Beautiful Afternoon at Stockers

Ever since my brother Rick and Dennis Fairburn went to the Hunterdon streams Monday, I've wanted to go. Not for the outrageous numbers of trout they caught: 120 for Rick, 96 Dennis. No, Dennis posted a couple of photos and I felt drawn to these streams, some of my very favorite, despite the fact that they're spring fed little and trout don't reproduce. 

Saturday came very quickly, and I didn't feel prepared to go. I waffled around during the morning, going to the bank and seeing dozens of cars at the North Branch, working on an essay I've worked on for more than a month and can't seem to finish. I sure wasn't headed over to the North Branch and hoped that in the afternoon, the Hunterdon streams wouldn't be crowded. 

I deeply considered just canceling on my plan and going to Round Valley to walk with my wife and dog. Shooting a few photos, yes, but not a photo shoot proper. I very much enjoy outings with her. She kept telling me to go fishing, as if she knew that would be best. I told her I should give up fishing and for now on, she and I will go on outings together. She just laughed. "Go fishing." And she was out the door before I left with Sadie the Black Lab to walk Natirar.

Life can be like that. She has better judgment than I do. I get lost in my sensitivity easily. She certainly knew better than to get sucked into some nonsense about me not fishing anymore. Like that's really going to happen. I drove away from Bedminster wistfully remembering when she was about 25 and me 32.

And things got bad. I was driving U.S. 202 towards Pennsylvania, and I don't believe I have driven it in that direction for about five years. We used to all of the time, to visit family in New Hope. 

All sorts of landmarks seemed ragged and torn, ripped through by the struggle for nickels and dimes they represented, and to cap it all off, I saw the Stewart's Root Beer we stopped at a couple of times, out of business and coming undone. I had gone deep south by the time I arrived at Alexauken Creek, imagining the residents along the border as malevolent and to be avoided. I stopped at one spot, then decided the stocking crew probably didn't carry trout a hundred yards, despite the Fish & Wildlife sign. 

I drove on.

I scouted Wikicheoche Creek, and decided it, too, wasn't to fish. I knew I was headed for the Lockatong, but driving along the Wik raised my mood quite a lot. Where I put boots down at the Lockatong, I caught a trout on my first cast, the crowds gone. I persisted there awhile, catching seven more and coming back to myself. I sometimes wonder if other people go south and turn around, quit before they make the journey in full. Never compromise on your happiness. Do whatever it requires, even if getting there feels like it might do you in. 

I was at Kingwood. On a plateau. Farmland. As you can see in the photo above, the creek has a pastoral quality. I followed roads down into my favorite gorge. It gets no respect as the Ken Lockwood does, but it's beautiful. I came completely out of the struggle by the time I reached Strimple's Mill, fully happy to be there. Trout were there, and I caught three more, but I wasn't out for excessive numbers; I was meeting my favorite place--Planet Earth--on its own terms, rather than as a resource to scrape together loose change.

 

 

Hunterdon Streams