I threw a fit of the screamin' Mimis. I'd gone out through the front door without looking, and at this time of year, that's not a wise move. Something bit me on the back of the neck, and I wiped away a smear of bug. It's mosquito season, I thought. Granny said she'd had one in the back bedroom.

I came in the house and sat down at the computer chair, crossing my foot over my knee in an inelegant pose for a woman. I spied a tiny golden spot moving along the inseam of my trousers, inching its way along the white fabric. I knew what it was immediately. I knew what had happened. The hair raised up on my head like I'd stuck my finger in a light socket, and I could feel Them-with-a-capital-T walking amid the forest, an invading army on the move. My eyes flicked to my trouser cuff, and I went airborne. Fifty or more minute yellow spiders paraded on the hem.

Now I'll stare down a bear, mind you, or creep up on a burglar in the dark with my weapon drawn, but spiders are another story, and I'd walked through a hatch of them as I went outside. I pelted for the shower at high speed, stripped off my clothes, dropped them on the bathroom floor and began stomping, stomping on the heap. Satisfied that I had mashed most of them, I whisked a brush quickly through my hair, dived into the shower, and without waiting for the chill to come off the icy well water, stuck my head and shoulders beneath the drench.

I suppose my loathing of spiders goes back to an episode in my childhood. We lived in Eastern Washington where the word "spider" often equates with "black widow." I had gone out in the morning to play in the sandbox directly beside the kitchen door, and when my mother looked out to check on me, she saw that I was not alone. Although normally the black widow does not build a nest in the open, one had set up housekeeping in the darkest corner of my play area.

My mother is deathly afraid of spiders, whereas they merely give me the major creeps. She snatched me from the sandbox and fled inside, shrieking for my father who had not yet left for work. Inevitably, I was caught in the web of her hysteria before my father had dispatched the beast, and until I was in my thirties, I feared all spiders equally, regardless of their species or their size.

Over a period of time, I have broken myself of the tendency to panic at the mere sight of an arachnid on the ceiling, and although I still kill them if they're in the house, in the woods I'm content to let them be. The great hairy purple things that live in our garage nevertheless inspire a flight reaction, and the time I brought two dozen in the house with the artificial Christmas tree is a recollection on which I'd rather not dwell too long.

Cleansed by the shower, then, I pitched my clothes in the washer and checked the bathroom floor for illegal aliens. I found one errant intruder patrolling the bathroom sink, which served to remind me to wash my hairbrush. Several more floated out of it at the touch of scalding water. I started the washer, not willing to chance that I'd crushed them all while dancing naked on my clothes.

I've still got the willies.

WARNING: the information contained in this posting is extremely disturbing. Readers are advised to proceed with caution.

I hope every one of you who reads this will send it to every pet owner you know. I was given the information by a pet-care professional (retailer, not a vet), and I've backed it up with enough Internet searches to be convinced that it's true.

Take a look at the ingredients on the food you're feeding your animals. Do you see "meat by-products" or "animal by-products?" That blanket description covers not only rendered road-kill, but also the euthanized remains of pets picked up from veterinarians. In other words, you may be forcing your beloved pet into cannibalism.

Every made-in-the-USA pet food I looked today has one of those two generic items in it. IAMS (from Canada) doesn't, but as I understand it, that company has done quite a bit of laboratory stuff that PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) doesn't approve of. Okay, PETA is a radical outfit, but when they come up with things like tests performed to find out just how much filler you can include in food before it is no longer good enough nutrition to sustain life, it kinda makes you think, eh? I feed Skunk IAMS dry food. She doesn't like their canned stuff, but that's tough. I took all the Fancy Feast back to the store after seeing "meat by-products" as the first item on a can of so-called "whitefish dinner."

The whole scenario was uncovered when veterinarians began reporting that sodium pentobarbital (the drug most commonly used in euthanasia and anaesthesia) was losing its efficacity. Analysis turned up high quantities of the drug in pet food, leading scientists to believe that animals were developing a genetic tolerance for it.

As I understand it, Science Diet was one of the first to be exposed. Not only were they including euthanized pets in their food, they weren't bothering to remove metal dog tags or flea collars, and nobody quibbled about the reasons for putting the animals to sleep. Were they old? Or were they sick? The answer is that it didn't matter. The entire windfall of dead animals was being processed and introduced into pet food. No wonder diseases are mutating!

Ever wonder what happens to the deer carcases and possums alongside the road? They're picked up by the county truck and sent to rendering plants. Voila! Nice, fresh meat by-products for Fido and Puss. You didn't really think the county had its own crematory, did you? Likewise, unless you make private arrangements for your beloved pet when they have to be put down, they don't just go in the bin out behind the vet's shop.

Pretty gross, isn't it? I took a dozen cans of Fancy Feast back to WalMart today. I think better of Skunk than to feed her cat food made from cats. I'm kinda reminded of that movie, "Soylent Green." What next? Granny burgers?

I hope you're as outraged as I am. I'm also hoping that enough people will refuse to feed their critters this crap that it'll put these pet food companies out of business. Read your labels and TAKE THE BAD STUFF BACK TO THE STORE! And tell them why.

Does anything WalMart sells actually work in accordance with its packaging? In the last several months, I have returned probably a third of the non-consumable items I've purchased, a list which includes photo albums which shed their entire content unless you sealed their "magnetic" pages with scotch tape, fish hooks with open eyes and no points, a "universal" coffee carafe that on further investigation fit none of the coffee makers on their shelves, screws without slots in their heads, underwear with mismatched leg holes, and the latest, an "extendable" slingshot that doesn't extend.

Once while waiting in the long return line, I overheard another customer's complaint which sums up the lackadaisical quality control of WalMart's suppliers. The woman had purchased several pairs of purportedly identical slacks after trying on a single pair. I too have run afoul of inconsistencies in size, but her objection involved far more than an inch in the hips. She held the offending garment up for the clerk to see. The right leg was clearly six inches longer than the left!

I drive an hour to reach the nearest major retailer which, unfortunately, is Wallie's. A K-Mart lies fifteen minutes beyond, but they don't carry cat food, kitty litter, or my brand of sensitive-teeth toothpaste. There is a Target store situated on a mall, but even if I didn't find the mass of society milling in its confines discomfiting, their prices are significantly higher and prohibitive for someone on a limited income like myself. Nor does Target handle fishing supplies, three factors which make them the shop I'm least likely to visit on a day in town.

In essence, I am constrained to shop at WalMart, like it or no. I have little or no use for the clothing section, and my path, once through its doors and greeters, is somewhat bee-like. I flit to the pet section, sporting goods and cleaning supplies gathering pollen. I pass the noxious weeds of toys and dresses, ignore the fields of shoes and jewelry, only occasionally to light among gardening or videos in their seasons of summer and winter. I know where toothpaste is, and vitamins, and can successfully bypass the stinky swamp of health and beauty aids without its odors tagging after me.

I have learned to check out in the fishing department to avoid inordinately long lines at the checkstands, and I've gathered experience with double-checking prices against their shelf tags before the last item is rung. Errors of thirty cents seem to be more frequent than excusable, and once the register has closed the transaction, objection requires that the shopper visit customer service for reparation. How many people walk away without their refund when they see the line that extends to the door?

Yes, now I have to return a slingshot. "Pull up the yoke for distance," the box advises, words which do not match the heads of the three screws holding it firmly in place. Typical.

You have to chuckle. Teaching Sande and his wife to recognize birds and call them by their correct names is as close to hopeless as schooling a chicken in calculus. The most common rebuttal for my accurate identification of the violet-green swallows which inhabit the back fence birdhouse is that they are "chickadees," based on the hypothesis, "We had chickadees in California."

The house finch which Roger Tory Peterson portrays verbally as a "sparrow dipped in raspberry juice" has been described by Sande's wife as being a very tiny bird with red, yellow and green markings only minutes after it leaves our mutual scrutiny, and white-crowned sparrows grow to the size of robins when they pass from the field of view. Cowbirds or starlings may be referred to as "those black birds you're so fond of" in the same breath that calls my precious crow friends "blackbirds."

