I’m cleaning out my liquor cabinet at home. As cleaning goes, this isn’t the worst thing. I mean, I’m drinking liquor every evening, and I’m actually being “productive” in the process. That the liquor is of rather marginal quality, purchased during the less discriminating years of my youth, is of little consequence. Actually, given the nature of some of this stuff, I can probably lay claim to loftier goals than simple productivity. Ridding the world of such noxious and dangerous distillations as Goldschlager and Drambuie is surely worth a Nobel Prize of some sort. Either Peace or Chemistry should do. From what I hear they’re practically tossing the things out like candy at a small town Christmas parade these days.

I’ve found that I can drink almost anything if mixed with the appropriate amount of soda. The type of soda is relatively unimportant as long as it’s present in sufficient volume to tolerably dilute the liquor. Ginger ale, Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper. They’re all okay although good old Coca-Cola Classic is the preferred diluting agent. As a matter of principle I refuse to ruin a good root beer on this stuff.

It’s amazing how much stuff one can accumulate when taking up a new interest. And it all seems so important at the time. You know how it is. You don’t really know anything about it. Actually learning about it will take too long. So you do the natural thing and buy a bunch of stuff. Somewhere down the line you realize you really only like good bourbon, single malt Scotch from Islay, bamboo fly rods and dry flies.

You know where this is leading. For those like myself, who tend to over-do things, a similar task must eventually be undertaken with one’s hobbies, or else you will soon find yourself buried under the rubble. This usually isn’t as much fun as cleaning out the liquor cabinet, but, luckily, cleaning out the liquor cabinet can ease the pain if performed in parallel. I first cleaned house with my fishing a good many years back. During my early college years I was into conventional bass fishing when suddenly I realized that the high-speed bass boat, couple dozen rods, and two ridiculously gigantic tackle boxes full of all manner of lures just no longer did “it” for me. The reason I wanted to go fishing in the first place was to get away from just this sort of thing. I had been reading a book on backpack fly fishing in the Rocky Mountains. This was “it.” This was what I wanted to do. I would take up fly fishing and get away from the competitiveness, crowds and expense. Don’t laugh about the expense part. I was naive and idealogical, and really I do still believe it possible to take up fly fishing without spending a fortune. It’s just not likely.

So anyway, I cleaned house. I didn’t exactly get rid of all my bass fishing gear, but I cut out its practice almost completely. At first my fly fishing was fairly simple and cheap. I had a rather inexpensive fly rod, cheap reel, level fly line from Walmart and a handful of flies. Slowly I improved my system until I had some nice gear that was actually fun to fish with. I was going for trout in East Tennessee several times a year and loving it. Toss in the regular local trips for bass and bluegill and things were positively rosy.

Then things took a turn for the worse. First came tying my own flies, then rod-building, bamboo rods, silk lines, photography, and running a blog about it all. Late last year, after we got back from Glacier, I crashed. The evidence is the utter lack of new content over the past few months. Everything just got to be a bit too much. I went fishing less last year than any other year in my life. What recreation I did take part in had begun to feel like a second job. For example, at one time I was working on three graphite rods, restoring an 8wt bamboo rod, repairing a bass rod for a friend of my father’s, tying flies for the whole group in preparation for the Glacier trip, reading three books sent to me for review, and sorting and editing hundreds of photos. The evenings and weekends just weren’t time enough to finish it all, and certainly not if I actually wanted to go fishing in there somewhere. A change had to be made. The house had gotten pretty dusty.

Much of this is a byproduct of growing up and getting older, I suppose. As long as I have a house, a full-time job, a family and all the attendant responsibilities I simply won’t be able to play all the games I want to play all the time. I mean, I love all those different aspects of the sport, but if I’m to retain my sanity, some of them must be tossed out with that empty bottle of Southern Comfort.

