Fishing Less, Doing More
People in my life have noticed that I don’t go fishing nearly as often as I did before surgery. It’s not that love fishing any less; it is more that I can now physically do so many other things. Truth be told, I used to go fishing sometimes so that people wouldn’t be as likely to notice that I simply couldn’t do other things and enjoy them. At my highest weight, even walking more than a few hundred feet got to be too much.
This past Saturday I went on a 2 mile nature walk with my wife and oldest daughter near our cabin in northern Minnesota. That distance would have worn me out for days when I was bigger; not so any more. We went in search of miniature yellow ladyslippers; wild orchids that are relatively rare and bloom for only a short time. The picture below shows one of the flowers next to my thumb. It seems so delicate, yet it is a perennial plant that regularly survives winter temperatures as low as – 40 degrees. The trail we walked is a spur off a little used logging road. The nearest town is 14 miles away. From the logging road, it did not look promising, yet this quiet, out of the way, unassuming path revealed almost 100 yellow ladyslippers, brilliant swatches of Indian Paintbrush flowers, 5 kinds of butterflies, 4 foot diameter ant hills, chest high ferns, ruffed grouse drumming loudly nearby, and who knows what other creatures eying us secretly from the surrounding woods. I also found several promising patches of diamond willow from which I could carve walking sticks. It was a wonderful experience and one that I would not have enjoyed nearly as much in my past life. Oh….and I did go fishing later in the day and caught my limit in less than an hour.
RP