Given illustrations in either of two beautiful but relatively useless books which cover the entire United States, the margin for error is magnified. If the Audubon Society could document any of the Sandes' observations of orioles or cardinals in this area, they would rejoice. Soon, I'll deliver a spare copy of Peterson's western edition to my friends, but I rather doubt it will serve the purpose intended.

Complicating the issue is the occupation of two Sande birdhouses by English sparrows which, if violet-green swallows are something else, must therefore be chickadees by default. "We had chickadees in California," they explain, "like that one." The finger points to the sparrow on the perch.

"Where's your bird book?" I ask, untangling my clenched hands from my hair before I wrest it from my head untimely. I find the chickadee page and lay it wide. "That's a chickadee," I say. "See the black on the head?" An inconvenient Oregon junco lights on the back porch mat and sends my lesson haywire.

I was convinced that the Sandes only had "blackbirds" and "chickadees" in their garden until recently when Sande saw a goldfinch. He mistook it for an evening grosbeak ("one of those things you feed") and his wife called it "green," but at least no one said it had a red breast or was the size of a pigeon. I saw this as a sign of progress, and it was followed by another which shows that something is sinking in. While chatting about the back fence cottage's occupants, Sande's wife actually referred to them as "lavender green sparrows."

If bright days and good weather are to be devoted to angling, cycling, and hiking, it follows that the dismal, grey, soggy periods must be used to perform necessaries such as shopping and gardening.

A stream of water from the porch awning smacked me in the back of the head as I was potting begonias, but at least my fundament was out of the rain. The hanging baskets were stuffed with Silver Falls dichondra and orange pansies, and three Richland gold hostas were seated in temporary pots embedded among the lily-of-the-valley before I resigned, soaked to the bone. The forecast showed no letup in precipitation for the coming week, but that's no excuse to let healthy plants fall to ruin. The weeds can wait. Planting had to be done.

Sometimes it seems that tasks and sport teeter in precarious balance, and never so much as in the early days of summer. The current juggling act couples shad with surf perch in widely separate venues, and the need to be at home to have a propane tank and fireplace insert installed. My hair wants cutting, prescriptions need to be picked up, the browns are jostling for a look at new flies, and the good ship Grasshopper is impatient for its exercise. I've fallen behind on making bread, dinners are often quick-fix noodles, and an order for six birdhouses finds the lumber still uncut. I'm spread thin and running fast, and the weight of my eyelids drops me into bed before the last of day's light fades from the evening sky. How many nights in a row have I watched five more minutes of "Harry Potter" before nodding on my pillow? At this rate, I'll have seen the movie in a month or two.

Don't mistake me. I relish this flurry of activity. The busy and frenetic tenor grants me the illusion of youth as long as I stay moving. Though I may drop like the proverbial stone at 9 p.m., six in the morning might find me taking a pre-breakfast stint of weeding. I need no alarm to wake me. The lightening sky is my reveille, and rain or no, I go eagerly to chore or pastime according to the tilt of the scales.

The agony of driving four and a half hours each way has been nudged out of memory by recollections of a doubled rod and singing reel. The pain of rising "earlier than early" pales beside the glad aches of arm and thigh the morning after, and Sande is ready, even eager, for a day of shadding.

Each morning, it is my responsibility to check the count of fish passing the ladder at Bonneville. Today, the snowballing number tallied three times the mass of yesterday, thirty thousand times that of a fortnight ago. The mainstem river now begins to bulge with their population, and swells daily with the bulk of fish finning in an upstream drive to the spawning grounds. The shad are on the move.

Regrettably, the state of the world is such that little old ladies can't pitch a tent in a public campground with any sense of security, and dossing in the back of the car is also risky, or I'd make a two-day project out of this proposal. I'm cozy wedged between a rock and a stump if it came to that, but Sande's bones have seen twenty-five years more than mine and his idea of expedition accommodations includes a Continental breakfast at minimum, while mine needs only a blackened billy and some instant oatmeal. Nor is it easy for either of us to get away overnight. A campground or motel is almost entirely out of the question, although we rented a kitchenette once last year while angling for surf perch. Sande was less than comfortable without the amenities of home, and I fairly gagged in a room that smelled smoky and well-used.

Without squandering on luxuries, therefore, we'll drive and fish ourselves gleefully into exhaustion, only to recall at day's end that we must again drive home. It is a pilgrimage made but once a year, and worth its cost for the entertainment, though there can be no doubt that we'll both complain mightily of our foolishness.

The work is far from done, you see. I have made a prudent vow that no more than ten fish will leave the bank in my cooler, a year's "pickled herring" and salted roe. Over-enthusiasm is a disease easily caught, and friends are greatly more reluctant to accept excess shad than they are salmon or trout. It takes a trained palate to appreciate the critter fully, and a good hand with the fileting knife to render the oily flesh useful. The scaling is another element to consider. Each scale is approximately the size of a dime, and they are best left at the river, because even if you've done your labour well, you'll find them adhering to the sides of your kitchen sink and on your counter up to six months later.

Some would say that shad are more work than they are worth. I disagree, if for no more reason than the sport they provide. One might relegate their eating to those of us who relish lutefisk, so to them I say, "Your loss." A week or ten days, this kid's going for the shad.

The Grasshopper has sailed, and she is a fine craft. She has an unerring nose for browns skulking in the cattails, and has shown a marked preference for larger fish. She moves sleekly across the water whether propelled by a forward or a backward stroke, and maneuvers amid lily pads adroitly on the cold trail of bluegills. Perhaps the only thing I can say in complaint is that she was not meant for a skipper a mere five feet tall, and as a consequence, my legs have been a bit stretched by reaching for her footrests, and my trouser legs fanned water as often as her oars. Both these points can be remedied, one by intervention with a hacksaw and a drill, the other simply by rolling fabric out of harm's way.

Assembly on site took longer than I'd hoped, but much of that time was spent in deciphering the minute pattern of arrows in the directions for attaching the pontoons to the frame by means of straps, rings and cam buckles, a process which must be completed four times. Now I know the sequence: under frame at A, through O-ring and back over frame, under frame at B, through opposite O-ring, under frame again and over, then through cam. It makes sense hands-on, but looks hopelessly complex in diagram. Each pontoon attaches to its frame member by two straps, and then are joined together by the back apron and the seat, strong metal clips holding each part in place. The stripping apron is put on last, and only closed across the lap when the fisherman is seated. With oars in place, a simple kick propels the boat easily into deeper water. Practice will substantially reduce time spent at water's edge.

After a morning of frolicking along the northern bank, the eastern end of the pond showed many rises I suspected of being bluegills. They were feeding on blue-winged olives (mayflies) and tiny midges, dimpling the surface and sometimes rolling on their tiny prey. I dapped among the surfacing fish with a stringer of trout already caught at my side, hoping for punkinseeds, but finding none but more browns within the havens of reed or lily. We must wait for warmer water, Grasshopper and I, and bluegills are not a sport to be taken too seriously when there are browns about. Nevertheless, I spent a few hours paddling around, taking the measure of my new toy, revelling in the warm, bright day.

Disassembly seemed to consist largely of furbelows: cooler, fly rod, fish making separate trips to the car for further processing. I removed the back apron and seat to lighten the load, but was able to easily pick up the remaining structure and carry it half a block. The pontoons deflate rapidly, and I should have wiped them down before opening the valve, a clumsiness moreso than a mistake. In a few more trips, I'll be able to do it by the numbers, 1-2-3.

Practice makes perfect. The browns are holding out, despite water temperatures rising. The Grasshopper will sail other waters before the summer's end and fish shall tremble at the sound of her name.

Sande has gone home a happy man. The Fish Gods were especially benevolent in giving him a variety of their fare, and although it took two lakes to accomplish his limit, he bore with him two rainbows, two browns and a good-sized silver. Your author was selectively fishing for browns, and managed to come home with a spare due to a small miscommunication.

The smokestack lake is beginning to bloom with the algae that befouls floating fly lines, so my days of plying its water are soon to end. It was fun in its brief season, but in another week or two, only potty-mouthed bass fishermen will patrol its shore behind the cattails or fling their obscene, hula-skirted lures among its lily pads.

