The Triumph of Hope

Whoever said that the second marriages was the triumph of hope over experience could just as well have  been talking about our northern springs:  We're sure the good weather's here and then, well... It was in the high 70s here yesterday, so druggily warm you slowed to  a crawl on walking out of the grocery store. You didn't care if you never got across that parking lot. Today by contrast? Temps in the mid-40s and rain like cat’s teeth driven into your skin. Anyway, it's a picture of the pond I visit almost daily and in it you will see the man I watched for 20 minutes, completely perplexed as to what he was doing, bent over and holding something to his mouth with both hands. Was he ... flossing? Playing the harmonica? Working to blow up one of those impossibly skinny balloons? It didn’t come to me for the longest time that he was tying a fly to go fishing.And this scene to the right says it all about the weather today, from the dead tree to the still-sere grass to the bright-green of the mallard's head that somehow fails to shine forth in the usual way. It’s the triumph of hope over experience to believe things will be green within the week but this man lives by hope. as I watched from my car he finally finished tying his fly and then he began flicking his line. I closed my eyes and remembered this clip from 1992’s A River Runs Through it,  made from a book that a Montana boy once made me read and that I will never forget.Watch it here and it's 1992 again and Brad Pitt is but a lad.  Watch it there and it's 1908 when both an author and a century were young and unscarred.