23

Today is my twenty third birthday. Oddly enough it reminds me of a birthday I had almost a decade ago. The only thing I planned is fishing. By myself. Not because I don't have friends, or because I don't like the ones I have; but merely because it is summer. The sun is hot, the river is cold and there are trout, so the river beckons. I remember turning fourteen and begging for a ride to Boiling Springs and the special regulations waters below the spring fed lake. I don't need to ask for a ride now, just a day off work. Its my first birthday away from home. The annual beat of family tradition, carrot cake and cream cheese frosting will not be had. I doubt there will be any candles or shredded coconut, to extinguish and scatter. Probably very little wrapping paper today, but maybe a few pale ales paid for by the brothers I have found here in the west. I still fish today.

This western river the Provo is bigger and stronger than my home-waters back east and in many ways more alive. I am careful as I walk the bank to look up frequently and scan the brush that crowds the riverbank. This is moose country. Lord knows I don't want a stand-off with a moose. Especially not on my birthday. I never wanted to die on by birthday. I've heard people romanticize it as a bookend way to pass (dying on your birthday, not by moose antler). By now, if my Mom is reading this then she is going worry about me and my fishing trips, and for that I am sorry.

Alas I did not meet a moose today. Just trout. Trout on dry flies in the tail-out of a pool, where fast water meets slow. Up against far bank, where pale morning duns were made dizzy in the swirling currents of the seam. Twenty inches, finned and spotted. Dialed in on the emerging mayflies, rising, shoulder swirling, nose and tailing, driving me mad for over an hour. Until I drew from my box, the comparadun, oh deadly pattern. This fly has history. That particular fly, the week before, had caught fifteen rising trout while the fisherman across the stream (throwing a dry fly as well) hooked one. So sure, the comparadun was arrogant but so was the rising fish - not 35 feet from where I was standing. They deserved eachother. Six casts later the great fish interrupted the fly's drift and my rod tip went up instinctually. The river was saying happy birthday.