Here I have seen few anglers of the middle class, those Power Bait types who fall between the gentle, misanthropic fly-caster and the coarse, crude good-ol'-boys who root out "hawgs." I'm at a loss to explain their absence, for this lake would seem to be a paradise for any who might hold a rod. Only rarely does a Livingston boat trail a spoon at its stern, or perhaps a small cluster of neighbourhood kids will arrive with a tub of worms, taking an afternoon outing with someone's dad. It might be that at one end of the scale, the common fisherman is daunted by the grace and beauty of looped backcasts unfurling, or at the other, is put off by the vulgar, littering carousers. That the bass master and the fly-fisher can coexist is yet another puzzle.

Lest you think your author is particularly 'down' on bass fishing and its practitioners, I would like to say that I met a decent bass fisherman today. She (take note of that pronoun) professed to be 83 years old, and was bright as a new penny. In the two or three hours that I stood beside her while fishing for silvers from a bridge, she never once uttered a profane word, told an obvious lie, or was anything less than a paradigm of polite behaviour. Her fingernails were clean, and she picked up her trash and disposed of it in the appropriate receptacle. She was not ashamed to admit she had never heard of such-and-so lake or this technique or that, and she gave back as good as she got in hints and maps drawn verbally. She obviously believed that Sande and I were an 'item' (a situation we frequently encounter), but the closest she came to remarking on it was a wink in his direction when she explained she'd met her first husband while fishing.

All right, I admit to prejudice against bass fishermen in the larger run. An encounter previously in the day had set my jaw. Two young men to whom I had spoken were fishing for bass at a culvert within easy hearing distance. They hooked a nice brown which they gutted and found full of roe. "Bet that old lady wishes she had this little bitch," one said gleefully, and pitched the brown's carcass back into the water, wasted.

The number of bass fishermen on the smokestack lake is growing apace with the fetid algae. I will be glad to turn to the silvers now in their early days below the bridge where the bass-fishing grandmother revealed her moral compass when she confessed to me that she wished she had learned to cast the fly.

When Clyde is desperate enough to call catching perch "fun," the sport of fishing is in a truly sorry state. Catching perch is fun when you're ten years old. Catching perch is entertaining when you're a novice fly-fisherman and want to practice on something that will take any nymph in your box. Perch are notoriously bony and full of flukes, and therefore aren't worth a tinker's dam as food, and most serious fishermen will pull up anchor if they find themselves in perch country.

Clyde has sixty-three of the little buggers in his smokehouse, and he intends to pass them off as a "special snack" to his non-fishing associates at work, in much the same manner that I foisted off humpy salmon on my ex-husband after I had harvested the roe for bait. For this bounty of tiny, spiny fish, my neighbour weathered yesterday's downpour hiding within the canvas cabin of his boat with a propane heater running full bore.

This is the madness of fishing! Tally up gas, propane, bait, time, discomfort, wear and tear, and wince. Okay, they'd gone for trout and got a few to justify themselves (though not limits), and if no more were willing to address the hook, perch might have looked like "fun" if the sun had been shining brightly. Three-quarters of an inch of rain fell yesterday, and Clyde confessed that they'd had to run the bilge pump four times during their adventure. Insanity, utter insanity for perch!

I caught 304 perch in a single day some thirty years ago. I carted them home on a stringer which, when slung over my shoulder, dragged along the ground behind me like the train of a wedding gown. I had a darn good reason, too. Twenty-nine cats take a lot of feeding, but after pressure-cooking whole, uncleaned fish for several days in a row, store-bought cat food never looked so good despite its cost. The number of cats and perch speak volumes for the state of my mind in those days, and now that I am older and more stable, a single moggy and a limit of trout is my compass.

Perch in the smokehouse! Whatever is the neighbourhood coming to? Why, it's scandalous and shocking! And of all people, you'd never have thought it of Clyde!

The flurry of activity which carried me throughout the week is done, and I'm finding it hard to stay awake with nothing to entertain me but computer games. Perspectives change. What was appealing in the dead of winter is boring even on such a rainy, dreary day as this once outdoor activities have been begun. I want the sky above my head. My legs are restless, and the air in the house feels stale.

I've done my day in the rain. You don't know wet until you've had to walk ten miles to work in it with fifty pounds on your back and a cold cabin waiting at the end of the relentlessly steep trail. You can't say you've shaken hands with it unless you've stood on its home ground in chin-high false hellebore, where each strappy leaf pipes its accumulation through sealed seams and Goretex. You've never been its bedfellow until you've tossed your sleeping bag into the inch-deep pool in the bottom of the tent and crawled inside to take your nightly rest, and never have you truly been its companion until you can wring a quarter cup of it from one wool sock. Ah, the ranger years were great!

I've been wet before, and I'll be wet again, but given my choice in the matter, I'd rather pass on amusing myself out of doors in the rain.

Little streams are fine and fun for the fly-fisher who wades cat-footed along their mossy stones chasing after cutthroats, and beaver ponds (though mushy and riddled with sharp-pointed objects) are excellent practice fields for roll and tuck casts. Large fish sometimes lie beneath submerged logs and overhanging devil's club, but for the most part, small water here means small fish.

Standing on the shore of the smokestack lake, it is the fisherman who is landed helpless with brooders rolling on tiny midges and mayflies just beyond reach. The best backcast tangles in blackberry or canary grass, and steepling it serves only to ring the green chime of an alder belfry or tease fluff from the cottonwoods. The big trout is a dream the shorebound angler seldom realizes, whether he casts a worm or Power Bait, or daps a #16 artificial at the end of a twelve-foot leader.

Too many years have I trodden the brushy path. I bought a boat.

Polling among my nameless comrades of the Art Piscatorial, it was determined that if you migrate from float tube to pontoon boat, you'll never make a return trip. I was never too happy with the prospect of hanging my bum in cold water wearing waders or no, so although I've thought about a float, I've always decided against it as I stood beside them in the shop. A pontoon boat rides you high and theoretically dry, and gives you the option of paddling with oars or with your feet, if wearing fins. Like float tubes, pontoon boats have excellent maneuverability, yet are much easier to handle if a breeze rises, having less fabric for the wind to push against. Another selling point for me, a non-swimmer, is that a pontoon boat has two bladders, one to go flat if you run too hard up against a spiky stump and one to hold onto as you paddle back to shore. PFD's are required in this state, by the way.

I got a good deal on the bright yellow, eight-foot Creek Country. It's not an upper-end brand, by any means, but I don't intend to run it down the river, either. I don't need extra-tough bottoms, except perhaps my own. It has a mesh seat (highly recommended over the moulded-plastic type), rod holder, stripping apron, two capacious zip pockets for lunch and sundries, and another wide apron on the back to carry a good-sized cooler for lunkers. The whole apparatus breaks down into manageable pieces and fits nicely in my car even with the pontoons fully inflated. If I should ever wish to add a transom for a small electric motor, a kit is available, and snaps in easily.

The christening should occur next week. We shall launch below the smokestack onto gentle waters, and make our maiden voyage among the elder browns.

A name, a name...I must give some thought to a name for my wee craft, for all boats need their dignity if they are to be known among the fishes.

I flung my last cast across the water at three minutes to twelve. I'd given it my best shot, and because I had released one pitiful rainbow in a flagrant display of over-confidence, I had nothing in the bag but the smell of the previous day's limit. The casting bubble bobbed once as it hit the lake, for a moment tricking my hopes as the line twitched on its rise. I reeled in, turned and laid the bait rod down on the grass. I was done and defeated.

As I lifted my heavy fishing pack to shoulder it, a familiar face appeared from behind a tree. "Doing any good?" asked Bob, the chatty fly-fisherman I'd spoken with twice before.

"Nah," I replied. "It never happened this morning. For a while, I saw emergers and I thought it was coming on, but nothing rose to them. Every now and then, you see a rise or two. Not like yesterday."

Bob glanced at my equipment and saw that my fly rod was rigged and laying idle. "It's still early," he said. "Come on. I'll show you where the browns are."

Every fisherman knows where the fish are. I knew where the browns were. They were in that corner I fished yesterday until my arms were stiff, holding on the bottom, not the least bit interested in dries, nymphs, Power Bait or worms. The were out in the middle of the lake at a casting distance that Gary LaFontaine couldn't effect from shore. I knew where Bob would take me, and I'd fished it several times in between bouts of flailing the corner bay. That's where I'd caught that scrawny rainbow with a plastic nightcrawler, and I'd dragged ten different flies along the tops of the weeds trying to provoke a fat, sleek brown out of hiding.