I guess all of this is getting around to my saying that you can expect some changes on the site this year. I plan to do more fishing for the fun of it and less of the stuff that began to feel like work. Most of this boils down to a simple change in attitude rather than a drastic change in the actual activities. For awhile there I felt like I needed to post new content on the site every couple days just to keep the site viable. What “viable” meant is anyone’s guess. All I know is it began to feel like work. So now I’m just going to post something when I feel like posting something. I mean, no one out there is paying me for this stuff, so why should I feel like I have to please some intangible boss? I write because I enjoy it, at least I plan to from now on and that’s how this started anyway. Also, any ideas I had about building rods on the side for some spare change are getting tossed out with the Jack. I still plan to dabble in building rods, but it will be for my own pleasure. Maybe some day I might sell some rods on the side but only after I extract myself from the rat race. One job is enough, thank you. And I’m going to make a conscious effort to simplify my actual fishing. The first steps have already been taken. I’ve cut my Smokies fly boxes down to two tiny tobacco tins, one for nymphs and streamers and another for dries and wets. The vest will be left at home for anything other than a full-scale expedition to tough and unfamiliar water. I’m not buying any new rods until there’s a real need for it. New emphasis will be placed on backpack fly fishing, which is my favorite anyway and one of the reasons I took up fly fishing to start with. Certainly, I still plan to take photos when I go fishing, but once again the attitude will be different. I will engage in photography because I like to, not because I feel like I need to for the site or to improve my skills or for any other reason than the shear joy of it.

Looking back at all I just wrote, here is what I see: a poor and exceedingly verbose attempt to tie cleaning out the liquor cabinet with simplifying my fishing. But you know what? I don’t care because I had fun doing it, and that’s really the point, right? Why has fishing (and really recreation in general) become so blamed serious? I guess that can of worms is topic enough for another essay. Anyway I’m back, I’m not planning to let the site die (in fact I just paid another year’s hosting bill last week), I’m determined to have a lot more fun with fly fishing (and fishing in general) in the coming year, I hope to share some of that with you, and I really do think the site will be improved because of it. But if it’s not, then who cares? Take care,

Nathan

No, this has nothing to do with fishing. But it’s something I needed to write. My Dad, Ronald Walker, was born January 28, 1947 and passed away two years ago this February. My brother placed this memorial on his gravesite not long after the game. God bless you, Dad. Roll Tide.

Ronald Walker's tombstone.

Memories – especially those clouded by years and circumstances past – eventually fade, leaving more of a feeling in their place than the specifics of the event. But there are a few, a precious few, that stick with you as if they happened yesterday.

One of my earliest, and clearest, memories is of flying through the air…

It was 1970-something, and Alabama was in the middle of one of the greatest decade-long displays of brilliance ever displayed on the college field. It was a time when all fans just knew Bama was going to win every game – the only question was by how much.

The details of that particular game on that particular Saturday afternoon have long faded. I have no idea who we were playing, nor what the score eventually was. I do know it was post Johnny ‘Italian Stallion’ Musso and before the Goal Line Stand against Penn State in 1979, but a lot of the rest of it is gone.

What’s crystal clear to me, though, is my dad.

We were watching the game in the small living room of our 3 bedroom home in Theodore, Alabama – tacky 70’s wood paneling covering half the wall, and carpet that looked like an epileptic nightmare of tan, brown and black. Something big had happened and my Uncle Sonny – who may as well have been a second father to me, as much time as our two families spent with each other – picked me up in his exuberance, kissed me square on the face, and launched me across the room.

I remember that celebratory feeling that something really good had just happened. I remember us all erupting in joy…how loud my Uncle Sonny’s ROLL TIDE yell was…the whoops and hollers I could hear from the kitchen…how happy I was, surrounded by everyone there.

But the clearest vision I have, the one that stands out as if it were happening right now, this very instant, is my Dad catching me.

Two arms that seemed, to me, as big as tree trunks, snatching me out of the air with hands strong and hard as steel. Before I ever felt even the tug of gravity pulling me back to Earth, he lifted me up toward the ceiling, hands just under my arms, and looked up. Right at me.

