The 57th day of the year of the Camellia

LAKE WINNEPASAUKEE, NEW HAMPSHIRE

To set the scene, it is late April or possibly very early may. It is in fact, very early in the morning, probably 5:30 or 6:00 am in the New Hampshire wilderness. Well, as close to wilderness as one can get on a lake in a state so near to Boston, Ma. The sun has not completely risen over the Eastern tree line. A tree line comprised primarily of fir and pine, each competing for every square millimeter of sparse rocky soil.

The sun is still filtering through all the air pollution from the major metropolitan areas to the south such as Boston, Connecticut, and New York. The rising light is playing off the different chemicals deposited in the air, creating all the different colors one sees during the "Golden" hours.

Here the air is clear, clean, fresh and still. Likely cold at that time of morning. It smells of the pines where we spent the previous night, tightly rolled in sleeping bags, in a cabin built during the depression of the 30's.

There are five men who have spent forty years waking to this scene or a thousand variations thereof. For forty years these same five have endured each other's company for a week of landlocked salmon fishing on Lake Winnepasaukee. It is probably one of the only chances these men have to be together each year and the friendships can best be described as closer to that of brotherhood. Although there are times when the brotherhood is tested, but then that is more like sibling rivalry. Each is approaching or passing the seventy year mark, but when the card games heat up and adult beverages flow, one would think they were still in college. Or at least college age. Or at least think they are of college age. Or simply behave as if they were college age.

In the first years we would play cards till midnight and fish at five. The measure of the adult beverages consumed was in the gallons. Today, bedtime arrives around nine pm and an occasional bottle of wine or vodka is seen. Amazing what maturity can do, or undo!

Two boats, sometimes three, set forth into the image accompanying this piece. Each man full with anticipation of the first fish of the day (first winner in the daily pool) and even perhaps the largest of the day, taken early thus reducing the competition, and creating a good nature ragging.

Coffee cups rest on the gunnel's or seats of the boats, rods are held with anticipation, and another adventure begins. "Just look at that water", says one,"Today has to be a great day to fish". "There I saw a salmon rising to the surface". You can see such things on mornings like this.

Really a great day to be alive pursuing and the noble object of Sir Isaac Walton's prose.

Sorry, but we have two months to go before this scene is played out in real time. And you dear reader must endure my own anticipation and prose about that noble object.