On my way to Colchester Pond to scout some fishing spots with the hope to fill the freezer with catfish, I stopped at Biben’s Hardware for some nightcrawler worms, hooks, and ice. A bunch of old men were standing around talking and all of the workers were young men who have been instructed by their boss to ask every single customer they see, “Can I help you?” At least it seemed that way, because every single dude in that store wearing a red Ace Hardware bib asked me that.

I checked out and one of the workers said the ice machine should be unlocked, but he followed me out to make sure. It was locked, so he unlocked it and it was empty. He said, “It’s too early. Nobody’s been buying ice yet.” I looked at my receipt and said, “No worries. That is not enough money to stand in that long line and get a refund.” No time for that, trying to go fishing, not get my two dollars back. I watched him walk in and tell his boss. Hope he didn’t get in trouble for not trying to give me a refund. I drove away to the next gas station and found some ice. In total, I paid about 6 dollars for one bag.

My dog Okie came along for the ride. He’s never been a good fishing partner, but I brought him on this trip since it was my first time out there and I expected to explore more than fish. He learned a new word: “fishing.” He’s been fishing a lot but I’ve been trying to expand his vocabulary. I brought home a handful of dirt and some river grass from the Salmon Hole trail, and whenever I want to go walk there, I grab the jar of dirt and grass and put it to his nose and say, “Do you want to go to the river? River?” and he smells it closely and wags his tail. When we’re down there in the river bottom and he’s smelling the dirt, I say, “River!” He also learned “Beaver” down there. He also knows “Woods” by scent, thanks to another jar of dirt and hemlock needles. Sometimes he’s reluctant to go in the woods because, I suspect, it’s steep and he doesn’t have the best joints, and, I suspect, there is a bridge that he absolutely hates, but, I suspect, he loves the freedom of smelling around off leash in the woods once we get past those obstacles.

He knows a lot of words, but attaching words to smell is a newer thing. One time I bought some truffle oil so I could train him to find truffles. I wasn’t consistent with it and tried to retrain him after not doing it for a year, and I grabbed the first oil dropper in his box assuming it was the truffle oil, but it wasn’t until two days of finding “truffle” by smell in our living room that I realized he learned how to find CBD oil. (I got him CBD oil to help his arthritis but it makes him high, and I can attest that it’s strong because a small dose got me messed up too. Is “dog CBD” like a thing for the real stuff at a CBD store?)

We pulled up to the Colchester Pond fishing area and I saw two cars getting their fishing stuff ready. Dang. Two guys in a convertible saw me putting on my rain jacket (because it was forecast to rain during the time I planned to be out there), and one of them asked me, “Is it gonna rain? I’m gonna be so pissed.” They walked down to the lake, leaving the convertible top down. They didn’t venture very far from the parking lot. I guess it was too muddy, not sure, but me and Okie walked through ankle deep mud alongside the shore and into a thick swarm of black flies, hoping for some wind to blow them away.

Alongside the lake, part of the trail was through a forest edge ecosystem with tall grasses and sedges, which means lots of animal scents and tracks, and not many mature trees. Okie smelled a few piles of non-dog shit. At least three different species, I think a turkey, a coyote, and not sure the other big shit that didn’t look like dog shit. I had my bear spray deep in my backpack so I pulled it out and stuck it in my pocket.

So much mud. I thought “mud season” was overblown but I get it now. In the town forests, Okie doesn’t care for the bridges or boardwalks, but at least half a mile of this trail through the mud was a boardwalk (or, like a backcountry “boardwalk” with hand-hewn logs, really just 8 foot long boards stuck in the mud) and he preferred walking on that.

We found a nice spot with a bench but it wasn’t very clear to cast, so I decided to walk on since we could always come back to it. This took us up a ridge away from the lake into a different ecosystem with hemlocks and white pines, and some blowdowns that we had to navigate. Zoe taught Okie “under” and this has been a useful trick for navigating blowdowns.

We were walking with the wind at our face and Okie stopped and sniffed the air and his back got all tense with his hair sticking up and he started to growl. I said, “Hey Bear,” but I didn’t want to startle it because I’m trying to look more bears in the eyes, so it was closer to a whisper than a shout. But we didn’t see anything.