He had on a Bama T-shirt – white, with a crimson A on it… an elephant coming through the opening – and his mustached face had just a little grizzle on it from not shaving that morning. His face shined with happiness. His smile big as I’d ever seen it. And his eyes practically GLOWED.

My Dad’s eyes sparkled all the time. I don’t know if I’ve ever told anyone that, but they did.

It couldn’t have happened for more than a moment, a brief couple of seconds in the middle of mayhem all around me, but it seemed like forever. There was nothing else. For this moment, anyway, it was just me and him.

I don’t remember being put down from that embrace, probably because I don’t ever want to. I’ll always remember my father just like that. Strong… good lord, he was strong. Steady. 10 feet tall and bulletproof. And smiling, with those sparkling eyes shining on me.

On January 7th of this year, Alabama laid claim to its 13th National Championship. I watched the game with my own family, and celebrated long after the clock read zeroes and the scoreboard told the tale. I called friends and relatives, and jabbered back and forth with people at work. I put the stickers on the truck and stayed up long past the end of the game, taping every Sportscenter and news outlet I could find on the season.

Then, late that evening, I found a quiet place and remembered a game a long time ago. One where I wasn’t alone with the hero of my life, but one where we shared a moment together. And I thought, even though it’s not high on the priority list up there, this one is for you, Dad.

I love you, Dad. I miss you. Roll Tide….

PS Maybe it’s corny to you – dedicating a silly football game to someone past. But for our family, Bama football has always been a big part of life. Dad was the biggest Bama fan I’ve ever known, and we spent almost every fall Saturday together, watching and listening to Bama play. He loved it, and I loved being a part of it with him.

Matt

I guess winter is setting in. It’s cold, windy and rainy here in North Alabama. For all intents and purposes, fishing season is over. Sure, there’s no closed fishing season here, and you can still fish if you want to, but as John Gierach says, “You don’t have to.” Even if you did fish in this kind of weather, you probably wouldn’t catch much unless you’re into watching a bobber with a minnow under it or crawling bass lures over deep ledges. A few trips to Tennessee tailwaters are planned over the winter, but there isn’t much urgency right now. At least not until after the Bama-Florida game this coming weekend.

It’s hitting me hard this time, the whole winter and not fishing thing. I fished less this year than any other year in my life, well, at least the years that count. And it’s eating at me. I’m already restless before December. Destination guides are piling up beside the bed and toilet. By the end of February things could be downright desperate. In the meantime, I’ve apparently decided to amuse myself with photos of leaves. You’ll find a couple from the weekend below.

In other news, Reed Curry’s book on Trout, UV Vision and fly tying is finally out! He sent me a copy to review, and I’ll post my thoughts as soon as I can plow through it. In the meantime you shouldn’t wait on my review to buy the book. Reed’s as fine a writer as you’ll come across, and you can bet his book is entertaining, quirky, informative and highly useful. Check it out on his site!

I think all these leaves are from a pear tree.

I arranged them a couple ways, aiming for something sort of random but not quite.

Take care,
Nathan

In A River Runs Through It (whether the movie or the novella I don’t remember – I sometimes confuse scenes from the two), Norman Maclean tells of how his father valued brevity in writing. Reading through my post about online fishing magazines, I realize this is something sorely missing from my own writing style.

The latest issue of Fish Can’t Read was just published. It’s full of good material. I like it. I also like Catch magazine. Between the two, you’ll find just about the best fly fishing content on the web. I’m just not sure the periodically-published flipbook style will persist. I think more regularly published high quality content will eventually prove more successful. There – that’s really all I wanted to say with that bloated post from a couple weeks back.

Jason fishing a small North Alabama stream in early morning light.

