sample some part of the outdoors every day, regardless of weather.

I try to immerse myself -- body and soul -- into all of nature’s complexities.

Sportsmen seldom speak of little birds. Song birds cannot be hunted, as we all know, but I enjoy watching them at the bird feeder. I'm not sure I know, nor care, how many 50-pound bags of sunflower seeds are purchased each year to feed them. Numbers really don't matter.

I sat along the banks of the Betsie River two days ago watching a hen steelhead spawn with three males that seemingly took turns darting in to squirt milt on a golden spill of released eggs. I didn't view that hen as an object of angling desire, something to hook, land and take home. Instead, watching those fish was symbolic of all good things in nature that tug ever harder at my need to become even closer to it.

There is something about wild animals, birds and fish I find fascinating.

Nothing stirs my soul more than the roaring thunder of a spring gobbler making himself loudly known to every hen within earshot. He stands as the epitome of spring sounds that make me smile, feel alive and in tune with nature.

What can be more relaxing on a golden spring day when the temperature soars to almost 70 degrees, and we sit on the ground under a cedar, and drink thirstily of this delightful scent. We hear the peenting of male woodcock impressing a hen, listen as a ruffed grouse drum-rolls out his love song on a fallen log. Sometimes we even nap on such a warm day, and it's not laziness but a complete surrender to spring.

Become one with nature and live a life of outdoor pleasure.

I yearn for a day on a jump-across creek, bubbling from deep within a cedar swamp, and seek Robert Traver's little speckled beauties as he did on his pilgrimages to Frenchman's Pond. I love to burrow into such dense swamps, fish between tree roots in deep little pockets, and catch one or two brookies with white piping along their fins. That day will come on the last Saturday in April when the statewide trout season opens.

I need to feel the cold, firm and smooth skin of a brookie in my water-moistened hand. There is a burning need to look upon the stark beauty of tiny red and blue haloed spots that glint in filtered sunlight like rare jewels. There are times when I keep one or two for a long-awaited lunch of picking pink meat from the bones, and knowing I should have let these trout live. I've escaped the nagging need to eat a brook trout for eight or nine years although I fish for them often, but the old craving for one or two is tempting my taste buds.

Deep within me is another urge which I will put off for a few more weeks, but then I'll succumb to fishing bluegills on their spawning beds. I won't take many, because filling a limit is something that disappeared from my angling life many years ago. Instead, I need to feel that sideways pull on my fly line as a pug-nosed 10-inch bluegill swims in tight circles in the clear water. Holding a slab bluegill in my hands, and admiring the fish momentarily before freeing the hook and the fish is what my twin brother George and I used to do. I'll do it again, and hope he is watching me catch a fish or two on his behalf.

Nature brings about urges, and like eating brook trout, we back away to save our fish.

Old friends, people who enjoy what I enjoy, and feast ravenously on the bounty of the great outdoors are fun to spend time with. We find that as time passes, and as we mellow, spending time on the water or in the woods is a blessing. We enjoy the day whether we catch fish or not, and in some cases, talking and recalling past trips are more meaningful than catching fish.

Perhaps it's the weather, the time of year when spring gives birth to a new season, and casting about in search of different reasons and ways to spend time outdoors, is what appeals to me. I cherish days spent fishing with my son, David, and they are most important to me.

I look at him, and see myself as a hard-charging younger angler who is willing to pause along the way, sniff the ripening fragrance of newly sprouted leeks, and think of leek soup. David seems to understand The Old Man and his moods, and we can go for long periods without speaking, because we know that nature is silently speaking to us.

Spring is a gift, and I hope to pass it along to like-minded people who realize there is more to fishing or hunting than catching and killing.

There is life, and a love of nature, for any who wish to pause long enough to look, listen, smell, taste and touch.

Spring is what keeps winding my outdoor clock.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors