Thinking Spring

One of the many reasons to fish is that you're always thinking ahead, and in the middle of winter (and especially at its end) you're agog with anticipation, like a little kid. Spring comes as no surprise to a well-prepared angler.

But I've been an ill-prepared one for a couple of years now. I took my eye off the ball, worrying about this and that all winter, And when I first saw the buds and blooms peeking out, I realized I simply wasn't looking for it. I guess it was like that for our caveperson ancestors. They didn't know about the solar system, and when the sun started hanging lower in the sky, and spending less time there, they were bound to worry.

I used to think they were stupid. You could go to the oldest person in the cave, and broach the subject of the sun going out. Has it ever gone out, you know, for good? The oldest person would give them a look—the look that says you're an idiot. (My sister once said something and I looked at her, and she said, "Shut up!") The sun did that every year, the old person would say, not even looking up from the sinew she was stitching a bearskin with. "Don't worry about it."

As I say, I used to think they were stupid, but this year I understand. I didn't think the sun was going out, exactly, but I don't think I really understood that it would climb back up in the sky and make things bloom and bring about a general glorious renewal. (I love the Italian word for spring: primavera, "first green.") I really hadn't thought about it at all.

So I'm more or less in the position of those worrywart cavepersons—I believe I harbored in my breast, without articulating the thought, the idea that things would be cold and bare forever. But now I'm seeing the first green, and lavender and red and yellow. I was out walking yesterday, looked up through some formerly bare branches, and saw blood-red blooms against a robin's-egg sky. I wasn't sure it would, I really wasn't, but it's a pleasant surprise that it did.