Another Melted Monday Morning
I have to hand it to the free and the brave who still take a shaky stick and wave it gallantly at the high sun. It provides little comfort, and the fly, as it crosses by, only shades a stray hair on their ear.
People are finally talking out loud about what this kind of heat does to their mind, bodies and most importantly their souls. A feeling of nothing is pervasive, sweeping through the people like that unleashing of the holy spirit in the old Indiana Jones movie Raiders of the Lost Arc.
The feeling, generally, comes from surviving the previous day’s heat … each day like a peewee football team piling on top of you – not just one, but one more and then another, until you can’t even catch your breath – twenty-two little hundred-pounders on top of you. Outdoor projects, and huge goals wither and fade by the intense rays. At night, we water not just the plants, but the entire surface of our (grass-free) yard, the driveway, the street – just to bring the ambient temperature down. I concentrate on a few trees that were prized, and now stand on death’s door, each one costing hundreds of dollars. I tell myself I won’t ever be doing this again.
Maybe that inability to go, do and get done is just sadness, overwhelming sadness at what has become of our yard, the scorched town and burning earth. Fire trucks are heard all day long now, putting out roadside grass fires before they become newsworthy events. Sure, you can call it, “just another Texas summer …” all you want, but it’s not. The heat, this summer’s heat? It is consuming now, as opposed to the past “Texas summers.” It comes from every direction, and puts a look on people’s faces in the WalMart parking lot, a lot like the “Raiders look.
The funny about us humans is: Instead of trying to fix a problem, no matter the cause, the powers that be spend precious time denying the problem – heads in the burning sand until the very end. What happened to simply fixing a problem (no matter how complex) without blame, or credit attached? If it was an anomaly, then history will say so, and we will be judged better for at least trying to react to immediate conditions with limited knowledge. If it is not an anomaly, then history will judge us best for identifying a problem and doing something about it in real time.
I say this to say, Imagine a time when our favorite waters take a turn, and no longer provide us with a satisfying experience – sea to shining sea. The only predictable water is salt, and even that water suffers from the lack of fresh water mixing. Tell me your favorite fly fishing hasn’t changed in the last fifteen years because of the environmental changes.
IN case you missed it, I have a new contributing writer on board here at Texas Fly Caster! My fifteen-year search is over, and the second story by Isaac Flyhoff (there I named it) ran here yesterday. Catch the new column – Sunday Morning Chat – by subscribing for notifications when new articles post! Trust me, you won’t be getting as many notices as you would have a few years ago.
HERE ARE YOUR SUNDAY CHAT COLUMN LINKS
Fly Fishing The Lower Laguna Madre – A Tranquil Pursuit by Isaac Flyhoff
The Brief History of Fly Fishing – by Isaac Flyhoff
Category: Adventure, Body-Mind-Soul, Culture on the Skids, Fly Fisher Health and Wellness, Life Observed, Literature, Science and Environmental, Texas Water Conservation