We kept walking up and I got tired out of breath. Lost some endurance after I got covid/stopped running/been trying to heal some back pain. Thought about turning around, but I wanted to check out the north shore because I saw a vague comment on the lakechamplainunited.com fishing message board about the “north shore” of this lake being a good fishing spot, and it seems like a good spot based on what I know about the fish I’m trying to eat. Especially good if everybody fishes by the parking lot.

We walked down the hill until we found a granite memorial bench situated at a good fishing spot on the lakeside. Somebody owned this land then they died and donated the land to be a part of the public park. The only catch is they must be memorialized at the land with this stone bench in which something is etched about whoever it was. I didn’t read what the bench said, but I got worm guts and worm dirt in the letters, and I felt bad for accidentally defacing this memorial, but remembered the rain and wind would turn it all to dust anyway whatever. And I find it rude that these dead people would mark their ownership of this beautiful piece of land that they no longer own.

Made Okie drink water while I got my fishing spot setup, and tried to get him to lay down but he’s in livestock guardian mode whenever we’re in the woods. I told him that we’re “fishing” and made him smell my hands with worm dirt and the fishing pole and the tackle.

My first cast was terrible. It wasn’t very far, and I think the hook was sitting on the bottom because I set the bobber too high trying to catch some catfish close to the bottom. They come up on the shore during the spring. I don’t know this climate, so I don’t know when they come up on the shore, but I do know that catfish come up on the shore during the spring to spawn. They love the shores where I learned to fish because some of the shores have a ~10 foot high wall with gravelly sedimentation which erodes easily and makes nice big holes underwater for the fish. Need to find something like that here, or learn what sort of shores they like to come up on since I’m not sure if that type of wall is here.

The first cast got hung up. I couldn’t reel it in, nor could I pull it hard enough to snap the line. Finally it came free and my hook was wormless. Did I just miss a fish? I’m so bad at fishing yet I still love to do it. Catfish is the only thing I can consistently catch, and it’s because I know their spawning habits, which seems like something that might be considered immoral 100 years from now. I did a few more casts while Okie whined at me and faced towards the trail ready to keep going. Okie dokie, we will keep going.

Got to another spot that felt like a good place for animals to travel or hangout. Okie stopped while he was smelling the air and his hair raised on his back. I’m listening, trying to hear the bear like it sounded when I had a close encounter last summer, it sounded just like a squirrel in the leaves 15 yards away. This time we saw a squirrel in the leaves 15 yards away. Probably not that many bears around there. I didn’t seen any signs. The local hiking groups don’t mention bear spray, which is strange, though they know more than me. However I’m gonna keep carrying it. I’m more concerned about encountering humans in the woods than I am animals.

At our fishing spot I had devised a line for Okie to be leashed to. I was being lazy and didn’t want to untie it when we started back walking, so I just stuck the 200 feet long parachute cord into my pocket. I have a collection of messy parachute cord wads because I do bad rope practices like this. I was walking him like a manual version of one of those retractable leashes, working the line from my pocket, letting some slack out or pulling him tight. It would get in my feet if I wasn’t paying attention. Found it annoying to constantly be adjusting the line, so I cut it down to about 20 feet like a leash, because cutting the line was easier than untying it from his harness and putting on his real leash. This was a better system for letting him explore out in front of me without having to think about managing the line, and also attached and close enough to me so I can hold on tight if we see a bear or moose.

We’re not gonna see a bear or moose during this trip. But we did see some spring ephemerals: bloodroot and hepatica in bloom, trilliums starting to bud not yet blooming, and dutchman’s britches (which is a new one to me, and they spell it “breeches”). Saw a lovely rock wall with moss, ferns, bunches of blooming hepatica, and some dutchman’s britches. I asked my physical therapist if Vermont has spring ephemerals, but he had never heard of them. During a later visit, he informed me that he asked one of his patients who is a botantist from Lousiana, and apparently this patient said that it’s too cold for them here, which he told me after I learned the opposite from the internet. I didn’t tell him this at first because what do I know about plants compared to a botantist. But he brought it up again, and I told him that there are spring ephemerals here, according to multiple sources on the internet. So I’ve been in an indirect debate moderated by my physical therapist with a botantist about the existence of spring ephemerals in Vermont. They are here, seen it with my own eyes.

