“They’re more scared of you than you are of them,” the fellow across the way began, apparently oblivious to the overused cliché.
So I jumped in with my own witty comeback.
“Oh yea?” I said. “Well … I don’t believe you!”
Clearly impressed with my clever and skillful use of the language, the old man fired up in earnest, defending the reviled rattlesnake.
“When we were kids, rattlers used to protect our entire farm,” he said. “Papa used to say that rattlers would keep foxes and grizzlies away.”
Good readers, as you know by now, the old man has a way of drawing me in and no matter how hard I work to avoid the snag, invariably, there I am, sucked in.
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The lone, quiet blue flower peered up from its precarious spot amid the shrub and ground cover. If you’re prone to giving beautiful things human qualities, you might say it looked forlorn, or maybe even a little lost.

High water roared nearby and a leftover ribbon of snow circled a nearby brushpile, but there it peaked out — tired, but at least … there.

I was on a recent trip near Winter Park, and while I wasn’t there in search of wildflowers, the small splash of blue caught my wandering eye.

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“So how do you know it’s a red-wing blackbird?” I asked the fellow across the way.

“Well,” he started. “See that red on its wing?”

“Of course,” I answered.

“Then did you notice that the bird is black?”

“Of course I did,” I responded. I’m not blind,”

“Well, Mr. Smartypants,” he snorted. “That red on its wing and its black color make it a red-wing blackbird.”

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“Was it raining?” the fellow across the way asked.

“No,” I said. “It was a perfectly sunny day.”
“Was the water too cold?”

“I don’t think so,” I answered. “I brought up a nice bass or two.”

“It must have been windy,” he said with certainty.

“No,” I said. “It was pretty calm.”

The old man thought for a moment … I hate it when he does that.

Finally.

“Did you stink?” he snickered.
“No,” I quickly said. “At least … I don’t think I did. I don’t stink very often.”
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It is much more than the passing of winter to flycasters. It is more than the mere changing of seasons, the global, ecological repositioning and axis tilt toward the sun.

Indeed, it is a promise to all flycasters that this season — this year — will be the one in which we become better at our craft.

We have, over the better part of a month now, tied flies, wound backing, greased reel fittings, aligned rod eyes and packed gear. We have paused often during these tasks when a particular piece of equipment — necessary or otherwise — has sparked a memory or even a flash of a moment when things went particularly well. I would say lucky, but calling such successes lucky spoils the image.

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Editor’s note: Warren Bridges has settled into his new home in Colorado and is, once again, back writing a weekly blog. New blogs will be posted every Tuesday.

“What on Earth do you mean by ‘I know how Deborah Bicknell feels?’ You can’t possibly have the foggiest notion,” the fellow across the way started in. “You’ve never been anywhere near that lost.”

The old man was slipping, he knows exactly how lost I can get. Or perhaps he forgot that time I called him from Sandpoint on my way to Marsing … from Boise.

“It took a helicopter and two planes to find her,” I said. “I can top that.”

We were talking about, among other things, poor Ms. Bicknell, the 61-year-old rookie Iditarod musher who took a wrong trail during the race.

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As a renowned liar, the fellow across the way could easily hide his sorrow beneath a mask of hilarious guffaws and happy bellows.

So I could clearly tell that news of my leaving was hitting him particularly hard.

“You are leaving?!” he said between huge, fake smiles and chuckles. “You mean good readers of the Press-Tribune won’t have to suffer any more Sundays trying desperately to avoid the awful Back Roads drivel on their way to the classified ads?!”

It was clear he was in shock.

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Listening to Jamie Chilcott speak is like listening to what you think a ghost might sound like … not the crabby houligans that ruined Scrooge’s good night’s sleep – but a friendly ghost - with a resonance that holds the past as something wonderful.Sweet Hwy Sign.jpg

When she speaks of days long ago, you can hear the clippity-clop of horses along the dirt street, the creak of old wood as the wagons pass by, and the boisterous sounds from a nearby saloon.

Ms. Chilcott is 94, and recently, she took some time to reminisce about the past in Sweet, Idaho.

We visited Sweet several weeks back and learned of a water trough in the middle of town. Last Sunday’s Back Roads column included some of the history of the trough and the town.

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I guess it’s the idea that something so old and simple could still exist in our society that made the fellow across the way wax nostalgic.

“I don’t remember the covered wagon … of course,” he started. “But our old Rambler was about as comfortable.”

The old man is an old man. And with that age come certain rights – the right to forget, for example – or the right to wax nostalgic with a young buck like myself.

“I remember Atari,” I chimed in “… and split bamboo flyrods.” He smiled and probably would have patted me on the head like a good dog if I had been sitting closer, which I don’t do.

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Call it the ancestral pull … or call it nomadic or restless. It is all too commonly referred to as wandering or even waywardness.

But those aren’t right. Wandering is random, and waywardness implies a lack of focus or intent.

And good readers, those of us who have it are neither random in our direction nor blurry eyed. We are, in fact, clear of eye and focus.

And we can be found everywhere.

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