No fish catching for the first time in my last three or four outings at Smith Lake. That’s all well and good. I forgot my gloves and pliers, and I was worried about having to barehand the fish while digging a deep set hook or lure out of its mouth.
I always felt kind of bad for throwing fish back after doing that to them. I mean, here I am, using trickery to rip a bass out of the water while it pursues its constitutional right to seek food smaller than itself.
The sudden change of environment must seem to the fish like it has entered a different dimension.
Upon throwing the fish back in, I imagine it would feel a lot like I did last week before the getaway to the lake. I went to the dentist and received two crowns and replaced a bridge. At times during the two-hour- tooth chiseling, it felt like a hook was in my mouth. (Props to my dentist, though, for a job well done.)
As I was saying, I didn’t catch anything so that was one less worry off my mind as my wife and I sank into vacation mode. Vacation mode is where you put things into perspective and push sad thoughts away.
We sat on the dock, fishing poles by our sides, and inhaled fresh air. The trees were fiery, oranges, yellows and reds. They seemed to have been painted by children using water colors.
On our first day, a beaver swam close to Catherine who was standing on the dock. She said, ‘Aren’t you a cute little otter?’
And that’s when the animal turned over and smacked his tail like a paddle in the water.
I was not an eyewitness.
But she made sure I would see the red moon.
On Friday, she woke me up around 2:30 a.m. to go stand outside and gaze at the moon, which by golly was red or reddish. I was in a daze. I was wearing shorts, a bathrobe with no shoes or slippers. It was freezing. My feet kept finding the sharpest rocks.
I said in my Chevy Chase at the Grand Canyon voice: ‘Beautiful, time to go now.’
But it’s the longest lunar eclipse to occur in nearly 600 years, she said, obviously thrilled with her job as tour guide of the night sky from somewhere near Arley, Alabama.
I wondered: How did I get so lucky to be in that small fraternity of people who get to stand on shards of granite and peer into the sky in 38 F weather, looking at something — now get this — named the Beaver Moon.
It was a good ‘vacay’ though. We built campfires, made S’mores, read books and watched much of the first season of ‘Bewitched’ on TV.
Oh. and just one tip to somehow tie all this into music: Don’t start thinking about the instrumental theme song of ‘Bewitched.’ It gets stuck in your head.