Off the Grid

Welcome back folks. Feel free to soak in this stunning display of natural beauty kick-off the 2015 season. I put myself on a self-imposed hiatus. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to be knee-deep in fishing related banter, it’s that I’ve been dealing with a cancer diagnosis and a job layoff in the family (and the fallout of said events). This is the kind of stuff that everyone deals with. What goes around comes around and for better or worse it was our turn. It’s kind of funny. As I was sitting in a meeting last week, I engaged in the typical pre-meeting banter that accompanies such events. A client of mine asked, “how was your holidays?” To which I actually gave the truthful answer, “it could have been better.” From a angling perspective, I’d simply say there’s been too much reality and not enough fishing, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. I’m back in the saddle, but I must confess that I’m selfishly spending my leisure time elsewhere. So much to do, such little time. Giddyup.

There’s very little in life that doesn’t force me to pause and ask “what if?” To this day I still inspect every curb, crack and transition as if I’m still a 17-year old skateboarding down the street. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that everytime I turn the corner and descend the steep staircase in my house, I imagine myself dropping in on a big mountain cornice and carving a nice line through the bumps. Certainly aquatic features are no stranger to my juvenile curiosity. I’ve always reveled in my affinity for the quickie flyby. “I’ll just make a few casts to see what’s there,” is the mantra. It’s in life’s tougher moments that you seek solace wherever you can find it, and often times it’s sitting right beneath your fingertips. It’s less about the quality of the experience and more about the freedom and the fantasy that it represents. The simple act of seeking what lies beneath is enough to get you through to greener pastures. Not everything in life needs to be the five-course meal. The guilty pleasure of the five-piece nuggets can suffice. We can’t all be perfect. Sometimes you just have to reassure yourself that the Phoenix will rise again. Sometimes you just need to go off the grid.