The Ballet of Barometric Pressure

I spent a cold afternoon in January escaping to the place I escape best - the river. It had been weeks since I had last been and I could feel the creaks and crannies of my nerves beginning to expose their restless and reckless selves. The sky was clear. A beautiful un-inversion-ed respite from the valley clogged with pollution. Modernity! 

Waders up. Rod ready. Vest strapped. Legs moving. Release.

The weather people had been telling of a storm moving in the following day, so I was eager to get my recommended allotment of Vitamin D. Not too little, not too much, lest my pale sensitive skin get burned. I wonder what my grandfather's skin would say to such a cautious and rigorous approach. I continue my hike along the river.

As I approach the first good bend, I’m instantly transfixed on the still water and any possible ripples. I’m no longer concerned about my delicate, white skin attracting unwanted advances by the sun. And then, for a while, I sip on a spiked kombucha and fixate on the panorama before me. Light ripples of water dance towards one another in an inescapable rhythm of movement, maestro’d by the hydraulics below the surface that dictate every sway, push, pull, shaking, and stretching. A true ballet. 

I’m instinctually on the lookout for the buffalo midge and its smaller, obnoxious family member the midge this time of year. While the larger of the family, the buffalo, can be somewhat easy to fish, its smaller, less virtuous cousin, the midge, is a dastardly SOB on the eyes. I do not wish to be spiteful to any member of the insect world, outside of say, the mosquito, but I mean that in the harshest way possible! 

Both members of the family have graced me with their presence today. While the wind laps on and off, their tiny bodies arrive on the surface, on cue with every pause. When the wind pauses for several minutes, I am greeted with a small feeding frenzy in the tailout of a nice run. No big fish today, but the juveniles seem riled up and active. In that moment, I am reminded of something a much better and smarter fly fisher once told me. That on the approach of a storm, when the barometric pressure starts to fall, fish (or, at least trout - I do not mean to generalize the entire lot) can sense the change and begin to stock up, as it were, on food. Nose after nose, all to the surface, hoarding themselves as to descend into an underwater hibernation until conditions return to normal. A sixth sense between the natural world and the ebbs and flows of earth and her choreographed movements. 

I am grounded by this for a moment. Still. Peaceful. Thoughtful. A cooped-up field mouse rattles dead riparian vegetation off in the distance. 

I wonder how few of us would realize such a change in our day-to-day movements and routines. That we could be so in-tune with that around us that our own earthly instincts override ambition, pride, ego, and comfort in order to maintain the harmony and balance between earth and self. To be afforded an awareness we have not had in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years - or if ever. So much of our lives spent unattached to the very environmental surroundings we were once so connected to and dependent upon. And connected, literally, to the very wrong things. 

I am contrite. I gaze up and continue to watch the poetic onslaught of trout on midge which leads me to near degradation as I feel my cellphone vibrate in my waders. 

I only hope, one day, I can be as smart as those trout.