There's this small brook, a couple of towns over, that I fish from time to time. It's little known except to a small cadre of small stream anglers. The fishing cannot be described as good, but that's not what turns on people who crawl along thin blue lines. Wild fish. Tricky casting. Ample opportunity to lay out f-bombs when you tangle in a pile of twigs for the third time in consecutive casts. That’s a full day for a small stream angler. Sometimes I go down to this brook with the sole intent of smoking a cigar and sipping single malt. Losing a fly to a tree is just a bonus.

I know this awesome couple out in Idaho. Bruce and Kat, like many folks in Idaho, are avid users of the great outdoors. Bruce hunts elk with a bow and fishes rattlesnake infested canyons with a fly rod. They both ride fat tire bikes up and over majestic ridge lines. In a day, Kat can cross-country ski distances that I won’t drive without a bathroom break. All on public lands that are easily accessible.

If you had told me this time last year that I’d be fishing half as much in the second half of the coming year as I did in the first half, I’d have been deeply depressed. And I’d have fished a whole lot more in the first half. But next year will be different. I know what I’m up against going into the year and I’ve gained some very specific insight into what’s ahead. I’ve also developed some insight into what’s ahead for you.

Back from a week by the sea, I already find myself scrolling through rentals for next summer. Over the past few summers I've been drawn to the mountains but growing up by the sea, the salt is under my skin in ways that I am reminded at that first whiff of damp, briny air.

Growing up we fished in the ocean. When schoolie stripers were in during the spring I'd sometimes borrow a rod from a buddy and we'd head down to the shore and cast and catch. But there was never the passion, the obsession, that I have today for trout shaped objects.

At some point early in the last decade, I was like Frank. The entirety of my fishing gear would fit in a small box with my clunky boot foot waders, shiny and new, filling the lion's share of the space. One fly box with a dozen random flies. A single rod. Click and pawl. Discount line rigged with a leader nail knotted in apparent defiance of the impermanence of its design.

Having a small black lab puppy sitting in the space where my fishing gear usually resides makes that space look a whole lot bigger than it does during the season. It also seems more lonely despite puppy exuberance.

Two months ago I took all my fishing gear out of the back of the Volvo wagon (yes, I live in Connecticut, the native range of the Volvo) and stacked it in the garage. The primary reason was knee surgery which I knew would take me off the water for a while. The fact that it was five degrees outside didn't hurt either. And then this new puppy needed to go somewhere on the ride to the vet.

Laying about in in the depths of a hundred and one fever I have the leisure of considering all manner of things. In and out of the void topics both meaningful and mundane surge and recede. Did I reply to that email? I wonder if the ice dams on the roof will be a problem? How long before the streams flow free again?

Unlike much of the west, our eastern winter has been wet and frigid. Four foot drifts guard the banks of the driveway. The stop sign at the end of the street has been consumed by the plow's drift. It's increasingly difficult to find places to put the new snow which arrives, a few inches at a time, every other day or so.

While I still whine about the weather, mutterings about the weight of the season are so common as to be meaningless. So much has already said about the endless cold days that there are few words worth listening to. I do it as much out of habit as anything else.