Trico Hatch In Eleven Mile Canyon: Spiritually Belonging and Not Belonging

 I often wonder if you are a person who believes and has faith that ironically you then might be uncertain of where you belong.

There are times while fly fishing you find your self standing in the South Platte River in the midst of a Trico Mayfly hatch and you tie on the best Trico imitation you can find in your fly box and cast it through the thousands upon thousands of swarming naturals. It  lands on the surface of the currents that are covered with thousands of spent wing spinners and dozens of trout are sipping up the bugs all partaking of this natural phenomenon. If you are lucky you might spot your tiny fly drifting along among the thousands and thousands of naturals on the water and luckier still, you might see a trout among the dozens that are rising almost imperceptibly sip in your fly from the surface. Almost instinctively as though on automatic pilot and in a flow of your own, you raise the rod and the fish upon feeling the hook bolts downstream and leaps out of the water. As you remain in contact with this fish connected by the finest leader material made by man you may think how this all leaves you feeling strangely a part of this flowing world and how you are connected to it by the tiniest hook and almost invisible leader. Yet it all seems bigger than any world you have experienced in years, maybe decades and in some sense is too wonderful to explain to anyone when you get back home.

The only drawback is that when you are home and then have to drive to work on Monday morning the truth hits you as you realize you were and are a part of something much bigger than you and more wonderful than you can ever understand and probably at the same time you now know you are less a part of the smaller world you left behind and are now struggling to rejoin. As you reflect a little deeper you then know that the trick is to not just fool the trout you fish for but to somehow learn the art of living with wisdom, integrity, vitality, perspective and wonder in both worlds even as you remember thousands of mayflies falling down toward you from the sky and thousands that drift away in the currents toward sipping trout.

And then if you read the waters correctly you also might realize you do not completely  belong to either world. Not yet.