Brevity is also of use in reporting on the fishing trip Jason Kelley and I took over the weekend. The plan was to scout lots of potential smallmouth streams in our area, and catch some good fish to end up the season. We did scout several streams, some of which looked very good. We didn’t catch many fish. No smallmouth. We tried everything we could think of to no avail. The weather was great. We sampled several good beers. Dinner at Logans Roadhouse was good, and both Alabama (for me – Roll Tide!) and Arkansas (for Jason – Go Razorbacks!) won big in their games on Saturday night. We decided that we didn’t face enough adversity to deserve to catch any fish. With that in mind we plan to take our next trip during severe storms, only drink Natty Light, eat turkey dogs charred over a campfire and be Vanderbilt fans for the night. To the left is a shot of Jason fishing the first creek of the morning. I’m still editing photos, and I’ll post a few more as I finish them. I imagined how I wanted this shot to look when I snapped the photo and came pretty close to getting it there in the post-processing.

Take care,
Nathan

One day this week, I’ll post a report on a smallmouth trip Jason Kelley and I took over the weekend, but don’t expect many fish photos. We knew going in that this would be a scouting trip, and for the most part we struck out. Okay, that’s an understatement. We were completely whipped and embarrassed by not just the smallmouth but by all warmwater species present in our streams. At least the scenery was nice. Here’s Jason fishing one of the small creeks we explored:

Jason fishing a small stream in North Alabama.

I wrote this essay about the one good day of fishing we had in Glacier National Park last summer.

I was hiking to fish a high cutthroat lake inside Glacier National Park with my father and my wife. Not the most orthodox of fly fishing parties, but then again I’m not the most orthodox of fishermen and fly fishing’s not the most orthodox of subcultures, so it all seemed natural enough.

When we finally scrambled off the steep hillside and down to the lakeshore, we brushed the limbs to the side for our first close-up look. At least half a dozen cutthroat trout were scattered around lazily sipping something from the surface. Unfortunately for us, a gentleman was already there casting to them. He appeared to be the only other fisherman on the lake, so we worked our way around the west shore, the eastern side being a shear slope of loose talus that we didn’t feel like tackling. Besides, the west side appeared to hold most of the shallow water when we took our first look from high above.

I found it tough to contain the jitters. Every fisherman must know something like this when there are big fish right there, and you don’t know if you can catch them. And I was far from certain. I don’t know why I have so much trouble catching trout from a lake. I mean, my whole life I’ve been catching bass and bluegills from ponds and lakes, and from streams so sluggish they might as well have been lakes. What’s so different about trout?

I suppose a lot of it boils down to me still being a swamp water bass fisherman in fact if not at heart. I just can’t get it out of my head that catching a fish from water that still, shallow and clear is impossible or at least highly unlikely. Most friends would call me an experienced fisherman, but the majority of that experience has taken place on the aforementioned ponds, lakes and muddy streams, and with conventional bass tackle instead of a fly rod. Trout are still a beautiful, exotic species. A handful of trips for trout every year just doesn’t saturate you with the confidence that comes from living and breathing fishing like I did for bass back during my early college years.

And it’s not just the lakes that continue to bother me. What is it about the bugs? I mean, with bass, you just toss something big, gaudy and meaty out there and wind it back any way you want. Eventually you’ll find a bass hungry and mean enough to eat just about anything. I’m beginning to think all that crap about the confident fly fisherman calmly identifying the correct insect, tying on an imitation and catching trout is just that. Crap. Here’s how it happens this time, which is fairly typical of my experience:

I climb out on a rock and look over the lake. There are several fish rising. What are they eating? I don’t see a thing on the water. If I didn’t know better, I’d say these fish had gone mad from hunger and were sipping at nothing, convinced they were dining on fat green drakes. Nothing’s flying in the air either. I try an old trick, that did actually work one magical day on the Lamar River, and brush the grass trying to stir any clinging insects to flight. Nothing other than a few scrawny grasshoppers, and I’m certain the fish aren’t feeding on those. I take my hat and use it like an aquarium net to seine the surface of the water. Nothing shows up in there either. So, I tie on an Adams. Read the rest of this entry »

I really don’t think there is that much wrong with the online fly fishing magazines, at least not the ones I like (namely Catch and Fish Can’t Read). If you haven’t checked them out, you should. Catch is chock full of great photography and sweet videos. It’s unique in that it focuses solely on the photography and videography of the sport. Fish Can’t Read is broader, sporting well-written feature articles in addition to nice photography. Both magazines are published on roughly the same timeline as a print magazine might be, and both use a digital flipbook format. As I said, I like them both, but I’m not sure either will ever be a roaring success, at least not financially.

