DARK CURRENTS
By
Robert Robinson
Word count: 985
I stare at the painting—a mountain stream dressed in autumn colors— reading the water and planning a cast. My dog presses against my leg and I whisper to her of summer’s promise. The mountains have been silently filling up with snow for months, and the backcountry canyons that I love lie hush and dormant. The headwaters are frozen, in some places all the way across, and the trout are hugging the bottoms of the deep pools in a state of near suspended animation. My neighbors have taken down their Christmas lights, and the dumpsters overflowing with cardboard and colored paper have been dumped. The prospect of getting invited to a holiday meal is gone. Fly-lines have been cleaned, rods wiped down, leaders built, and flies tied. But the trailheads won’t open for another month.
On clear days, cottony clouds hang close on…