When Ambien fails!
You know when it happens. Those nights, when all the TV and/or reading just doesn't work. The drugs of choice for we insomniacs won't touch it. What is it with our internal clocks. Or maybe, like myself, our small brains just try to work overtime and sleep comes only when there is an hour or two of night left. Figures! Murphy was truly an optimist.
I have found that often my memory (long term because short term is shot) can carry me back to things I find soothing. Well if not soothing, then something that can help me gain the unconsciousness I look for. For me that memory flash often revolves around photography, places I have been, or things I enjoy doing. Generally all of the above! Or in my case, it most likely was a past fishing trip. Such a catharsis often starts on the big lake in New Hampshire.
A number of times, when we put the lake to bed, there is no breeze blowing and a colorful sunset. Such conditions portend a upcoming morning ideal for small craft and the pursuit of such finny creatures that swim.
On nights like these the pines will hardly whisper and the hoots of the owls in the deep woods with reverberate with unerring pleads for a mate or at least a friend. The loons will bounce their haunting calls over flats expanses of water as if in an echo chamber. The Lord promises that the next morning will be like that of the first day he created.
However, a night wind whispering or roaring through the pines, will portend more of the same the next morning. Which in the spring means an extra cup of Pikes Place Roast (bless you Starbucks), extra layers of long underwear, sweaters, and gloves plus hats to cover the more delicate tools of the angler's trade.
We always leave the dock and head around the "Summer house" or the gazebo on the small point of land upon which the cabin complex is found. This is the eastern shore of the lake and as such will not show the light until the sun is at least an hour over the horizon.
The water is black along the shore, even though at noon we can see bottom ten feet down. At this time of day all is dark with a shoreline that offers mystery, hope, anticipation, and the feeling of being isolated with nature. The water brightens as we slip quietly offshore. Colors move from the black of night to a silver blue cast of a rising sun without the contaminants of pollution that create a bight and colorful sunrise. A hard blue, crystal clear sky promises a slight breeze and chop on the water in an hour or two. Until them we contend with a gentle start to the dahy and a flat lake that gives up her secrets with every ripple.
Oh my gosh! I think I am falling asleep!
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