Not your usual February, and walking along the river

This February feels different.

I don't quite have a sense of what to expect as it plays out.

Today, as I write, I see a covering of fresh snow. The rain that fell over the last few days is frozen under the snow. The streets are icy and very slick. The cars move slowly, cautiously, along the road I can see from the house. The day feels more like it belongs in early December.

The intermittent rains and snows will come, or so the weather forecasts tell me, and the snow will melt and the rain and snow will soak in and charge the aquifers. The charged aquifers will feed the streams and rivers through the summer.

Groundwater is a bit more elusive to track than surface water, and the snowpack and surface water can be deceiving enough.

Through the remainder of February we're supposed to see plenty of wet days. Right now the snowpack for our end of the state is about 60% of normal - depending on where you look. We could have a dry summer - but I'm not wringing my hands, yet.

I remember a February a few (more than a few, actually) years ago when Jan and I took a walk along the river on Feb. 9. We won't be doing that this year.

But when it's warm and pleasant enough, I want to spend a day, or the better part of it, walking along the river - just walking. I leave my fly rod home when I'm taking that sort of a walk.

I want to see, feel, listen, tune in with all my senses, get to know as much about the river and its surroundings as I can. I want to see and hear the birds and wildlife. I want to move slow and quiet enough to take in everything I can, get a sense of it all.

Some of my time will be spent just sitting - on a rock or a log near the river, watching, seeing if there's a rise. Seeing a rise this early usually means a hatching midge. Nothing else hatches this early, unless it's a little black stonefly about a quarter inch long.

I might see some of them, looking like little black spots of suet or fire ash, on crusted patches of snow or streamside rocks. They're invisible to me on the water, but from underneath they're well silhouetted against a brighter sky to the fish.

I remember taking a break from fishing, sitting on the bank and seeing the black specks on the streamside granite gravel begin to move. I had been trying to figure out what the fish in front of me were taking. I didn't have a clue until I took a break from actually fishing and observed, even if quite by accident, what was going on.

I didn't have the right kind of fly along and so made-do - poorly - by cutting down something else and finally getting a strike.

Since that day I've never ventured out early season without those little winter snowflies - or capnea - tied as skinny little next-to-nothing slender bodies under a sparse wing in #18 or #20.

Walking the stream without the distraction of a fly rod can provide hours of that sort of observation. Nothing sharpens the senses like spending time just looking, seeing, listening, feeling the air against your cheeks or the gravel under your feet.

I'll turn over a few rocks at the water's edge, or maybe as far out as calf-deep. I never know exactly what I'll find, but I have an idea. I come back with a sense of which stonefly nymphs are moving toward shore to hatch and when they might get there, how heavy or light the summer's caddisfly hatches might be, and what the mayfly populations look like.

This is different than turning over a few rocks before I tie on a fly later in the year.

One nice thing about this sort of pre-season February walk is shaking the house-bound sense of winter, leaving it all behind for a day that is dedicated simply to being out there. Another is re-tuning the senses, making them more acute, more aware.

And I'm getting a little itchy, impatient, for the snows and rains to give me a break so I can go do it - just sitting here thinking about it, writing about it, isn't enough.