Spring is the season of renewal. That’s especially for those of us who work in education. We know — as the weather warms and the rivers begin to rise — that we’re about to say goodbye.
That’s the bittersweet part of the job. Ask a teacher why they love their work and the answer usually begins with the kids. Spending your working hours around young people, mentoring them in their journey and watching as they blossom into young adults, helps us old farts feel young even as the gray hairs and body creaks accumulate.
Then we have to watch them leave as they move on with their lives.
The calendar is filled with dates that mark rites of passage similar to graduation day. New Year’s, with it’s excessive celebration followed by black-eyed peas and cabbage, begins the season of skiing and ice fishing. Folks who enjoy those activities may be happy, but many of us instead fall into a funk that only lifts with the longer days of spring equinox. As day overcomes night the world comes alive. It’s when skwalas emerge, as do the first signs of green in the cottonwood bottoms along the river.
My kids graduated from Glacier High School a couple of years back. Since I just have the twins it was a big day. A friend and I were comparing notes about graduation milestones recently, as my two are now about to collect their two-year degrees from different community colleges, and her oldest graduates this spring from high school.
When you spread out your kids it’s no less poignant when they reach these plateaus. It’s just that if you only have one kid, or just twins, as I do, then the passage seems pretty definitive.
After that Glacier High graduation I got out for one of my favorite rites of spring: grayling fishing at Rogers Lake. I didn’t get to take the twins that day as I think requiring your children to join you on a fishing trip the evening of their high school graduation borders on abuse. I’m lucky that my daughters enjoy fly fishing as much as I do, but 18-year-olds are supposed to be with other 18-year-olds on graduation night, celebrating the passage with those whom they shared the journey.
I instead spent the evening at Rogers with my brother who rode his motorcycle out from Washington to share in the big event. I have a photo of my little brother from that day with one of those nice, 15-inch or so Rogers grayling that are so amenable to dry flies this time of year.
Graduation day was June 1 that year, but unfortunately as I wanted my city boy brother to see it, the spawning run up the little creek on the east side of the lake was over. Still we caught plenty of grayling out in the lake.
I also hooked and lost three fish that I figure were decent-sized cutthroats. I just can’t be sure because I never got a look at them. We saw pods of fish working in the middle of the lake and rowed out to give them a whirl. I was fishing a tiny Smoke Jumper emerger on light, 6X tippet. That turned out to be the ticket, except by June the lily pads were also emerging. The plants weren’t on the surface yet, but you could see them four or five feet down, pushing toward the sun.
Grayling may be hard fighters, but they’re usually manageable on light tippet as they mostly fight on the surface. The fish I hooked that day had different ideas, plunging deep as soon as they felt the hook. And with the light tippet — a necessity fishing small surface flies on a glassy lake — I pretty much had to let them run.
A wrap or two around the lily pads and those cutthroat earned their own passage to freedom.