It’s green for go on spring-loaded imaginings

I long for winter to be over. There, I said it, knowing full well writing it down or saying it out loud most likely condemns us to at least one more hefty dart of snow.

But done is done — that mistake has been made.

Out of a sense of penitence, I offer a preview — or perhaps, a diversion.

Up early. Up early enough that sunrise is just a promise on the horizon, a June morning with the house still, making soundless coffee, standing close to the stove, not letting the kettle whistle.

Backpack’s ready — long boots and heavy socks are poised by the back door. The coffee takes too long to make, and then it’s too hot to drink quickly — I could put it in a traveller mug, but ritual says no. Stand by the window, looking out, and suffer through. It’s my equivalent to having to have a full breakfast before anyone can open Christmas presents — mild cruelty and deep eager anticipation all bound up together.

Quick inventory on the way out the door — knapsack with field lunch, map, fly rod and reel, fly box, bug spray, boots with socks tucked inside.

Ready for the quick car ride to somewhere new.

The best is when it’s somewhere you’ve scouted but never fished — either a brook leading through ponds you’ve picked out on a 1:50,000-scale topographical map during the dark of a winter snowstorm, or following a freshet that runs under a side road that you only noticed during the full pelt of the spring runoff. Destination set, only driving prudence holds you back.

Rules are, you leave the car on the same side of the road as the direction, upriver or down, that you plan on taking. Every one of us is only a quick fall away from immobility, and searchers deserve at least a starting point.

The larch needles are still in their early stage of bunched fingertips, soft and rubbery to the touch, tragically easy to dislodge just by pushing your way through the branches. Birds in full spring cacophony — announcing, discussing, romancing — and moving through it disturbs only the closest of the singers. Chickadees land on nearby spruce tips near the brown-paper-wrapped new growth of the spruce buds, and offer their traditional chickadee head-tilt of curious inspection.

All the plant life on the brookside is wearing the bright greens of brand new — leaves unfolding, buds splitting. The scent is of fresh crushed but unfamiliar herbs — full and bright.

Then, onto the brook itself. The sound of the water all around you: the small musical notes of small flows falling for mere inches in between and over round rocks — the more complex, full sounds of larger water falling over angle-falls and rushing through chutes.

If you’ve picked it from a map, the cross-hatches tell you there are falls coming. Two- or three-bar falls will be large enough for significant pools. The best places to stop, especially if the trees reach their branches in over the top, bringing shade to as much of the water’s surface as possible.

The rod was put together standing by the car, the fly line threaded through the line-guides, the thin leader tied tight and then tied to the eye of a fly with a barrel knot, familiar though it’s been winter since you’ve tied one.

Loft a small Grey Adams fly into the foam of a small waterfall, drawing it out slowly so it resembles an insect that has been drawn into the spume and is trying to scramble clear. A trout dimples up — there’s the wonder of not knowing, when the rise is so slight. Not knowing what size of fish there might be, not even by the sip of the rise, only knowing from experience that the pool is large enough for reasonable fish.

More rises. A strike or two, which you invariably handle awkwardly, early in the year.

You catch and keep a few — enough for dinner, maybe. Sleek-sided trout, dark along the back, bright-sided with white and bronze sides, colourful spots. They shine bright in the sun; you nest them in wet handfuls of moss to keep them damp. Or you don’t catch any. It doesn’t matter.

The day warms, and the fish slide into their high-sun noontime lull, slipping slowly deep in the pools, out of sight.

Stop for lunch. Sitting, you realize the river rocks are warm beneath you — it feels like a particularly fine rediscovery. Make a small stick-fire on a stone berm reaching out into the river, just enough to boil a kettle for strong tea and to cook a fat sausage threaded onto an alder branch to hold it out over the flames.

There’s a grey jay. There’s always a grey jay, rude and pushy and curious, but you’re glad of the company.

There is spruce smoke in your eyes no matter where you sit, and an aerial carnival of black flies has arrived and is desperately seeking landing places to bite, bug spray be damned.

As excited as you are to be out on this kind of day, you might find you slip into an easy nap, waking to find the sunlit side of you too warm, and the shadow side, too cool.

The day dawdles. You can feel like you’ve been out all day, and your phone — oh, that’s right, you’d forgotten, you have a phone — will tell you it’s barely past noon.

And all of afternoon is still ahead.

The truth is that winter is not all that far away in either direction, but, just right now, far enough.

Far enough.