My reasoning is that they’ll never be able to generate the ad revenue needed to keep going in their current format. I probably spend a couple hours with each issue, so if you have an ad in there, you get my attention for maybe a couple minutes every two months. That’s just not much. For their sake I hope I’m not the average reader. With a print magazine, I might look at it every couple days for a month or so, assuming I leave it in the magazine rack by the toilet or lying by the bed. I just don’t believe these new magazines are taking full advantage of the internet. I mean, one of the things I dislike about print magazines is that I have to wait a couple months before I get a new one. Well, if you’re running an online magazine, there’s no reason to limit your audience in this way. Why not publish new content at least a couple times every week? Why wait until you have a whole magazine’s worth of content before publishing any of it? My suggestion to those looking to craft an online magazine would be to use the blog format, but not make it a blog, if that makes sense. Simply use blogging software (Wordpress would work just fine) to publish your content as it’s ready for publication instead of using the flipbook format. Just because it’s Wordpress doesn’t mean you have to call it a “blog.” Wordpress would simply function as your content management and publication system. You could even maintain an editorial “blog” as a separate section on the site.

No one out there’s doing this, and I really don’t understand why. Midcurrent is probably the closest, but it doesn’t really do what I’m talking about here. Not yet anyway. What I’d like to see is an online magazine that publishes very high quality features at least twice every week. Maybe Monday I can go in to work and read a feature essay about someone’s backcountry trip. On Thursday I have a video about tarpon fishing from float tubes in some croc-infested swamp. For the weekend I get a full-length article related to fly tying, and the next week I am treated to a photo essay on Alaska’s monster rainbows. These wouldn’t be your typical blog entries. They would be full-fledged articles and features just like those being published in the magazines, but instead I’d be fed material more regularly. On top of that, I’d be visiting the site daily looking for new goodies, and therefore I’d see the ads every day instead of just once a month. You’d need to figure out how best to get the ads seen without causing too much irritation. That’s one good thing about the flipbook style – you see the ads as you flip pages, but it doesn’t feel overly intrusive. Personally I would publish large, attractive, image-based ads (similar in look to the ads in the flipbooks) as the feature post on days when no new content was ready. That’s in addition to sidebar and a few in-line ads. Please, no pop-ups or pop-unders!! Also, you could have a section listing guides, shops and lodges for specific locations, much like the print magazines have in back. I would actually find that feature useful.

Something like this just might pull in enough ad revenue to make the whole thing click. Of course, you’d need really high quality material. The writers, photographers and video-makers would need to be paid for their contributions. In addition to the features, you could include a breaking news section, a weekly editorial opinion section (which would be like a normal blog entry), and a forum. You’d need to maintain a presence on all the social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, but the truth is, something like this wouldn’t be that tough to do, and I’m a little puzzled as to why the digital flipbook has become the format of choice?

I think you’d have to keep the whole thing free and make it work on ad money alone (and maybe a few other things like calendars, DVDs, fine art prints, etc). I know I just wouldn’t pay for something like this. There’s too much good material out there in blogs, forums, etc. for me to pay for online content. There are still print magazines good enough that I’ll pay to receive them, but I haven’t come across any website that I’d pay for a subscription to. Midcurrent is probably best positioned to make a run at something like this, but I’m not sure it’s what they’d want to do. You may ask why I’m not trying it myself. Well, I think whoever does it needs to be positioned as an “insider.” Someone who has the clout and respect to pull in the requisite talent quickly, and maybe convince that talent to work for free for the first couple months. I’m about as far from that description as you can get. Heck, I don’t reckon I even fish any more. Doesn’t feel like it anyway. I just post and read about it, and I like pretty fishing pictures. So, what do you think? I want to see these folks succeed. I like the content, and I like the people. Plus I want a good product, and I want it more often. Tell me what you think.

