Blame it on the walleyes. They were all still out there, teasing and tempting. I hadn’t taken any out of Sea Gull in the past two days, so where else could they be? The lake beckoned, and a flash of fishing fever surged through my veins. The heat messed with my normal brain functions. An urge bordering on primordial, or at the very least tribal, co-opted all rational thinking. Something told me that all the rhythms – circadian, lunar, the heartbeat of pisces, all of it – were synched. It was time to fish, and the rocky point just a long cast from my tent beckoned like an evangelist at a revival. I grabbed my pole and jumped down the bald boulder on which I camped, picking my way across a field of granite monoliths clustered like toes around the foot of my island campsite. I hopped first on one, then the next, and yet another, like a big horned ram picking his way along the side of mountain. I’ve long enjoyed boulder bouncing. I’ve done it since I was a kid, and at that moment, it was right with nature. I felt good, natural, as I quickly closed the distance to the big toe at the island’s point.
Then, midstride between a hulking flat topped granite table and a rounded balding that looked like a goat-shouldered monk hunkered down in the lake just a few hops before my fishing destination, it hit me. The words that rang in my conscious mind were, precisely, “What am I doing? I’m a 63 year old man, four months out from total knee replacement surgery, and I’m bouncing across these boulders like a ping pong ball. What am I thinking?”
Well, I wasn’t thinking. And I wasn’t feeling pain in this new knee of mine, that’s for certain. But with reality grasping for a handle on any sort of rational brain waves boulder hopping around the inside of my cranium, I settled like a butterfly on a flower pedal on the next nearest stone. Once there, I gained both my equilibrium and my senses. I felt a grin claim my face. What, I wondered, would my surgeon, Dr. Robert Trousdale, think if he witnessed my flight across these venerable boulders? Maybe he’d smile, confident in the quality of the art he worked on my knee. Maybe he’d shake his head and wonder if he should refer me to his colleague, the shrink? I don’t know.
I glanced at my route across the granite stairway, feeling a full, growing measure of gratitude for the new knee he gave me. I took the last few boulders at a respectful pace, settled in a likely spot to cast my line, and enjoyed the hour before sunset pondering the beauty of the boundary waters, the painless relief of my new knee, and my gratitude for medical science.
The fish weren’t biting.
