The bright orb of the sun punctuates ocean blue sky fabric and pushes the mercury past the seventy degree mark. Amid Sandhill cranes basking in sun drenched fields, tree swallows dive in love sick spirals and Morning Cloak butterflies stretch hibernation stiff wings. Humans scurry about fueled by anxiety...anxiety about the possibility missing a single moment of this precious gift called summer. Boats buzz like mosquitoes along the river as engines are tested for soundness. Rakes rattle through the winter dry grasses emerging from rotting snow-pile corpses. Children with rubber boots sloshing at their knees stomp through mud-puddle seas. Smiling parents look on in envy, too bedazzled by the new found sun to care about mud stained clothing.
Here I sit in the bed of my pick-up truck, surrounded in all directions by spruce forests dripping on soggy carpets of snow. Mosquitos pester the snout of Scrub, the aged Golden Retriever resting at my feet. Sipping my pint of Guinness I conemplate the river 30 yards ahead, its coils meandering westward towards Fairbanks some 20 miles distant. I squint at a dimple spreading across its surface...."Can it be? Is an Arctic Grayling already arriving for its summer feeding banquet of crunchy insects?" Instinctively I reach where my fly rod should be stowed, but then I remember my purpose for being here on this fine day. I take another swig of Guiness and pull my eyes back into focus on the text book of Spanish lying on my lap. Final exams are in two days and many verb conjugates remain to be crammed into my head before I can become a danger to that Grayling calling me to river's edge.
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