Take care,
Nathan

Have you ever been out on a Southern bass lake in the middle of the night? It’s a scary place. As scary as any old house. It’s like the inviting, fun-filled lake you’re familiar with becomes another world after dark. Especially a big, Southern lake like Lake Guntersville. It teems with life, most of it seemingly involved in the massive, slithering convulsions you hear all around. You can’t tell how far away or how close most of it is. Sometimes things bump the sides of the boat. Other times you hear something in the air. Bats? Who knows? You’re unsure if a bat would be better or worse than what you’re imagining. You hope it’s neither. Guntersville is choked with aquatic weeds. This adds its own creepiness once the light of day is gone. The thought of falling into that choking, clinging mass can paralyze you with fear, any ideas of a cooling midnight swim long forgotten. Carp, big bass and other, mostly benign creatures are responsible for the majority of the noises, but in the darkness the human imagination can be a frightful, even deadly thing.

But there are bass to be caught. Big ones that don’t like to come out and play during the harsh summer sun of daylight. So lots of us fish the lake at night, or at least we did years ago. Back when I was a kid, there were nighttime bass tournaments that let out from the Mud Creek boat ramp every Tuesday night. My brother and I would sometimes fish with our dad. We would get lucky on occasion and win one, but mostly Bobby Hutchins won them all with everyone else fighting for second place. Bobby was a heck of a fisherman. He was a skinny, older fellow who was a legend among the local bass fishermen. Bobby always fished alone and always at night. He was extremely secretive about the lures he used and his favorite fishing holes. He was friendly enough, but the rest of us always got the feeling he was making fun of us somehow, especially at weigh-in time when he’d wait quietly until everyone else had weighed their fish. Then he’d pull the winning stringer out and pick up his check.

This didn’t bother me too much. I was just a kid, and I felt lucky just to be hanging around so many good fishermen. Plus, like I said, we’d occasionally win one of the tournaments anyway. By the time I got in junior high school, my friends and I didn’t fish the tournaments any more. Our dads got the crazy idea that we were old enough to be paying our own entry fees if we wanted to fish, so we just went out by ourselves in the little aluminum boat with wooden seats that we had christened The Hawgdaddy. We’d row the boat over to watch the weigh-ins, but mostly we decided that we liked the fishing better than the competing anyway.

Then one night Bobby didn’t show up at the weigh-in. They found his boat in McIntyre Slough, but they didn’t find his body until early the next morning. Officially his drowning was an accident, but there were some pretty rough characters who fished those tournaments. Characters who didn’t take well to donating their hard-earned money to Bobby every week, and who might have grown tired of Bobby’s smug attitude. We always figured some of them did Bobby in that night.

A couple years went by, and most people forgot about the whole thing, or at least didn’t think about it much. Us kids didn’t though. We’d go out fishing at night on the lake in the Hawgdaddy, and we’d scare each other with stories about Bobby’s ghost stalking the shores of the lake on the darkest nights, eternally searching for those who held his head under that black water. Like I said, Lake Guntersville at night is a scary place. It wasn’t hard to scare each other. Read the rest of this entry »

Dutchess and Me

We lost a good dog this weekend. Dutchess was nineteen years old (yes, we know her name is a misspelling, and we don’t care). She was a chow mix mutt. Jacqulyn and her were friends long before Jacqulyn and I even met, so it was always understood that, while I might be a human member of the clan, Dutchess nonetheless held a somewhat higher position in the hierarchy.

I did come into the picture early enough that I got to meet Dutch during her mature but still highly active years. There was nothing she liked so much as to chase a cat away from its dinner, and then help herself to it. Dutch had the pickiest eating habits I’ve ever seen in a canine, leaving us to sometimes practically beg her to eat, but the one sure way to make her eat was to try to give her food away to one of the cats.