I should have gone to town and done my chores instead of going fishing. I knew that, too. I'd shot half the day, and the remaining half looked too short to hold the proposed schedule. I weighed factors, and (I suppose you could say 'predictably') went with Bob.

The promontory is not large, and although it has a bare patch, dual hazards of canary grass and mounded blackbery bushes are too plentiful. Many fly-fishers would find the point only spacious enough for one. I chose to believe that my companion was as good as he claimed to be, and picked a spot where my backcast wouldn't catch his loop if they coincided. We tied on the flies of our preference, both selecting small, dark nymphs of some sort, and I asked, "Bead?" assuming that we'd need weight to reach suspending fish.

Bob shook his head. "They'll be feeding on emergers as soon as the water warms up a little. They'll only be about three inches under the surface." His greater experience was to be my boon.

His nervous chattiness subsided to a tolerable level after the first few casts. The long-awaited Bite arrived an hour later, and I brought the first fish (a good brown) to shore. When I left at the end of another hour with my limit, my companion was still merrily casting away, deftly removing barbless hooks from the corners of his prizes' mouths, then shooing them away undamaged to the dark, deep water.

Careful study has shown precisely where the jinx lies. The browns were in the corner, responding enthusiastically to a blue-winged olive and Sande was stationed at the "good spot," pitching Zug Bugs to dead water. My conscience nagged me as I hooked the fifth brown. I eased it gently from the hook and let it slip away among the reeds. As it finned away free, I was climbing the bank to go collect my partner. This was a bounty which needed sharing, and I had vowed before my friends that today, Sande would have fish. How could he miss?

It took approximately two minutes for me to reach him, another five for him to reel in, secure the fly in an eye of his rod and gather his gear. In less than ten minutes, our lines were both sailing across the bay in the corner, tiny bits of green thread and feather at tippets' ends.

Was it the disturbance of two flies lighting on the cove? Was it the sound of dual footfalls on the hard-packed shore? Was it a fluke in the hatch, perhaps, or ten minutes' difference in the sun's position behind a tree or cloud? We'll never know. Something put down every brown in town, zap! Just like that. Even the pesky rainbows I'd been fighting off all morning no longer cared to give a falling bug a glance.

The next fish either of us saw was a very gravid bluegill that took time from building her redd to seize a dark Hendrickson close to shore. By this point, I was throwing flies of any shape and size to any point my cast would reach. Why had I let that last brown go? The bluegill darted from my palm as I released her.

Sande had reached the point of desperation, rummaging in my pack until satisfied with chartreuse Power Bait and a floating egg. Several four-inch rainbows were pleased by this change in the menu, and eventually, one adult took a fatal sampling. I persisted with flies until our limits were filled, but no more browns rose to the bait.

I jibed my fishin' buddy unmercifully about being the part of the partnership that carried the jinx, good-sported ribbing and taken in the spirit intended. On my bad days, few and far between that they may be, I get my comeuppance. One wonders about that hex, though. Could it have been responsible for the flat tire we had when we got back to the car?

I am not to be held accountable for the misinformation in the previous entry. In fact, the person I spoke to at Fish and Wildlife only shortly missed giving unofficial apology for the way the shad 'closure' had been worded. Originally meant to be in place only for the spring chinook run, my contact admitted that it "might have been misleading," and hastened to assure me that "there will always be a shad season on the Columbia." Perhaps the Department misspoke; perhaps officials waked up to the mistake they were about to make. In any event, the Columbia River below Bonneville Dam opened for shad on 15 May. Those friends who were hoping for pickled fish may set their taste buds expectantly. Two thousand four hundred and forty (2440) shad passed over the fish ladder on the 16th, six thousand two hundred and sixty eight (6268!) on the 17th. The run begins.

In other fish news (she said with a broad grin), the lake below the smokestack continues to produce daily limits of a mixture of rainbows and browns. Yesterday, I caught fifteen in the space of a few hours, today twenty-two. Tomorrow, Sande gets his chance. Sande's one of those folks who doesn't like to get up before breakfast, though, but I might be able to tempt him with an eyewitness account of a brown the size of a small salmon rolling just beyond my best cast. Man, I threw everything I had at that fish today, and all it did was laugh at me.

Yes, I'm happiest when the fish are biting. It's been hard to get through these last few months, but now the trend is looking up. Rivers, streams and beaver ponds open soon, giving us plenty of fishable waters to choose from. Feast or famine, it seems to be. That is ever the lot of the hunter-gatherer. Tight lines! and more tomorrow.

The column of fetid smoke you see issuing to the north and west of you is emitted from no smokestack, no forest fire, no nuclear blast. It rises in the manner described as "roiling," and comes from the orifices of my ears. I've just been informed that shad fishing is now off-limits in the state's best shad river, a regulation I suspect of have been inspired by a misplaced belief that large numbers of undersized sturgeon are being accidentally killed or injured by shad fishermen.

Neither endangered nor threatened, of shad themselves, there is no shortage. In fact, they have grown so numerous in the state of California that fishermen are encouraged to take all they can catch. We're not quite to that point yet in Washington and Oregon, although the number of shad passing over Bonneville Dam's fish ladder during the peak month has been reliably over two million every year since 1989. Over one million topped the dam during a two-day span in June of 2003.

So what is a shad, you ask, and why am I so riled? Essentially, the fish is a two- to five-pound herring, delicious pickled and coveted for its roe, which is second only to caviar when properly prepared. Most shad are taken, however, to be subsequently used as bait for Mishe-Nahma, king of fishes, Hiawatha's sturgeon. (I eat my take. I'll never see a sturgeon, for reasons outlined later in this essay.)

The American shad (Alosa sapidissima) was originally introduced into the Sacramento River in 1871 and soon became a successful and dependable resource. With an eye to a new fishery, shad fry were subsequently seeded in the Columbia River drainage system in 1885, although surprisingly, it was discovered that many had come north from Sacramento on their own. It is possible that immigrant fish were caught in the Columbia as early as nine years prior to deliberate planting.

Sturgeon regulations have become very stringent in the last ten years, to the extreme that it might be safe to say that if you've never caught a 'keeper,' you're not likely to have the opportunity with new laws being put into place every few months. There are slot limits, area boundaries, special gear rules and more, such that the man in the boat is the only one with a chance, and only on the second Thursday of the month if it follows a full moon. It is a wise angler who checks with Fish and Wildlife before essaying sturgeon waters, even if his intent is trout. Salmon and steelhead restrictions are becoming equally severe, and many sportsmen are finding that their favorite rivers are now closed. In fact, the salmon/steelhead fishery has met its fate in the Columbia under the same regulation which prohibits catching shad.

In the grand scheme of things, I can understand protecting the sturgeon from excessive human predation. These are wild fish. However, both native and hatchery-raised fish are included in the salmon/steelhead laws as of this writing, a factor which is patently unfair for the sportsman who purchases a tag and wants to fish within a day's drive of home. But shad? That's a whole 'nother ballgame, boys. Next, the bloody guv'mint will be telling me I can't catch bullheads.

A duck in the hen house, that's what I was. Sande was obviously out of place and had a good excuse to beat a hasty path to the door, but I had been invited to the wedding shower for his granddaughter, so to absent myself from the proceedings would have been inconsiderate at the very least. I arrived, gift in hand, wearing my best every-day trousers and a decent canvas shirt with buttons on the opposite side of the striped camp shirt it partially covered. That's my customary mode of dress, work shirt in place of a sweater or jacket. It says, "This person is an outdoorsman, regardless of where she is standing."

Sande's youngest daughter is like me, a tomboy and not ashamed to admit it. I am sure that she, like I, has been charged with preferences she does not have, based solely on her fashion sense and overall demeanour. She greeted me at the door and I realized I'd made a gaffe. Daffy, auntie to the bride, was wearing a dress. The groom's grandmas were in slacks, somewhat mitigating the appearance of my functional twill, so I relaxed, if only a little.