More blowdowns, more “under.” Do you smell a porcupine Okie? Nope, no porcupine. We haven’t learned that smell yet, or at least, we haven’t connected that smell to a word. His goal this summer is to see these animals: porcupine, black bear, loon, moose, fisher cat, and catamount. Would love to see a wolf, but they don’t live in this area anymore after humans killed off the New England and Adirondack populations, so now the only lone wolves that end up here come from either Michigan/Minnesota or Canada (it’s doubtful they come from Canada because they would have to cross the massive St. Lawrence River).

I’m gonna keep trying to find a wolf in New England, though, or at least think about them while walking around in the woods, trying to find this thing that used to exist here but no longer does, but it could, and sometimes they do show up here, which apparently is a contentious thing and some people don’t want to believe it, but I don’t care the reality of it because in my imagination there is a wolf living in my home and we will keep searching for God in the woods.

The trail took us far away from the lake and I decided we’d do the entire loop. We were startled when the wind was at our back and came up on old man in a red hooded cloak walking in silence. He looked like he was having some zen time or something. He asked, “Catch anything?” and I said, “Nope, just trying to scout,” and he said, “It’s too early.” New England people always trying to tell me what they think about my current situation. He might be right, but how am I supposed to learn if it’s too early unless I go out fishing when the bloodroot is blooming, and then come back once the trilliums are in bloom? And then come back when the mountain laurel is in bloom and the serviceberries and the partridge berries etc, because how else do you know when the fish are biting if the plants don’t tell you? Definitely not by listening to some too early gray headed zen motherfucker who could probably teach me some wisdom about life but not about fishing, or maybe he was trying to whenever he said, “It’s too early,” but that’s not very helpful at all.

I have some things I need to write, so I wrote down a collection of prompts in a small notebook and sometimes during a dull moment in public I will do a writing prompt. Was dumb to bring my notebook thinking I would write some. Also why did I bring a book? Like I’m about to read out here, it never happens. I always bring too much, including my pocket-sized digital camera that didn’t have a memory card. The spine of the notebook pressed into my back. Okie had to go under another blowdown, and this time I had to crawl under too, and I was crawling on my knees with my face close to the ground looking at some tree buds that resembled a caterpillar. A new thing I’ve noticed this year. This is the third different tree species that drop something I’ve seen like this. This one was like the tree pollen thing that you pull at and it leaves behind a clean stem, but it had purple accents at the end of the brown open pollen vessels.

Rest of the walk was uneventful except walking through more mud, ankle deep bootsucking mud, big muddy field on the forest edge with a ton of birds that I don’t know how to identify. The trail goes along a private landowner’s boundary and they have an interesting cattle fence/dam thing to separate the public wetland from their wetland. I didn’t understand the intention of this structure. Are they trying to put up a fence, but also keep the forces of water from washing the fence away? Curious to go back and wonder why they built it.

It’s said to be 3 miles but it felt closer to 3.5 or 4. Wind and rain coming in. Some people looked at me like I was crazy coming out of the woods like that. Too early I guess. Okie and I were very muddy. I found our new mud cleaning spot for the next time we come out here. Easy place to walk down into the lake and wash off. Will swim here in the summer.

I regret not bringing my canoe whenever I moved here. Why did I do that? I can tell you the excuses but they will sound dumb. Went home and looked at canoes and kayaks on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. Found a great canoe for $100 that should’ve been $500, which is another story where I almost got robbed by the canoe seller’s boyfriend who was making her sell her dad’s canoe for some drug money, but that’s for another time (this is a lie, this was my imagination, I bought it from a rich man’s daughter and they didn’t need anymore money).

When I got home at dusk after buying the canoe, I left it on top of my SUV because I was lazy and didn’t want to deal with it yet. The next morning, while my SUV was shaded from the sun by a red spruce tree, my neighbor told me, “It’ll warp like that out in the sun.” Thank you for your New England opinion about my how I should store my canoe overnight and briefly into the morning.