Fishing the Flood

Some random insights from life in a federal disaster area:

Pumps are whining. Calves are drowning. Neighbors are either distraught or blithely delighting in hardship. Even basic functions like getting clean water or flushing a toilet become hour-long odysseys. And the critters… the dry ground is literally crawling with deer mice and voles and shrews that have been displaced from their lower-lying habitats.

Still, life goes on. I got to town yesterday and made the rounds, checking out flood damage, when I came across this scene.

Brothers Addison and Bobby were capitalizing on the high water. Bobby holding the sign that had been leaned up against the plank bridge, Addison wetting a line.

“I felt a couple of tugs, but nothing yet,” said Addison when I asked that universal of all angling questions: How’s the fishing.

Our water will recede. Our land will dry out. But there will always be a kid with a rod, making the best of any situation.