Merwin: The Road to New Waters

I’m a little grumpy this morning. Must be the rain or maybe the barometric ache in my arthritic knee. Anyway, today I’ve had it up to here with the urban/suburban yuppy-ness that seems to have invaded the southern New England/New York trout rivers that I’ve fished so often over the past 40 years. So I’m looking for new waters.

These won’t be new in the sense of being recently manufactured, of course. Just new in that I haven’t fished them before. They aren’t hard to find. I have sometimes taken a regional highway map, for example, and with a pencil and compass set according to the map’s scale, drawn a circle with a 200-mile radius and with my home at the center. I figure that’s about the limit for a short weekend driving/ fishing/camping trip. The amount and variety of available fishing within that circle is just amazing.

This time, though, I’m looking at the northern sector. Rivers there are far enough away from the big-city ‘burbs that I’ll expect to see few other anglers–or at least few well-dressed ones. The first such trip is next week. It won’t take much–tent, sleeping bag, backpacking stove, fly and spin rods all in the back of the truck. I can get up there and back on on tank of gas. So I’ll chuck it all and live free for a couple of days. Free on the road, and free on the river. All with the fun of checking out something new….