For a few days recently it has seemed like spring. Maybe it is.
On the Ancient Roman Calendar the Ides of March occur on March 15. Winter is supposed to separate from spring precisely on March 15, according to the ancient Romans. They never made it to Montana.
On the Modern Montanan Calendar the days of winter and spring bounce around on both sides of March 15. We take the spring weather when we can get it.
"Beware the Ides of March," one Shakespearian character said, and when that line was spoken, things all of a sudden separated from hunky-dory to going to pot.
In a broader, deeper sense, ides are divisions, separations.
I hit a point every year where I've had enough to do with winter. I chafe at the bit - impatient and housebound, restless and itching. By mid-March I'm ready to spend time outdoors again. The skwala hatch will start soon. As my Texan friends might say, it's fixin' to.
There are a few skwala nymphs close to shore, nearly ready to crawl out and hatch, and when two adult flies have been sighted by reliable sources, the hatch is on. We'll see those #8 brown-olive tinted bugs soon - we're already seeing their smaller gray cousins, the #12 nemoura stones, and the itty-bitty #18 to #22 black capne, or snowflies as they're called in other places.
There are also some black midges in the foamy swirls of slow eddies where they hatch. You almost have to imagine them to see them, but it pays to look - and be sure to have all of those flies along when you go out.
For me, this business of getting out in March and fishing again brings a private inner rejoicing, recalling a time of life-changing personal triumph. I cherish the joy of living in the present each year as the trees bud out and the low level snow melts and creeps into the waterways, bringing new life to every living thing in its path.
Late one February, many moons ago, my wife-to-be, Jan, invited me to go for a walk along the river. She knew that my health, without going into gruesome detail, was in the tank. My lungs were failing. And without life-giving oxygen, I was failing.
I was hesitant, but took up her invitation. I shuffled along at a slow pace for about 75 yards before I sat on a log, exhausted. My lungs and bronchia went into spasms. It was ugly. Jan waited. As we walked back to the car she announced, "We're gonna do this again tomorrow. We're gonna get those lungs in shape."
I wondered, then, how I'd stand it.
On each day's walk we went a little further. By March in that spring of '97, I was fishing again. I was walking down trails that I thought I'd never see again - seeing new buds on trees and hearing birds go about their spring business, and fishing - stalking trout, wading to where I could get a decent cast at them - and rejoicing like never before in simply being there.
That same level of inner rejoicing has never left me - not just on the days of spring's renewal every year, but through the warmer days of summer when everything is green and wildflowers line the banks in certain places, and trout get voracious for golden stones and green drakes and the fishing can be exhilarating.
I rejoice in the changing colors and crisp ripe local apples and balmy-crisp middays of every autumn - the world surrounds and overwhelms me in its beauty. When I fish, I take it all in.
I still rejoice, every time I'm on the right side of that separation, that ide, between the deathly chill of winter and spring's rebirth of life and the hope, regardless of the season.
This year it will be no different. One of my first fishing trips will be my traditional walk past that log where I had to sit and revive, unable to go further. Sometimes when Jan and I walk past that log, I give voice to the memory.
She remembers, too.
When I'm on my own I walk at a deliberately brisk pace past that log just to celebrate the fact that I can. Every time, I remember, even when I'm on the way to my favorite water downstream where I'll fish again in earnest, again to celebrate the fact that I can.
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