Now I can hold a teacup with a raised pinky if society demands it, although I've been known to humiliate myself to tears nosing into a crowd of suits discussing ice climbing techniques or reefin' on a lunker when clad in a slinky, black satin mini short one sleeve. I tend to totter on wedge heels, though, so most social functions will find me seeking camouflage behind the largest artificial plant: the haven of Nature, despite reproduction in plastic.

I was introduced around the room as the "fishing buddy," somewhat in the manner of saying, "This is my uncle. Normally, we keep him locked in the attic." That, too, is part of my character, and it defines me. The grandmas accepted me as couch mate without visible sign of reluctance, although I was puzzling over how to hold up my end of a conversation if one arose. Our hostess came to the rescue with luncheon served on individual trays lined with crochet work, punch in crystal cups and silverplate beside china.

A friend had warned me about the next phase when I found myself paired with the two grandmas, one playing the 'bride' to two 'dressmakers.' It wasn't toilet paper, but tissue, and there were crepe paper streamers, artificial flowers and satin ribbon in the turn-of-the-century gown constructed by my team. We won, hands down, and the 'bride' received an expensive planter for her prize, fairly awarded to the person who had functioned as dummy without being able to participate in the play.

When the games were done and the chatter devolved to pregnancy and child-rearing, I began edging toward the exit, totally out of my depth. The fun was done. I was neither first nor last to leave.

I dreamt I was a horse. In a pink dress with matching antebellum cotillion chapeau, I walked on hind legs into the portable marked, "Women." A loud voice from inside demanded of me, "What for YOU in hotel, eh?"

Dr. Freud, take that cigar and put it where it will gag you.

Hey, don't you damn city people know the meaning of the words, "Private Property?" Dennis and I rounded up a couple of fern-pickers in grand style yesterday, Dennis on the quad and your gentle author packing, as they say, at the rear. We've had an upswing in robberies lately, and we don't take kindly to intruders prowling the woods behind our toolsheds. This pair actually debated the issue, the female member insisting on snitching "just a few more" fronds.

Dennis began politely enough, explaining the situation and asking them to leave immediately. When this suggestion was not well-received, my neighbour insisted firmly, "'Now' means 'NOW!'" His Doberman dropped into a crouch with hackle up at the sound of Dennis' raised voice, and Dennis drove the couple to their car like cattle, following on the verge of the road to the next place they stopped, again to rout them out.

Suppose you owned a city lot with an alley running along its back border. Your prize roses are situated just inside a decorative white picket fence, their pretty buds thrust up like minarets. The open flowers are lower on the bush and just inside the gate. Now I happen to be driving along the alley and I spy rosebuds. I am thinking, "Ah! the florist down on Main Street said he'd pay me a buck for every open rose I can bring in." I swing the gate wide, ignoring your open garage opposite the rosebush, and I take out my little pocket knife and begin making tidy diagonal slices through stems. Are we getting the picture here? Do I need to make it clearer? You are not happy about this petty thievery, not one bit, and most likely you're already dialing the sheriff before I can start nosing about in your shed for tools I might like to collect. Well, we don't have the option of swift enforcement here. Law takes as long to arrive as Christmas for a kid, and we want results now.

Another example of city-folk behaviour is the jackass who turns his car around on Clyde's yard. He pulls into the driveway before he sees that it dead-ends at a garage. He does not put his vehicle in reverse. He hangs an immediate left and makes a sweeping arc across the euphemistically-termed grass to put himself into position to enter the highway. Beggin' your pardon, but I think you'd be a bit incensed if I pulled the same doughnut on your lawn.

Does common sense stop at the city limit sign? Fern-pickers, I might be planning to take those fronds to the buyer myself to supplement my meagre income. Mushroomer, that's my dinner in your basket. Hunter, I have fed those deer. They trust me and my family enjoys their presence. Get back in your car, trespasser, and hie yourself back home before I load your britches with buckshot for mistaking your innocent pilfering for thievery with bad intentions. Your carelessness and disregard have no place here in the wilds where vigilance is the watchword.

You don't need to pick up worms at the grocery store. Just drive twenty miles further on, and turn right when you see the big smokestack. An abandoned 20-acre millpond lies at its base, uniformly seventeen feet deep, relatively unknown to any but locals, and its stocked German browns fairly dance for a black hare's ear nymph fished on three feet of leader behind a casting bubble. Yes, Fishwitch is back on her pace. I picked up eighteen yesterday, and although only ten were keeper-sized, three of that number were browns, which made me a very happy camper.

This tiny pond is home to enough species of fish for any sportsman. Browns are the major draw for trout fishers, but bass fishermen are equally attracted to the water. Of trout, there are the browns, rainbows and brookies that I know of, and the landlocked salmon known as "silvers." The spiny rays are represented by bass, perch, crappie and bluegill, rounded out by channel cat lurking in the corners.

Now I'm not a member of the hot-dog/chicken/stinkbait crowd by any means, and really prefer daintily placing a fly to chucking worms and Power Bait, but at this time of year, fly-fishing waters are few and far between. My rods have stood in the closet since fall, and I hardly expected to long for one of them before the latter part of June. (Thank you, I fall short of being a purist, and take salmon on my stoutest stick and a big gob of home-cured roe. Them's smokehouse fish you're talking there: a staple food, not sport.)

Not knowing what any day in May may offer, I carry a multi-purpose tool at this time of year: a medium action bait rod, and only that. I could land a pumpkinseed with it or a steelhead, if my patience held. I kicked myself mightily when we reached the parking area, seeing several fly-fishers already on the water in float tubes, and more were gearing up. If nothing else, I should have had an Ugly Stik on hand. "Semper paratus!" I said gleefully, for in my tackle pack is a little bit of everything, including a small box of the most versatile flies for these parts.

The water was opaque, so I chose a dark nymph. Three casts gave me the feeding depth and the strike zone. Soon I had three fish on my stringer, all the while Sande flailed away with nothing for his efforts. I went in pursuit of bluegills at the farthest end of the pond, not to cut the day short for my partner, but none were forthcoming. The water might have been too cool yet for them to be on the move, or they might not have liked my fly. I was having too much fun to bother trying for them with worms.

I hiked through woods and grassland, up a small rise and down along the long side of the reservoir, then crossing the short end, stopped and picked up two more fish before checking on my buddy. He looked wistfully at my stringer and announced his score at zero. "Okay, follow me. I'm gonna put you on a fish," I said. Sometimes I have to talk him through it. On the short side again and with coaching, he got his solitary rainbow.

In the meantime, I tied on an elk hair caddis as an experiment and twitched it along the surface until three more fish lay on the shore. I lost the fly to a worn leader, and we'd stowed the bulk of the gear in the truck, so it was time to go home. Fishwitch is back.

The Department of Natural Resources may lose one of their finest wildland firefighters if Clyde decides to pull up roots and transplant to Montana as he's talking about doing. He has family ties there, and a good position is coming open for a man of his experience.

Clyde is an odd bird. He has more common sense than any ten of us together, but very little education. His high-schooling was conducted largely in special ed classes and metal shop. He is able to read a newspaper, but only with difficulty. On the other side of the coin, he knows the names and habits of any wild creature in the state, can track a field mouse over bare, hard ground, and can estimate the height and girth of a tree within inches.

For lack of a degree, he has held a seasonal position with DNR for over twenty years, unable to upgrade to permanent status. Within his venue, however, he has recently risen from Engine Leader and Fire Marshall to Supervisor over the field crews, which is a respectable title, but one that carries only minimum benefits and no opportunity for further advancement. His love is actively working on the lines, but at almost 50 years old, two bad knees kept him from passing the "pack test" at the arduous level this year, something not required before 2002.

He and I are unlikely friends, but friends we are, and fishing buddies. We've had our outs, notably when he abruptly decided to pay me court and scared the livin' bejaizus out of me by appearing at my doorstep well after bedtime, slightly sauced and spruced up in his Sunday best. There was a hiatus in our relationship then that lasted several years, but we mended fence while both his parents were still alive and have maintained an active friendship ever since. In short, we're comfortable neighbours in an area known for its survivalists and meth labs, its robberies and its unsavoury characters, so not only would I be sad to see him move, I'd be a bit afraid of what new tenants might take residence in the ramshackle, unimproved-upon, 100-year old logging shack next door.