Dutch didn’t know many tricks, apparently considering them below her dignity. Well, she was a Duchess, you know. Still, she had a few eccentricities that could be exploited for the benefit of all who enjoy good play. You could angrily bark “Get ‘em Dutch!” and she’d immediately switch into guard dog mode, attacking any invisible villains in the area. If you clapped your hands and yelled “Get Dutch!” repeatedly like a hyperactive child high on sugar, she would run circles around you as quickly as she could.

That was my favorite game with her. I’d get her going and then try to tackle her. She picked up on it, and a raucous game of tag would ensue with Dutchess almost always coming out the winner. One particular time she flat out tackled me. Dutch was blind in her left eye, the unfortunate result of a shooting accident when she was a pup. I made the mistake of chasing her on that left side where, of course, she couldn’t see me. She turned and cut my feet right out from under me like an NFL cornerback, sending me tumbling down a hill. When I managed to sit myself upright, Dutchess pounced on me with what appeared to be a big grin on her face, apparently not sorry in the least for nearly crippling me. Anyone who says a dog can’t smile obviously never knew Dutch, or most any other dog for that matter. Or maybe they’ve only known sad dogs, which Dutchess most certainly was not.

Dutchess and I shared a healthy fear of lightening, however we reacted to it differently. I tend to seek shelter, feeling most comfortable with something over my head. Dutchess, assuming we didn’t let her in the house, would run frantically around, back and forth, right out in the rain. I assumed she was trying to keep moving so as to give the lightening a moving target. On occasion we’d let her in the house to lie peacefully on a rug until the storm passed, but generally she was an outdoor dog.

Dutch was quite a devout dog. She could be found faithfully sitting on the steps of the neighborhood church every Sunday morning for many years until we deemed her health too poor to let her make the walk. She wasn’t happy about that and sulked for some time despite our best efforts to explain our reasoning. How that dog knew it was Sunday morning, I’ll never know.

In her later years Dutchess grew quite deaf and blind and was plagued with arthritis. Even then you could easily see her excitement when we arrived for a weekend visit (Dutchess lived with Jacqulyn’s parents). Her whole body wagged when she came to greet us even though she could hardly walk, and that twinkle was still there in her one good eye when she’d hobble over to chase a cat from her food.

We held on to her as long as we could, until the pain she lived with daily was too much for both her and us to bear. We buried her Saturday up on the hill behind the house in a pretty spot overlooking the woods. It wasn’t much, but when we finished covering the grave with stones from the forest and planting a couple flowers, her final resting place looked pretty and peaceful.

Good bye, Dutch. We love you and miss you. You were the best. I hope we meet up again some day in a better place without pain or blindness. Rest well, girl.

Nathan

I’ve been intrigued this year with decaying fall leaves. I’ll just be walking along idly staring at the ground, and suddenly I’ll be struck with the pattern of veins or the unusual coloring of a particular leaf out of a ground covered with them. I’d like to set up some nice still life scenes using these leaves, setting them in artfully amongst a pile of other fallen leaves. You can see some nice samples of stuff like I mean on sites like www.naturephotographers.net (look in the flora gallery). So far I haven’t found the time, so I’ve gone a quicker route. I’ve always liked old wood as a background for fall leaves. Not very creative, I suppose, but it works in a pinch. A couple were photographed near where I found them while two are photographed next to a nice knot in the landscaping ties at my in-laws. I was more interested in the patterns and texture as opposed to the colors, so I went the monochrome route with them. Of course, what all this probably means is that I really need to get out and go fishing…

This leaf was still bright green in the center but fringed with a ring of decay.

I found this leaf lying near these small ferns. The lines of the ferns and the leaf are in opposing tension with each other. Not sure the composition works, but I still like the leaf.

I really liked the detail and curves of this leaf. If I had it to do over again, I would have tried to make sure the entire leaf was in focus.

These are leaves from a black walnut tree. I liked how they stood out from their mossy background, and there seems to be a sense of balance to the twig even though its weighted heavily to one side.

Take care,
Nathan