First of December.

Twenty-four hours before I mentally chastised two coeds pouting lips and snapping selfies in front of an art-deco bar downtown for living an inauthentic self. Now I’m making a long drive for a short trip, checking a box that says I visited the creek this month.

Not that I didn’t want to come, just that this was the first day in a month filled with holiday parties and preparations that I could get away. Even then, the forecast is for snow this evening, as much as a foot before all is said and done.

It’s cold and quiet enough I can hear another bipedal fumbling on cobbles in the stream. I don’t bother changing into waders, just cherry picking a half-dozen spots I can fish from the bank. I like it a little better, forces you to be more careful, to think a little harder about how you will present the fly.

I scare up a doe. A white-throated sparrow watches, curiously, from the brush.