This is a copyrighted original work of fiction. All rights reserved.
All characters featured herein are at least eighteen years of age, even if not expressly stated. Any resemblance between actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Song lyrics contained herein remain the original artist's property.
Many thanks to editor Tom Graham of Girls_cum_first.
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I slipped my canoe into the creek water, stepped in while steadying the craft, pushed off and eased myself into the seat. I was in Heaven again. The weather was warm already. I was looking forward to a perfect day.
Since I was a boy, I've taken this annual solo trip. Just one day, a scant few hours really. No other event during the year, not Christmas, nor holidays, not birthdays, nothing compares to my few hours drifting down this creek. All my family matters, work, my worries and fears, everything disappears. It's just me, nature, the creek and the brown trout within.
The creek itself is not spectacular, the section I travel is in the upper reaches. Even the fishing isn't particularly good. The eight miles or so that I glide down runs through farm country, then eventually drains into the Great Lakes basin. My aunt and uncle's farm used to back onto it.
My aunt died years ago and the farm was sold. But I still return. This was my thirtieth year as an adult making this trip. I must have done the same number of trips, or near enough as a youngster.
I know this section of the creek. I know every twist, every eddy, every riffle in the water, every tree, every stone, every bush. I know where the fish are, and aren't. I know the bird's nests, I know where muskrats live, where the possum lives, the mink too. As I've been making this trip for the last three decades on either the first or second Saturday in June, I know when and where the bugs hatch.
The logistics of the trip are very simple. Having packed everything the night before, I leave at six a.m. for the two hour drive to my cousin Dan's house. My uncle Roy lives with Dan and his family in a modest little house since they sold the farm about twenty years ago. Dan is a mechanic in Carlisle, the local town.
Every year I stop in and say hi to whoever is home, whether it's Dan's wife or one of their kids then Dan, old uncle Roy and I head into Carlisle to stop at Clara's Country Kitchen where we have breakfast together and catch up before we drop me, the canoe and my gear off at my starting point. They then drive my car and trailer along with Dan's pick-up to the other end and lock the spare set of keys inside the car. Before leaving Clara's I order a toasted ham and cheese to take-out for my lunch. That and a six pack of Coors Lite and I'm good for the day. It would be unusual for me to have more than two beers during the trip, but I stash the whole six pack in the canoe anyway.
As it was unusually warm and sunny that day I knew fishing would be poor. I didn't care. Most years I just release the little trout anyway. I'm always equipped with two rods, one an eight foot fly rod with a caddis fly on the end, the other an ultra-light spinning rod with a small Mepps. I always pack a few spare flies and lures. Most of the gear that I stow consists of a back-pack with spare clothing, rain gear, a small tarp. I had this routine down pat.
For a short section of creek, it has a surprising number of looks to it even though it runs through agricultural land for the most part. The creek meanders for the first few miles with a gravelly bottom and a few pools. There the fishing is good. Next there is a very shallow wider section where the bottom is a combination of shale, a few gravelly stones and clay. It is in this section, especially in drier years, that I have to actually get out of the canoe and walk it along. After that section there is another half mile of gentle twists to the creek with trees, mainly native mixed hardwoods. This section is narrower but deeper. A channel runs along the center. A tree, long fallen over, crosses the creek causing another step out of the canoe in that section.
Then the creek makes a slow turn into Morgan's Canal. At least that's what my uncle would call it. It's a dead straight section about three hundred yards long, fairly narrow with very slow moving water and a muddy, clay bottom. A deeper channel runs along the center, perhaps three foot deep. The section is picturesque in that it is bordered on both sides with old willow trees and other mixed hardwoods and shrubs. The surrounding land is very low through this section. Although the fishing is not particularly good here, it's my favorite section. Morgan's Canal is not a canal at all. It's what was left by the early pioneer, Morgan, who drained a swamp exposing probably twenty or thirty acres of land. It had to have been quite the undertaking back then.
After Morgan's Canal the creek sweeps to the left and there is a small parkette which is accessible from the nearby concession road. It's just a picnic area, but there are two small ponds and coniferous trees giving the parkette a cozy protected feel. If I ever see anyone else on the creek, it's there at the parkette. Usually it will be a couple of kids with a fishing rod and bobber hoping to catch a sunfish.
