First of September.

I’ve come July and August, mostly more to look at flowers than fish. It’s been hot and dry, the creek’s low and clear, and the fishing isn’t so precious I’m willing to get up at 4 am or stay well past dark and lose flies in brush just to check a box and say I caught a fish this month. I came, I saw, and in the meantime I cleared a dry spot and a wet spot in the yard to recreate the flowers I’ve walked past every month for two or three years now.

The first day of autumn knocked twenty degrees off the thermometer. It brought a little rain, not enough to raise the creek, enough to permeate the woods with the smell of fall. I went and cast and caught one, and quit to look at rocks and flowers and mushrooms.