Tiny flies tied to match tiny blue-winged olive mayflies.
Hope -- in the form of tiny bugs -- fluttered into my life on a recent winter day.
I was driving along Washington's Yakima River through a landscape of clear water, skeletal winter trees and die-hard patches of crumbly, crusty snow. The Yakima River -- like most Northwest trout streams -- strips down to stark basics on a January afternoon.
Everything out there seemed to be in shades of gray or brown -- including the sky. I recalled the first time I saw grainy, black-and-white photos of World War I battlefields. I was 8 years old, and I didn't know that photographers didn't have color film in 1915.
I thought the shots of gray skies, seas of mud and shattered trees were drab and colorless because there was no color or joy left in the world during that terrible slaughter.
Now, the Yakima River in 2010 is a lot prettier than the Western Front in 1915, but I longed to see green leaves on the bankside alder trees. This winter has settled into a slow, long haul for me, and I yearn for it to give way to new life.
Perhaps I have too much time on my hands -- and too many wakeful nights. I stare out the window at the bright stars -- or scudding clouds -- and wonder what comes next for a newspaper journalist who is suddenly without a newspaper to call home.
I'm lucky -- I have lots of choices. I'm relishing the chance to start a freelance writing career -- and not have editors hovering over my shoulder. But I was a newspaper guy for a long time, and I miss the noise and bustle and brassy wit of the newsroom.
Life is suddenly quieter these days.
I suspect I need that quiet. I need to think about how newspapers -- those big, gray sheets of paper that now thump on fewer doorsteps each morning -- are vanishing into a dark eddy of closings, job cuts and carefully worded severance packages.
Most of us who spent our lives at newspapers will not work at a newspaper again. I know I am one of that tribe, but I'm not too sad about it.
I loved working at newspapers, but being inside one as it slowly died was torture. The staff -- and pages -- got skinnier and skimpier, and it was like watching a friend or beloved relative slowly shrivel away on a too-big hospital bed.
It was almost a relief when the phone rang early one morning a few weeks ago, and I got a message to come to the office for an important meeting.
I had never been fired or let go in all of my 48 years.
"So, this is what THAT feels like," I thought as I walked into the newsroom and every set of eyes swiveled to look at me. I just felt kind of empty inside, and all the late nights, fires, earthquakes, elections, car accidents, big stories and little stories of my career started to fade to gray inside my head.
After that short meeting ended, I walked back to my desk and sat down. I thought that my job -- so special to me for so long -- had boiled down into a number in a corporate computer. I didn't notice when that weirdness happened -- but it did. It's happened to plenty of other journalists as well.
So, I've had some long nights of wondering during the past few weeks. I haven't been sad or worried or depressed -- just unsettled.
On a few of those nights, I've walked to my fly-tying desk and slid a tiny hook into my vise. A size 22 hook is about the same size as the word "and" on this page, and it takes some concentration to wind thread, feathers and soft, downy fur onto that hook. But a fly that somehow looks like a blue-winged olive mayfly slowly forms under the bright glow of the desk lamp.
It's easy to fit four or five of these flies onto a penny, and 12 of them fit into a neat row into a fly box. I will need dozens of these flies for the next few months. Blue-winged olives are those mayflies that start the fishing year on Northwest trout streams. These tiny -- yet tough -- bugs swim up from the bottom rocks and weeds, poke through the surface film and split along their backs. Then a delicate mayfly -- they look like tiny sailboats on the water -- crawls out of the old skin.
The trout notice all this, and gentle rings spread over the water as fish sip bugs from the surface.
All this happens from January through spring on most trout streams. Blue-winged olives start hatching well before leaves sprout and uncurl on streamside trees, and these bugs often hatch best on snowy or rainy days. Blue-winged olives slow down in late spring, but they crank up for a second show that runs from September through late November.
These delicate bugs are happiest when it's cold, wet and miserable out there.
I think about all this as I tie one grayish-green mayfly at a time -- and watch my fly box fill with flies.
As I tie, I think about mayflies that break into a cold, new world -- and then often vanish down the gullets of trout, whitefish and diving, dipping swallows.
I think about my own new world -- and how I can't stop myself from writing about what I see, hear and feel when I'm out there in the real world. I suppose I now prefer the perils of real rattlesnakes, bears and horseflies than the ones found in office buildings. Truth is, I'm now more afraid of taking a job at a big corporation than I am of being out there on my own.
I never want to feel like an expendable number again. I want to live life on my terms -- as much as I can.
So, I had to smile the other day as I drove along the gray banks of the Yakima River. I smiled because my eyes -- always drawn to water -- caught a glimpse of delicate, spreading rings on the slow, glassy bankside water.
Rainbow trout -- feeding on hatching blue-winged olive mayflies -- were making those rings.
It's a new season, a new year -- and a new life.
