Father’s Day Fishing
This has been an extremely busy summer for me. Recently, one of my daughters and I were comparing our busy schedules. I mentioned that I had a column due and would rather spend my time out fishing. She offered to write my column for me as a Father’s Day gift so that I would have more time to go out fishing. So, for the first time in the 10+ years I have been writing this column, I have a co-author in my byline. The next half dozen paragraphs are from my daughter, Barb:
In one of my earliest memories of my father, we were playing in the backyard, sometime in the late 1970’s, and he suddenly rolled over and plucked a four-leaf clover out of the grass, showed me, and stuck it in his shirt pocket to gift it to my mother, later. This wasn’t a one-time occurrence. Over the course of my childhood years, my dad was known to often reach down and pluck four leaf clovers out of thin air. It happened a lot on our walks, or when he was mowing the grass. It happened so often, my mother and I would sometimes beg him — separately or together- to find one and then point to the general area, to actually let one of us find it. This never worked, even if Dad did find one and try to just generally point to it.
Imagine my surprise, one day in my early forties, when I was out mowing my own grass and I looked down and found one… and then ten minutes later, found another four-leaf clover! When questioned about his spotting technique, Dad would demur, “They just pop out at me. They don’t look like the other three-leafers all around them.” Pressed further, he’d talk about his job, hunting for Russian submarines in the Atlantic, during the Cold War, and talk about “studying patterns.” I, too, concur “four-leafers” jump out at me now and it’s not unusual for me to find 4 or 5 in an afternoon if I’m outside near a clover patch somewhere. I don’t always find them if I purposely look for them, though.
My memories of “Taking it Outside” with my father span my whole lifetime. When we lived in Brunswick, ME, and I was about 7 or 8 years old, Dad camped outside in our backyard with me and my brother, David, in a small, two-person tent. Family lore has it, Dave and I started bickering about who had more stars on their side of the tent. Dad told us the only way to resolve the conflict was to count the stars on our respective sides of the tent. Needless to say, Dave and I both quickly fell asleep, counting stars. Since David’s a lawyer now (and I’m a special education teacher), I know I was simply, as my brother’s responsible elder, helping him hone his arguing skills while I sharpened my experiential teaching repertoire, but I have other memories, too.
More recently, on a dark, clear night last October, here in the Belgrades, Dad and I took my 2 rescue dogs out for an evening walk, to look at a meteor shower. I may (or may not) have spotted some meteors, otherwise known as shooting stars, super subtly, in my peripheral vision. Then I saw something that looked like either an airplane or a satellite, moving resolutely against the dark sky, in a single direction; followed by another in its identical trajectory; and another; and another; and another…. I pointed them out to my father and he stared at them for a bit and said, “I think they’re military aircraft. Commercial airplanes don’t fly that close together, but the way those (15-plus planes) are going- they’re all headed Northeast. Probably out to the Middle East.” (Where a few days earlier the current Gaza conflict had begun).
It never ceases to amaze me how nature puts patterns together, as part of our human lives and outside activities. Dad’s told me of the importance, in identifying flora, for example, of knowing what something looks like in the spring; in the summer; in the winter….
Unofficially, summer’s already arrived. The mums are blooming. It’s strawberry season. The hummingbirds have returned. Finding our joy in the better weather seems like a common pursuit. But, as we find our joy, both individually and collectively, let’s also never stop learning about all the cool, natural stuff happening all around us. Look out for patterns; be open to the unexpected; and bring a parent (or child!) outside. You might find a four-leaf clover. Or something even more meaningful. My four-leaf clover streak hasn’t ended yet, and Dad and I regularly send pictures of our finds back and forth to each other- even as other family members roll their eyes in our direction. Happy Father’s Day! Happy summer!
Check out the picture (above) of Barb and Dave hiking in the Azores in 1982 with their much younger dad. Also, the four-leaf clover plucked and gifted to my wife on the morning walk we took the day I drafted my half of this column. I also managed to get out on the lake to fish a bit and spent an exciting 20-30 minutes landing a 10-pound pike on my 6-wt flyrod while trolling for trout with a white zonker streamer fly.
Download Full Newspaper: High Res | Low Res (Details…)
<— Previous Article • Summaries • Next Issue —>
©2024 by Summertime in the Belgrades. All rights reserved.