I can't help but hope that the DNR will see the light before the deed is done, and do all in their power to keep a valuable asset from being lost, but as neighbour and friend, I want what's right for Clyde, despite knowing that I may not like it when it comes.

I built the cat a window seat today. There has gotten to be rather too much tummy to fit on the sill with any degree of security, although I wouldn't wish to refer to her a "fat" because cats are known to be easily offended. Her forequarters are narrow and her face dainty, but her lardy bottom quite fills the seat of a wooden chair, and the avoirdupois about her middle region sags and tempts gravity when she sprawls on the back of the couch.

This is an oddly built cat, as if two different animals had been stitched together without referring to the size tags. Her hips are frog-like, structured for producing kittens at six-month intervals, and when she's thrown over a shoulder, the span is such that a foot projects on either side of my ribcage. The front end fits the window nicely, but the rump is twice too wide.

Her eleven-pound weight must be attributable to genetics. She eats sparingly of the Iams ration recommended for maintenance, and receives only enough treats to make up for what she leaves in her bowl. She's very active, and spends hours galloping from window to window pursuing the unreachable squirrel which often bedevils her by sitting just outside the sliding glass door to nibble on scattered birdseed, or lacking that for sport, she chases after me with equal enthusiasm.

She was such a tiny thing when she first came here! You could have stuffed her in a teacup. Already, she'd fended off two cat-eating dachshunds who had dispatched one of her much larger litter mates, and the dogs subsequently adopted her as their mascot, not tolerating any other cat. Her left wrist is heavily scarred by the battle she fought and won. This feisty streak has left more than a few gashes in my hands and arms, though I'm to be blamed for initiating rough play and only reproach her if an attack was unwarranted.

She's not much for laps and cuddling, although that may come with maturity. She is, after all, only a year and a half old. The one significant exception is a nightly snuggle. It begins around 2 a.m. when she asks to be let under the blankets where she turns around to face me, sniffs my breath, and then lies down with hind feet braced against my stomach as the front paws knead my chest. So composed, she purrs herself back to sleep in a process that takes fifteen minutes or so, and despite missing a portion of my night's rest, I find it as comforting as she does.

It's been a number of years since I shared my home with a cat. I'd forgotten cat hair and litter tracks, gnawed corners and midnight pounces and toys always underfoot. I had forgotten the allowances that need to be made, the courtesies which must be observed, the time clock. It was necessary to drill holes in the wall to support the window platform, one more thing in the long list of cat accommodations I agreed to make by signing on without reading the fine print of the contract. Nevertheless, when I tell friends that she's more trouble than she's worth, I don't mean it, not really, not at all. "It's a pretty decent cat," I tell her as she lies upside-down in my arms, "despite the fact that I need a derrick to pick it up."

Forgive me, but I have no strength left to be outraged by the abuse of Iraqi prisoners after a day of fighting with the government for adequate medical care for myself.

Approximately two months ago, my medical insurance stopped covering a specific drug for cholesterol (Zocor) which my physician had prescribed over another, knowing that with my history of adverse reactions, the second drug was quite likely to be a problem. Unfortunately, the only drug the insurer would then allow was the one my doctor had precisely wanted to avoid (Lipitor), so I was obligated to take it or run a high risk of stroke. Inevitably, side effects occurred, and when they finally became too severe, I called the insurer to see if any options were available.

Supposedly, in cases of "medical necessity," the physician is required jump through a lengthy series of hoops to obtain proper treatment for his patient. The cost of time on his part amounts to several hours of being put on hold at various agencies over a period of days before the request will be considered. If approved, the doctor will be given a code to refer to the pharmacist, who in turn presents it to the insurer, a time-frame of several weeks in which the patient can either take the medication and accept the adverse reactions, or refuse to take the medication and put their health in serious jeopardy.

I attempted to start the process of appeal today. I arrived, as is my custom, ten minutes early for my appointment, then sat in the waiting room for an additional twenty beyond the specified hour before being called into an examining room. Another hour elapsed before I laid eyes on the doctor, although I could hear him in the adjacent chamber discussing the merits of various models of car and his latest footrace. When at last he did attend me, it was with courtesy and professionalism, although I'm surprised he didn't comment on the black smoke rising from my ears. I gave him the information from the insurer, whereupon he went directly to the phone. Before he could dial, his nurse called him aside to say that my information was incorrect and that the medication I had taken previously (Zocor) would not be covered under any circumstance. She gave him a list of substitutes which they would approve, from which he chose Pravachol.

When I presented the prescription at the pharmacy, it hung up on a further bit of bureaucracy. It seems that Pravachol is approved if and only if there is a direct interaction between the current medication and another drug. There is no allowance for patients with adverse reactions. The pharmacist dumped the mess back in my hands to sort out with doctor.

I called the clinic as soon as I got home. The nurse listened to my explanation patiently, and apologetically explained that it would be a few days before anyone would be back in the office. I couldn't help but wonder if there was a marathon someplace, or a car show. Fortunately, however, my doctor had not yet left the building, and the nurse called back within the hour to say he'd prescribed something else, with arrangements already made with the pharmacist. The substituted medication is one that is known to be virtually ineffectual, cheap but worthless. I know a barrel when I encounter it, and that's a big one you see me over.

The temptation is to throw all the pills in the john and give it a flush, and try to do it on my own with diet. I've done rather well on that basis previously, and perhaps if I was a little stricter...say perhaps using only 100% fat-free chicken broth instead of 99%, and not putting an egg in the bread I make once a week...I might get the LDL down to a tolerable level. There's a snag with that, though. It seems that if I don't take what doctor prescribes, my insurer can dump me and I can lose my financial benefits as well: damned if I do, damned if I don't.

At this point, I can honestly say I'm glad of one thing: I do not have high blood pressure.

Yesterday's spontaneous visit to the rural areas in which I grew up utterly stunned both my mother and myself. We weren't so deluded that we thought we'd find things pretty much untouched, but we were nonetheless ill-prepared for the gruesome example of sprawl that met us at the door.

It had been ten or more years since either of us had been by the old Foss place, six acres once divided almost equally between homestead, pasture and forest, set beside a neighbor to the north and one to the west with the next being a shack a quarter mile away. Our house was spacious for its day, solidly and beautifully built by a Danish cabinetmaker. Behind it, a barn half again as large stood against the woods, with a wooden-floored upper storey worthy of being called an apartment. There was a mother-in-law cottage between these two structures which, although small, had two nice bedrooms in addition to the kitchen and living area.

Of this, not a shred of evidence remained: no fish pond, no raspberry patch, no dahlia garden, no cherry trees, poplars or towering maple, no evergreens. The pasture was filled with modern homes; filled, I say, like a carefully packed box of china without space between to allow the slightest rattle, cushioned only by small patches of garden and postage-stamp manicured lawns. Ten or more vinyl-sided atrocities jostled elbows where I once climbed fruit trees, another ten crowded cheek-to-jowl where the driveway formerly ran. The potholed gravel road was paved, of course, and had I been dropped there by helicopter, the only thing I could have recognized was the lie of the land.

At the second location, the tale repeated. I had ventured there years previous to find that I could not confidently make out our house among its crammed neighbors. The surprise here was that the buildings I had seen at that time had since been razed! New homes had sprung up in their places, either carbon copies or reflections of the others in the paved court which had been our yard in another life. An address sign displayed our number, or we might have thought we had made the wrong choice of the latticework of roads striping land where only the ghosts of fir trees stretch their boughs.

I made a loop, and on coming into the street from the opposite direction, found unexpected confirmation behind a thick laurel hedge. A peek of dark barn red made me slow the car. "That's Hazels' place!" I cried, the south wall of a painted log cabin barely visible through the leaves, an anachronism and old friend.

The familiar fades with logarithmic haste these days, and fifty years' change hops by in ten. I write, looking out the front window past a fence, a road and phone lines, across a pasture and as my eyes raise to the mountain, I see only trees for now.

The seedlings are beginning to crowd one another in the flats as if jostling to be first in line for a good seat in the garden, not aware that the theatre won't open until June. A few are covertly holding hands where the growing media abut, and some of the more brazen youths are fondling their companions through the fine mesh which covers the warm, damp peat.

