yeah, that feels better!

This is what spring looks like:

We caught those little beauties last night not a half-mile from our home and less than a quarter-mile from where the creek meets the ocean. L caught the biggest one, I caught the other two.

These could be anadrymous trout, meaning that they spend part of their time in salt water and part of their time in the fresh water of the creek, but we could not tell. When anadrymous trout first return from salt to fresh water, their skin is very silvery and the color of their flesh is sort of pinkish, almost like salmon, but lighter. The color fades after a few weeks in the fresh water and they look like regular trout. These girls (all three were female) were all the characteristic greenish with bright spots and blunt tail and pale whitish flesh that mark the native Maine brook trout.

They were delicious. I ate them for breakfast today. Dredged in an egg wash with milk and then dusted vigorously with flour and a little cornmeal. I fried them in just the littlest bit of olive oil (we were out of regular oil) and splashed a little lemon juice on them at the table. Utterly divine!

No fishing today - too much to do - but maybe tomorrow. It's supposed to be a nice day!

life all at once

Why is it that life seems to happen all at once? For two weeks I have not been able to get out of my own way. I had nothing to do and too much time to do it. It was rainy and crappy and nasty and depressing.

Then this week, the sun came out, the air warmed up, the peepers have started and I've got enough work to make it impossible for me to go fishing. Ain't that just a kick in the head.

I began my day by crawling under a seasonal cabin to look at the copper pipes there. I did not quite fit, and it was wet and cold and filled with soggy leaves and half-eaten acorns stashed by some hyperactive squirrel from the previous season. The cabins are built on posts and have lattice skirting to prevent things from getting too soggy under there, but in the third full week of April after a particularly wet winter, it was still plenty damp down there for me. I was able to make progress as the day went along, but it seemed like some kind of ritual getting dirty thing that I needed to do to get it over with so I didn't spend the rest of my day trying not to make a mess. Sort of like eating a toad first thing every day. After that, the day's got to get better. First thing to do on the job, crawl through the mud and get leaves into your underwear. After that, ripping up the floor and building a wall was a walk in the park.

Speaking of the park...

I took a beautiful ride through part of Acadia tonight on my way home. The picture here is taken from the place where Cromwell Harbor Brook flows out of the Great Meadow and under the Park Loop Road, right at the end of Ledgelawn Avenue. As I walked around trying to find the best shot, I was struck by the quiet, and then my something else. There was something beyond the silence, something at first just out of my ear's perception. Then it hit me. I was hearing a high-pitched whine, almost, a loud chirping by so many voices as to become one single endless note of song. The peepers were out. Spring is here. This weekend I will MAKE time to go fishing.