I finished up work on Thursday and got home just as Jilda was leaving for work.
There were things that needed to be done around the house/farm but I stepped out on the deck and the sky was blue and the clouds were drifting toward the East and I heard a gentle calling. I had been reading “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway and had just finished the part about him and his friends fly fishing in Spain. I loaded my gear and headed to the Sipsey Fork of the Warrior.
Pulling into the parking lot of Riverside Fly Shop, I stepped inside for the fishing news. Randy and his son gave me the scoop on the types of flies the trout were hitting. He also mentioned that the Power Company would turn the turbines on at 4:00, it was 3:45.
I thought my trip was awash but Randy gave me a tip on a lesser-known spot where I could fly fish even with the turbines running. The words of Hemingway were still whispering in my brain so I walked the extra half-mile to the spot.
Who cares if the fish don’t bite, I thought to myself, there is no place I had rather be.
The evening was warm, but the water was frigid. My fly line whispered overhead as my fly teased the brush on the other bank.Time slows down when you’re fly-fishing and I didn’t realize that the water was slowly rising. I then noticed one of my shoes I had left on the bank was floating by me.
I will need that for the hike back, I was thinking and when I stepped into the stream to grab it; I found myself in waist deep cold water. My shoe was taunting me, drifting further away.
I tried my casting skills, which until then I thought were pretty good, yet the shoe kept floating, and my casts were getting tangled in the brush on the other bank. After getting a day’s pay of flies tangled in the brush and never snagging my shoe, I decided to call it a day.
I hobbled in one shoe back to the truck. Driving home, I wondered if Hemingway ever had to fish for his shoe.