Despite altering the sowing date within the recommended time frame, whatever I plant always seems to be in advance of itself as the date of departure approaches. Three or four sets of true leaves will have appeared above the cotyledon leaves, and those that need it will be overdue for the pinching that should be avoided while the youngsters are still in their temporary situations.

Gardening in the kitchen is a bit of a headache at this point. The laundry machines have been converted to a greenhouse bench with a light slung low above the lids. The washer can't be opened without removing the light, and the lint filter can't be taken out of the dryer without shifting the trays. On Sunday, the lot moves to the top of the chest freezer for a few hours, during which time I'm more than a little likely to recall I didn't thaw the chicken.

Soon, the flats will move onto the back porch by day, only to be brought inside at again in the evening. Killing frost occur late here, and even early June is a risky time to be putting tender annuals out-of-doors. I play the odds carefully, with one eye on the past weeks' pattern of weather, and the other on the tantalizing prospect of doing wash without interference. If Jack Frost does pay an unexpected visit, I'll be standing by with sheets of plastic to keep his fingers from nipping wee green noses.

Once they are securely established, my tending of plants grows lax. I weed among their feet, water them as demanded, fend off serious threats by predators. I am a casual gardener once my charges have gone from home and settled in respectable positions. My parenting is done, and I have only to admire what they can achieve on their own.

The scent of lily-of-the-valley isn't apparent when you first step out the front door, thick as the flowerbed may be with its nodding white bells. You pass through it without notice en route to the mailbox, the current created by your moving body bearing the fragrance into open space where it disperses, but on return, it follows as daintily as Mary's lamb and mounts the step at your heels. It catches you up with your hand on the doorknob, and suddenly, you are enveloped in a cloud of gently sweet perfume.

My grandmother had lily-of-the-valley in her garden, and of an evening when the heat of the day drew back, I loved to walk beside it. There might have been faeries among the leaves, so enchanting was the setting; ephemeral creatures with gossamer wings and green-hued hair who gowned themselves in the foliage and blossoms, camouflaged to fool the inquisitive eyes of a child. If they danced there, they danced in the cool closing hours of the day, and took their repose out of sight beneath an overstory of veined greenery.

It might be that my preferences in scent were affected by my grandmother's garden, for I love lily-of-the-valley foremost, followed shortly thereafter by lavender, lilac and honeysuckle. True, they hearken to Victoria's day alongside crocheted and tatted laces and Charles Dickens, but so too are those artifacts encountered within my domain. Nevertheless, I have not reached the age of antiquity held by bustles and high-button shoes if, perhaps, my tastes could consign me to their dusty shelves.

The mail has gone, and I've walked memory's footpath for today. A tiny vase holds six sprays of fragrant white bells, and sits upon a tatted doily on the mantle.

A quote from MSN’s Science News today: “Squyres said Opportunity's remote sensing instruments indicate the cliff is mostly basalt, a type of rock that makes up most of the seafloor on Earth. But whether that means the rock is solely sandstone or was once a Martian beach or sand dune remains to be determined, he added.”

From Cornell University, is he? Oh dear.

Can you say, “IG-ne-ous,” Mr. Squyres? Can you say, “Sed-i-MEN-tary?” When I was in elementary school, I owned a full set of “All About Books.” The one which examined geologic processes explained the difference in detail. Igneous rocks are extruded in a molten state. Sedimentary rocks are formed by deposition. Sandstone and basalt are as unlike as poppies and potatoes, steel and aluminum, cats and dogs. Perhaps the reporter responsible for the story misquoted the Spirit Rover project’s principle investigator. I should devoutly hope so, else we are in deep, deep trouble here on Earth.

On the Net, in magazines and newspapers, on television and radio, errors of this magnitude are born every day. Too many people disseminate what they read without verifying the material, and so perpetuate misinformation. I am guilty of it myself at times.

I was once told that Lemony Snicket (of Baudelaire orphan fame) was a pseudonym of J. K. Rowling. I was so thrilled with finding this tasty bit of gossip that I hastened to pass it along to our librarian. Before I had uncovered the truth of the matter and the name David Handler, the library staff had circulated the mistake to a dozen or more patrons. By the time I could apologize and correct myself among my associates, damage control was futile in the wider scene.

I have never seen a retraction published on MSN, never a correction. Spelling errors abound as if no proofreader ever glimpsed the page. We walk in a day when the best advice might be a more stringent variant of this famous quote: “Don’t believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see,” or better, “Doubt everything, even this.”

At the very tip of a silver snag which rose some thirty feet higher than the surrounding forest, an immense tangle of twigs sat poised like one of the desert’s famous balancing rocks. Over its rim, eyes watched three anglers boating slowly through the narrow canyon, the sharp eyes of another sort of fisher: an osprey. Her mate soared above us, surveying the water for a dash of silver rising too near the surface. If he saw our lures glittering with reflected sunlight, he paid them no heed at all.

This particular defile is accessible only by boat. No roads enter it, nor footpaths. For vast stretches, any boatman would find it impossible to disembark onto vertical rock banks or timberland thick with undergrowth. The marvel is that stumps below normal high water line show deep notches where early loggers installed springboards to aid their felling. It is an area that speaks of a bygone age, and Paul Bunyan might have been its hero.

The canyon cleft lies nearly southward from its mouth, and so is brightened by sunlight throughout most of the day. The hills on either side are quartered and cross-quartered with evergreens and hardwood, and are broken occasionally by domes of grey basalt. Odd bits of geology lie on the rare shingle: rounded pebbles of white, river-worn quartz, shattered petrified wood, mica-flecked granodiorite. Vulcan laid this pavement, to be sure.

Our penetration ended at a small cascade where the parent stream debouched into a circular arena. Small fish frolicked after surface insects, leaping clear of their habitat like astronauts in search of wonders. We trolled among them, hooked a few but delivered them back to the water with care, perhaps to mature, or perhaps to find their way into young osprey tummies as Nature intended. A few would find their end untimely, destined for the smokehouse.

Were we three fishermen in a boat or three travellers in a time machine? The ancient canyon opened both possibilities. My line drifted ‘twixt the twain, with the osprey overhead and the Blue Ox just over the hill.

¡Vamos a celebrar! Es el cinco de mayo, el día de la independencia de Mexico.

That said, I should add that history is not my long suit. All I have ever known of the subject appears in a two-page spread in the current Old Farmer’s Almanac. Ninety percent of the material was summarily dismissed from mind in the fifteen steps required to get from bathroom to computer. My mind will not retain historical data unless it is pounded forcibly into the grey matter.

As I child, I was a straight-A student of history. It didn’t come as naturally as English, math or science, although I found it interesting and had no difficulty filing its statistics for future reference until I contracted the Asian flu. During my fifth-grade year, I lay with a raging fever for the better part of a month.

We were snowed in. Our house was set deeply in a geologic kettle at the end of a dirt road so steep that even today, I doubt it’s ever plowed, and chains or not, the Ford couldn’t have climbed it to carry a sick child to the doctor. Phone service was out, although the electricity flowed faithfully, and I dimly recall my mother skiing six or seven miles to the grocery story once I was on the road to recovery.

Scholastically, I had quite a set-back. A month’s tutoring had gone, and I was far behind. In the parochial schools of those days, no allowances were made for lagging students. Plain and simple, I was expected to catch up on my own. In English, I was already well in advance of the other students and so breezed through exams without cracking a book. Science and mathematics came quickly and without effort, although a B was the best I could muster. I faltered a bit with geography and saw my scores dip accordingly, but for history, there was no hope. I took a fat D the following quarter, and my grade point average plummeted. No amount of study drilled a fact into my head thereafter.

I’ve often said that my history cells burned up when the fever reached 106.2 degrees. I’ve managed to install a few bits of information in the files over the subsequent 45 years, but precious few stay longer than ten minutes. I know more about Australia than I do America, only because of an abiding interest and repeated exposure to the facts.

