Monday Morning All Booked UP and Wide Open
NEW DAY
Imagine my relief this weekend, as the United States of America finally began to move from the grey to a black-and-white decision aka. election 2020. It has been an enlightening week past, as my mind wraps around the facts of the election. There are shadows, or details in the shadows – like the best Ansel Adams …
Rather than vanquishing the defeated from our collective conscience, they need to be accepted as a powerful presence that may be leaderless now, but needs to be smothered with love and acceptance as we blue folks struggle to understand the red, and their grievances – on every single level, and on every single topic. This is now, after all this, the UNITED States of America. If you want to keep flying your Trump flag, go ahead. I am doing the visualizing of where to put my new flag pole in the front yard on my little street, in my little town. Yeah, it will be the Stars and Stripes.
COVID SHUTDOWN
Some of you have come to enjoy the travels I make to new fly fishing spots, and that is especially true for the Texas Gulf Coast travels. Unfortunately, with the huge upswing in new cases, and because the southern portion of Texas – from San Antonio on down – was already a flaming hotspot, I won’t be going to the coast anytime soon. Or Houston, to see my loving family, or Arkansas to punch my ticket on an amazing Bull Shoals White River invitation, or Breckenridge for a week-long family Thanksgiving invitation. Unbelievable really. The best of times cheated by the worst of times.
No, we are staying close to home for the next death march, on edge and hoping that it passes by our door once again. And the same goes for our fly fishing excursions. It’s time to stay close to home, keep our powder dry, and get ready for the future. I hope you give me a chance to make this quarantine interesting for you, the readers, and perhaps we can explore new ways to commune – in person this winter – and still remain safe.
Books Books Books
I know you remember my mention of all the fly fishing related books I receive for review writing, and just last week I sat down to review the most recent book, “On The Cains,” a book about Atlantic salmon and world-record-sized brook trout. Then comes another new book, “Casting Forward – Fishing Tales from the Texas Hill Country.” What would you do? I sat down the book on Nova Scotia salmon and world record quality brook trout, and became entranced with author Steve Ramirez’s book. Local. Locals always come first in my library. Maybe that is how I will finally arrange my tweedy wood library that I’ll never have. If I were to stack all the books I have sitting for review, they would come past my waist now – a good start on a library, but a little bit of a slow start on review-writing. And I’m not that short.
I consumed “Casting Forward” in a few long hours, relentlessly determined to focus (when did focusing get so hard!) on this spiritual adventure that not only reveals another perspective of the Hill Country fly fishing experience, but also opens up the experiences of a fly fisher. THAT REVIEW will be published here tomorrow. We fly fishers make grand claims about the art of fly fishing, over the last Century primarily lead by skillful and colorful writers. Ramirez’s book, if you are interested in this type of prose, makes the perfect bookend for Aaron Reed’s book. In this trickle of new Texas Hill Country books, I bet there will be more to come to fill in the spaces between the two. Even a trickle can create a canyon, right?
IF I am correct, you can download a “sample” from “Casting Forward” on Amazon, so please at least take the time to do that, and get a taste. Then tune back in here later tomorrow (Tuesday 11/10) for my review, and a short plug is coming on the YouTube Channel later this week. And if you can’t make either of those, the review (in a short simple version) should be running in the next Lone Star Outdoor News.
If this is the first you know of this book, be sure to let SOMEONE know where you heard about it! I have felled many trees (written thousands of articles) over the baker’s dozen years here, and for the vast majority, I never ever know if they make a sound when they fall.
Thanks for reading the Monday Morning Sidewalk, and make sure to check out the Steve Ramirez book review tomorrow. PS – I’m a damn slow reader.
Category: Body-Mind-Soul, Book Reviews
