Part One: On Being Lost

“It’s orchestrated,” he says, rises shooting the surface everywhere but under the fly where he wants them. Where you want them. The epicenter of the universe, a size 20 trico's footprint, the bullseye which seems impossible to hit – here now, where the day’s crescendo has worked since sunup to reach. All of that tension, released into bugs and bites, pimpling the surface worse than an adolescent's face. Pop it, he says. Pop it.

It’s orchestrated. Like a Steve Reich piece -- time signature moving every other measure, keeping you moving, keeping you feeling the beat. Keeping you at attention -- even all the while very confused. Just as you get comfortable, everything changes: the tempo, the key signature…life. Out of time, tune, and so it goes. Taking you along with.

Trying to read, to keep up -- but in the end you can’t. You’re lost. Failing, even with spinners, caddis, midges popping off. The measures move too quickly – and when your eyes get lost, when you finally stop playing, hooking your small para-adams onto the third guide up, the song goes on the same as it always has...always will. Your part can be played over; you aren’t that important… 

…and yet you do matter, somehow -- leaving light footprints, unevenly spaced, close together on the hike out.