Since leaving the bathroom and the Almanac’s pages, I remember only that the Cinco de Mayo battle was fought with France. What year? Where? It’s gone. The word “mestizo” lodged in the sponge, though, because the language cells were unaffected by my bout with the History Flu. Funny thing, the brain…cerebrum, cerebellum, parietal, occipital, temporal, pre-frontal cortex, medulla oblongata, corpus callosum, gyri, sulci…

The downfall of Man began its journey with the invention of digital watches. Back in the Dark Ages when computers required large rooms to house, an engineer wanting to check the time could simply hike up his sleeve with a simple single-arm gesture and take a gander at the hands of his timepiece. Sometimes, the pointers were striped with sub-lethal doses of radium, allowing the hour to be displayed even in the dark. Admittedly, this phosphorescence faded without frequent exposure to light, but for most of us, it was adequate. I mean, how many times have you had to check the time when you were locked in a dark closet overnight?

Then came the first digitals, and since the clocks no longer had hands, it seemed their owners had to make up for their shortcomings. To tell the time, the stretch-and-rotate motion was first employed, but then the user’s second hand came into play to press a button. You could no longer raise your coffee mug to your lips and read your watch simultaneously. From that era forward, our lives have become increasingly more complex by way of technology.

I bought a digital camera, not wanting to be left behind in the modern world. It took me months to learn to use it, and still I never felt secure going on a photo shoot without the manual in my pocket. The photos lacked the crispness of my old 35mm., and often I had to discard images which were rendered unusable by chromatic aberrations, a disease peculiar to the digital species. I could store many more photographs on the media card, meaning that my camera bag was not cluttered with rolls of film both used and unused, but viable and deceased batteries soon filled the space. The camera was light enough for backpacking, but far more fragile than its three-pound predecessor

One winter’s eve, I went calling on friends and accidentally left the camera behind. A week later when I went to retrieve it, the barrel was jammed open with stripped threads, the motor had burned out as the machine tried vainly to shut itself off, the LED screen was fried. After four months at the repair shop waiting for backordered parts, the carrier of my service policy finally opted to replace it with a new one, my choice from several options.

I have the new camera. It is much smaller and takes photos with greater resolution. It would not, however, accept the old media or batteries, so those were obtained at my expense. It came with two computer disks for installation of hardware and instruction, whereas the old one had a hands-on guide book for easy study. This camera came with no such manual, nor is one available, and the computer version runs on the clumsy and cumbersome Acrobat and lacks a “find” field. I could print it out…all 220 pages…or I could guess, as many folks do, and hack my way into a minimal working knowledge of a very technical device.

Somehow, I can’t consider this advancement progress. I thought technology was supposed to make our lives simpler. If it takes two hands to tell the time, they should be a clock’s, not mine.

In an era when rude clerks are the norm and the phrase, “Help yourself” takes on a twisted and unsavory connotation, it is refreshing to find a store where service is friendly and prompt, and personal attention is delivered with honest warmth. I found such a shop today while looking for a book rack for my unpretentious Schwinn bike.

I’d bought a “universal” rack last week, only to find that it didn’t fit. Too often that’s the case with things I own. The “for all brands” carafe fails to trigger then mechanism in my coffee maker by a clear half inch, “one size fits all” nightgowns drag six inches on the floor, the “adapts to any chuck” drill bit refuses to spin when mounted in my power tool. I have returned photo album pages clearly showing the model in my possession as one to which they purportedly can be adapted, sewing machine needles “compatible with Singer,” window screens, shower rods, pipe fittings, car parts, vacuum belts, toothbrush heads and so on, so on, so on. I have become so accustomed to the routine that it never crossed my mind to think that, just once, fault might lay elsewhere.

The book rack I purchased at a well-known outdoors store refused to cooperate with my installation. The legs were too narrow, the supporting bars were both left-handed, and even so, failed to reach the screw holes in the bike frame by a good six inches on the diagonal. The alternative bridge mount was no better. I gathered all the screws and washer, put them in the sacks they came in, bagged the lot and tucked it in the car to be returned.

The girl at the register was sympathetic. “Schwinns are kinda different,” she explained, and handed me my refund. The address of a Schwinn dealer was in my pocket, but when I arrived at the building, it was vacant. Wild geese are my major sport.

Not ready to admit defeat, I got in the car and drove to Plan B without a phone call. The book had said it was open seven days. My faith is often blind.

The shop was in a hole below the level of the highway, a sharp 270-degree turn to enter a parking area shared with an auto mechanic’s patients. That gentleman was under the hood of some relic at the cyclery’s door when I passed him by, and although he was greasy and using words my father used to start the tractor, the bike shop was neat and clean, well-stocked and appointed. The store manager left off repairing someone’s pricey mountain bike to wait on my dilemma, and before he returned to it, he had installed a rack and adjusted the Schwinn’s derailleur as well.

We talked of routes and trips, joked about my ineptitude (well, there was nothing in the directions for the universal rack that said those rails had to be bent to fit, and I don’t go bending things I’m not told are to be bent), and when it came time to pay the piper, the fee was less for all than what I’d paid for the rack I couldn’t install.

The bike is set, and so am I, all geared up and ready to go. We have wild geese to chase. Ta-ta!

We are creatures of habit, we human beings, and our patterns cage us. We rise at an appointed hour and conduct a ritual of personal hygiene that is far more structured than one might think. We follow a diagram of strokes when brushing our teeth, washing our faces and bodies or shaving, and unless some peculiarity dictates a change, these motions are quite nearly identical from day to day. We dress observing order: right sock, left sock. Our steps are measured from bed to bathroom beginning with our dominant foot. Our thirsts and hungers are more accurate than a sundial for telling the hour, and we read papers and watch television regularly in the truest sense of the adverb, minutes and hours allotted as per individual preference.

Boredom finds us far too often, and we wonder why. Our jobs are routine, so we lay the blame handily upon their restrictions, yet seldom do we analyze the simple functions of our lives as root of the problem. Even our vacations repeat themselves ad nauseam, copying form from year to year if, perhaps, in new locations.

Up and down, round and round, back and forth we go, strokes with a toothbrush or following a route. This is a rut, and we are in it like rats in a maze. Our patterns are our walls, and we navigate through them by rote to reach some small reward, only to begin again.

I am not suggesting that we take radical action to remedy this state of redundancy because it does not need it. A small change can effect larger ones, much like the building wake behind a power boat. We might benefit from driving different roads, setting our alarm clocks fifteen minutes earlier, taking tea instead of coffee. The importance is in altering our perspective, even slightly. The brain stagnates under repetition, the mind grows lazy with no call made upon it to form new pathways among the forest of synapses.

When a different set of muscles are asked to perform a task, learning occurs on a physiological level. It’s as simple as that. The next time you’re oppressed by humdrum, be bold! Go on, I dare you! Put your left shoe on first for a few days and see if it doesn’t change your attitude.

Do today’s children make May baskets and fill them with lilacs and scylla? Mine always had a few dandelions thrown in because I loved them so, and my mother would include them when she arranged the bouquet in a vase and centered it on the dining table.

For several days prior to the event, our classroom bustled with a flurry of construction paper and our desks were sticky with the honey-like mucilage we carelessly squeezed from rubber-tipped bottles. We were encouraged in freedom of expression after having been shown the basics, and depending on our individual inspiration, the finished containers ranged from crayon art or appliqué to basketry woven with paper splints.

The shapes were various: boxes, cones or hearts, each with a handle to facilitate delivery, and each student might make several different types with certain folk in mind. It was customary to present others outside the family with these little poseys, and the morning of May Day would find little girls out in the dew snipping blooms to fill their baskets, then tripping merrily up to neighbours’ doors en route to the bus stop. “Happy May Day, Mrs. Lowell!” Even the teachers were not forgotten.

We often gathered flowers from yards other than our own without permission, finding something special for a crowning accent here and there. Bits of greenery were taken from the wild, and perhaps a cedar fan or fern would be just the thing to go behind a wisp of spiraea or basket-of-gold lifted from a corner rockery.

The simplicity of this quaint gesture gave it warmth beyond its art, tying the parents of the community through the medium of the child. It forgave the trespasses of pilfered apples and blueberries, excused the insignificances of unreturned pliers and errant catalogues. Eloquently, if not elegantly in its homely presentation, between the lines, it said, “I speak well of you at my dinner table, and my child names you friend.”

If the tradition of May baskets is forgotten, it is to mourn. There are so many dandelions, and too many friendless people.