They Smell Like Fish

They Smell Like Fish

When the house starts smelling like fish, I know summer has begun. Well, I can tell summer has arrived because Mike’s friends are arriving with frequency at my house — and they all smell like fish, har har! Of course, each of them has enough gear to open their own fly...

Bill Cypress

Bill Cypress

We thought Bill Cypress was as close to perfection as human beings ever got. State Highway 16 ran south out of town. Not straight south — not to start, anyway. It had to work its way out of the hills first and make a couple of gentle turns past the new high school...

No Such Thing as a Bad Day Fishing

No Such Thing as a Bad Day Fishing

The bumper sticker read: A bad day fishing is better than a good day at work. I was sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic wondering how I had allowed myself to get in such a frustrating situation. Like all of the other miserable souls around me, I was growing more...

A Fishy Tale

A Fishy Tale

In my youth, I chanced to date a girl whose family had a cabin on a lake. The lake was Bay Lake, just north of sprawling Mille Lacs Lake in central Minnesota. Going to the cabin was an escape from reality. Annie’s father took good care of the place, and when we made...

Does It Still Happen?

Does It Still Happen?

Words and values were their greatest legacy — the outdoors their greatest gift. Tell me. Do kids somewhere still grow up with Cochise, Robin Hood and William Tell, rather than the Terminator and Robo-Cop? Do they still forge blood-brother pacts with the Ogalala Sioux?...

Old Timer

Old Timer

He didn't look 80 years or more; he had the timeless quality of vigorous old age, the look of extended youth often seen on the faces of old men who have preserved some boy thoughts, particularly boy thoughts upon nature... Mill and I had finished our sandwiches and...

Lowcountry Tales

Lowcountry Tales

A tangled tale from the Carolina Lowcountry where writing runs deep in the blood. Half-moon of July, a low tide at noon, glaring blight sun and nary a breeze to ruffle the waters of Port Royal Sound. Piney islands shimmer in distant heat waves, surf grumbles far...