The laughing river

Some rivers speak to us. It’s the sound of time. It’s the same sound the Native Americans heard way back when “the green dark forest was too silent to be real.” (Gordon Lightfoot). There are days when I’m fishing and I think the riffles are laughing at me. There are moments when, oddly, the pleasant monotony of the riffle changes for an instant and the sound you hear — or think you hear —- is the splashy sound of the rising trout. So you switch flies, from wets to dries, in the hopes that your ear heard right. But then the pleasant monotony of the riffle returns and no trout rises. What you thought you heard was merely a fleeting change in the rhythm of the riffle. And the riffle laughs at you.