My Secret Place

I have a place that I go in my imagination when I am tired of thinking too much.  I have to confess that I am not the best thinker in the world.  It takes me a lot of time and effort.  To others it comes more easily, more quickly.  I am slow like a bear.  I like to imagine that when I am aroused I can be dangerous like one, but for the most part I just feel slow and ponderous.

I had a friend in school that I used to debate with often.  He always made me look fairly foolish even when I was right.  He was funny and witty and he had the innate ability to process information with stunning speed.  He once quipped, “Brad Williams may shoot straighter, but I draw quicker.”  Truer words have never been spoken.

I have been blessed with the ability to read and remember things.  I can store large chunks of information.  It’s processing it that takes me forever.  I’m like a computer with a large hard drive for storage but a rather dated processor for speed.  I feel like a Pentium One in a Pentium Five world.

So, I spend a lot of time in the office processing the information that I take in.  It is wearying work.  Almost everyday, my legs go to sleep from the back of my thighs down from sitting and reading and thinking.  Sometimes, I sit and stare blankly for good periods of time.  Someone observing me would probably think I am a vegetable.  I have a hard time convincing my wife that it is during these times that I am doing my best work.

When this thinking and being vegetative wears me out, I begin to long to get out of here and do something.  Something vigorous, yet peaceful. Something manly.  This is what the little secret place that I go to in my mind is like.  I do not know where it is because I’ve never been there.

Wherever this places is, it smells fresh.  Fresh like flowing water.  It also smells sort of musty like woods.  My secret place is a large, rapid flowing stream.  It is as clear as crystal.  You can see the mossy rocks as the water flows over them.  And the water is as cold as it is pure.  It makes you want to drink deeply from it just by looking at it.  The stream flows through a shaded woody area.  All the trees are alive with green leaves.  But that is the background.  The stream is the focus of my secret place.  Also, there are no mosquitoes allowed in my little sanctuary.  Other bugs may come, but no mosquitoes.

I stand in the middle of that place dressed like someone out of Field and Stream magazine.  I have a boony hat with flies hooked on it.  I have on a pair of waders, and I am casting a fly rod like Brad Pitt in “A River Runs Through It”.  I’m drifting dry flies down the stream, just waiting for some gorgeous trout to suck it down so I can reel him in.  I can hear that stream running now.

The weirdest thing about my dream is that I have never fly fished in a stream in my life, but I have always wanted to.  I’ve only bass fished for the most part.  But ponds are muddy things compared to the flowing stream.  The waters of lakes are murky, and no one is tempted to drink from them.  Even swimming in one is sort of gross.  There are weeds and slime in still waters like those.  Give me a fresh water stream over that any day.

Today I would like to really go to that stream and catch some of those trout.  I want to hear the water trickle by in its endless flow to who knows where.  All I need now is a fly rod, some waders, a boony hat, some flies, a stream, an out-of-state license, vacation time, and a lot of money.  I think that I’ll stick to the day dream for now.  It’s cheaper, and in my dream I always catch fish…without a single annoying mosquito bite.