It is at night, with its common mix of inviting darkness and the things that wait for us behind the edge of sleep, when I most often look back at things that happened in the out-of-doors that I remember with deep pleasure--the things that I go out-of-doors to find and carry in my mind for just such times as these.
These are my treasures, and I like to count them out and shine them up. This is my savings book; one deposit a pair of pintails forever hooked above a spit of Manitoba marsh, another a rocking-chair mulie in a now-you-see-him, now-you-don't snow squall on an aspen-wrinkled Colorado hill. And so they can be paraded by, almost at will. A red-maned lion. An elephant so perfectly placed on a mountainside that I expect to go back there in years to come and find him standing just the same--pink-tinged in the sunset--as unchanged as a monument and as permanent in my mind. The white behind of an elk in black timber, the head turning back around, in a kind of comic double-take, when he realized he wasn't quite as alone as he thought...then, with all the dignity of a church elder, walking off as if to call me rude for stumbling, unannounced, into his private room.
A covey of quail drawn shoulder-to-shoulder in a circle as if carved in oak, believing, as I backed away, that I hadn't seen them.
I'm looking for a path to walk again; to come to find some soft and quiet place to rest. I want to listen to the gray shrikes calling in their flutelike pipings. Or stretch out in a Rocky Mountain meadow and wonder if the beaver that I'm watching ever dream or idly ponder any thoughts beyond their eternal sentence of rearranging their small brook.
I want to go beyond the everyday and find someplace else to be. I rummage again in my little storehouse. Past the lion (too fearful for now), beyond the elephant (too big to cope with), avoiding the elk, the deer, the quail, and come at last to just what I had been looking for all along.
A small boy I once had known, and even liked, arrived, wearing a straw hat (yes, I wore a straw hat) and carrying a fishing pole--an unknowing imitation of Young America at Play, complete with freckles and a mingled dog in tow.
And so, at the near edge of sleep, I joined this welcome, almost forgotten friend, and the two of us, as one, went back to better days.
Where should we go this day? Up the brook, of course. Its gentle banks lined with pussy willow and myrtle allowed no other choice for play. Up the brook meant barefooting it from stone to stone--to walk along the bank would be a travesty to being young and full of spring.
Where up the brook? Why to the Swimming Hole, of course. (Yes, I had a Swimming Hole, complete with a Big Rock to jump from.)
And then lying down, face bending the water as lightly as a skimming skater, I saw the trout that I had come to find.
Taking just the string in hand, I pushed the pole back on the rock and swam the threaded worm so gently toward the trout that he could not resist. And then, with a flip of the wrist, I flung him back to thrash surprised and frightened amidst the reluctant, sullen fragrance of the ferns.
The hook pulled free, and because of this, I think, I stood and watched to see which way he'd flop--like a speckled coin, tossing of its own free will. Toward the trees he's mine, and toward the brook he's free, I said--becoming a Solomon, trying on a life for size. So this little man watched the flip-flopping fish decide its life in random bendings.
My dog barked, from quite a safe distance, and almost as fearful that I would win as might I lose this awful game, I held his collar so he wouldn't interrupt my little play at being God.
I remember wondering could the fish know which way lay life or death? Would the game be long or short? And suddenly, he stilled and rested in the green. And then (instinct or chance? We never know) he came as close to sitting up as any fish I've ever seen and made straightaway for home.
Had he won or had I? No matter, really. But now I like to think I would have put him back no matter what. And then again, I'm not so sure. The prizes of youth in those early days were few and far between, and how hard it must have been to turn one back.
Either way, no matter now, except that I feel good remembering one spring, my Big Rock and my Swimming Hole and one fish, and looking tonight into the deeper dark I can see my trout still living there--and somehow sleep.
This story appeared originally in Hill Country by Gene Hill. Copyright (c) 1974-78 Gene A. Hill. All rights reserved.