Conflicted

During trout season here in the Carolina mountains, I keep all of my gear in the trunk of my car- luck favors the prepared.  I never know when the day will hand me a free hour or two and if I can divert directly to the water, that hour can go from tedium to tranquility.  I admit that on Thursday it was a calculated move.  Staring down the barrel at the three day weekend and with family all in Atlanta for a volleyball tourney I was sprinting through work Thursday morning, scheduled a lunch meeting at a cafe in the same complex as my local fly shop- a quick stop there and I'd be free to fish all weekend.

The weather was cooperating nicely, cool for spring in these parts, but flat out balmy, at 58, for my brethren in Connecticut, Jersey, Utah and Alaska   This would be a good day!  I pulled into the parking spot, blissful to see no other vehicles.  Backed up to a nice flat piece of granite, chunked the phone and Ipad in the drivers seat and popped the trunk- my phone booth- where I make the transition from mild manner city manager of metropolis to wilderness super hero.  As I pulled out my waders, I became disoriented  cryptonite? something in the gear bag was amiss, something was not where it should have been!  Like the good people of metropolis trying to comprehend how a man in a cape could fly, I stood staring in the trunk, mind unable to comprehend how there was only one wading boot.  I instinctively began rummaging through the gear, then even went and looked in the backseat of the car- all the while knowing that I had dropped off the boot for repairs on Monday and had even put on my calendar today to pick it up- but there I was, ready to start my fish-a-thon weekend and only one wading boot, but knowing I had in fact two feet.

I felt sick.  The responsible thing to do would be to drive back to the office and go back to work.  I wondered for a moment if I could wade in my neoprene booty.  Sometime I had an old pair of running shoes in the car or my work out bag with running shoes, but not today.

Dressed for Success

To appreciate this little crisis, you have to understand it in the context of the bigger crisis of my life.  Ok, not really a crisis but certainly conflict.  Too much of my very limit mental capacity is spent trying to determine if I am a trout bum or a respectable father of five, manager of a large organization, and leader of my community and church.  The two can never seem to peacefully coexist.  And while fishing certainly gives needed respite and makes me better, I hope, at all the other stuff, the desire to be on the stream is constantly battling with all the important stuff, even sometimes ripping the "important" off the "stuff" - exactly as our blog mission has been so perfectly stated by Judge Traver, "And sometimes he fishes not because he regards fishing as being so terribly important but because he suspects that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant."


So as I snapped a picture of my solution to the problem, I knew that I had captured exactly the conflict I often experience.  I also knew I had taken a real and metaphorical step to resolving the conflict.
Twenty years from now this will be part of the lore and legend my grand kids will know about me.  They wont care what I accomplished in my career, but they will know that their grandpa loves to fish so much that he once waded the trout stream wearing a $150 dress shoe- which was ruined of course!

By the way, the shoe did ok on slick rocks, I'm thinking about using that soft rubber dress shoe sole for a new line of feltless boots.  Fishing was tough, but didn't matter, I was out there, doing what I loved and caught a few fish in places other piscators must of over looked.