Ponds Upon Ponds

 

I remember in my masters counseling program I had one professor who said that when we get older, we return to the things that fascinated us when we were young. Well, I am getting older and I now find myself cycling back to little creeks and springs, wanting to build little dams and ponds, and hoping fish will find their way in those small impoundments where I can claim them as my own. I know as a kid I was often moving rocks around in creeks and I enjoyed watching the water back up in pools.

When I was in Highschool my biology teacher and wrestling coach took a group of us boys to his parents’ home out in Pa, on a fishing trip. We fished the Juniata which was a fine smallmouth bass river and yet what really held my attention was the little pond behind the house which was stocked with trout and that pond spilled into a smaller pond via a pipe. I can’t quite remember where the water went from the 2^nd smaller pool (only about 10 feet across). Perhaps it just drained out onto the grass.  I just know I could have played and fished in that pond system for days. There was one big trout of 20 inches in the smaller pond that made things interesting. My one friend hooked the rainbow and it charged back up into the pipe trying to find an escape path and broke him off.

I am at the point now where I have little interest in fishing the popular/famous rivers such as the South Platte in Colorado, or the Green River in Utah, or the San Juan in New Mexico. I know it is a cliché to say it but there are just too many people and no one goes there anymore. And those places are no longer mine. They belong to someone else; The maddening and growing crowds.

Call me a spoiled brat but I want to discover my own place, a place I can call my very own.

If I plan to fish or guide someone to one of my favorite holes and upon arriving, I see a guide who I know personally and they are there with his/her clients, or I see friends fishing in the hole, it already feels too crowded. It feels over run. It is no longer my place. Sure, I could speak up and say, “I was going to fish here, this is my spot, I was here first.” or, “My clients are fishing here.” But if I have to do that, if I have to speak up, it feels ruined already in some way, and the experience is no longer pure.

I need my own strip of water that is contained and pure but I am not sure if such places still exist.