Beyond the parkette was my aunt and uncle's farm. In that section and those beyond, the creek resembles the first section in that the bottom is gravelly and the fishing is good. The creek slowly meanders through the farm fields and is bordered by the odd tree clump and shrubs all along. The last section has a few good fishing pools and two more locations where I have to get out and walk the canoe through shallow riffles.
The entire eight mile section is shaped more or less as a big S with the parkette roughly half way. The entire trip takes me about six hours to drift along.
There is no need to paddle. I simply steer the ten foot canoe where it needs to head. I sit in the bow seat, seated in effect backwards and rest the paddle across the gunwales in front of me and pick up a fishing rod and cast.
Aside from the sounds of nature, one can sometimes hear a car pass along the concession road off in the distance, but that's it. I'm in my element. With every turn in the creek it's as if a mental layer is peeled back from me. By the time I get to Morgan's Canal I am zoned out. I am chilled. I am at peace with myself and with God.
It all started with my cousin Dan really. I was about seven or eight when my aunt and uncle bought the farm. My aunt Edna was my dad's older sister. Both my parents have passed away now, as has aunt Edna. We would visit the farm each summer for about two weeks, and being an only child I had to make my own entertainment. Dan, my cousin, is a good ten years older than me, and quite understandably he really didn't want anything to do with his little kid cousin. I'd play with the chickens, watch the few cows for a while, stay the hell away from the mean bull, wander through the corn fields, then ultimately land up at the creek catching frogs and crayfish, and chasing turtles. 'Terrapins' my uncle would call them.
I guess I was about ten when Dan, given the task of entertaining his little cousin, suggested that he drive me and his old canoe up the creek together with a fishing pole and have me drift slowly back to the farm. The entertainment problem was solved for Dan. A whole new universe was opened up for me.
I stopped going to the farm when I was fifteen or sixteen or so, having the excuse of a summer job keeping me in the city. At, I think, twenty one or so I reconnected and started going up just for the canoe ride. At first I would go with a friend, then later with my wife and then later once with my son, but none of them cared for the experience. Eventually they all left me to do the trip myself. I guess it was about twenty years ago that the farm was sold and my canoe trip was extended beyond the farm to where the concession road crossed it, effectively doubling the route and making it a whole day affair, as it still stands.
It was on that thirtieth trip, on that glorious, warm, June day while mayflies danced around me that something extraordinary happened.
I rounded the bend towards Morgan's Canal drifting sideways, casting to a little overhang created by a tree root on the right bank. I took in my first glance down the long straight, breathing in with delight.
Immediately I saw something different. Way down at the other end, some three hundred yards away, on the little bit of bank that juts out into the creek, there was something or someone and something squarish. Like a box or a sign or something. It wasn't moving. I didn't care, I just kept on drifting and casting into the center channel.
After about fifteen minutes, it appeared to me that it was someone sitting with a sign or something in front of them.
Another fifteen minutes or so later it appeared to be a either a blonde woman or a blond child and I guessed, a painting easel in front. Five minutes and a few casts later I determined that it was indeed a woman, or girl. I was still a hundred yards away.
When I got to about a hundred and fifty feet I could make out that it was a woman, thin, about my age. She was sitting on a small fold up stool with an easel and painting, probably two foot by two foot. She was painting with brushes. Both she and the easel were set up on the little jutting out bit of the right bank, on a small flat spot that has a U-shaped juniper bush kind of holding it together. I know the bush well. I knew all the bushes well.
A few minutes later as I very calculatingly drifted directly towards her, I smiled at her, she smiled at me. Neither of us said a word. She stopped painting and just watched me as I intruded into her space. I cast again clearly showing her that I did not mind her intruding into my space. The silence between us became uncomfortable, almost painful.
"I'll buy it," I said.
She laughed out loud, "You've not seen it."
"I don't have to," I said, "anyone as pretty as you could only produce a beautiful painting."
She laughed again, "Oh that's priceless. Prince Charming just drifted up to me and I didn't even have to kiss the frog."
