BACKROADS AND BOBTAILS
It's Time Now To Enjoy The Ride
by Bob Kornegay

As I get older, somehow my deep affection for flowing waters grows ever deeper. Water that moves of its own accord - be it creek, river, or babbling brook - does something to me, and for me, that still water cannot. Not, mind you, that a pristine pond or pretty lake doesn't have its appeal. It's just that now my aquatic excursions just seem happier when there's a bit of current to carry me along.

Why? Well, I'm not really sure I know, but I have a few thoughts on the subject that I'd like to share.

Perhaps it's the fishes that reside in the streams. I do, after all, love the fight of a Flint River shoal bass, a Blue Creek redbreast, and a Tallulah River rainbow trout. The finned denizens of flowing waters are almost always leaner, tougher, and often worthier angling opponents than most of their still-water brethren. Sometimes they're prettier, too. Yes, that matters from time to time.

Maybe I'm drawn to moving waters because they greatly simplify fishing for a naturally lazy soul who loathes having to spend most of his angling time motoring or paddling around just hunting for something to catch. In a stream, the fish I seek are, without exception, somewhere between two distinct shorelines in plain sight and easily reached. I can cover both banks without undue hassle, and if I must go searching it is either upstream or down, not randomly or in the proverbial circles.

Paul Stiles, a bass-fishing acquaintance from my past, once told me, "Bob, when you fish a river they're gonna be over here or over there. Ain't a whole lot of thinkin' to it."

You know, that by itself isn't a bad reason to fish a stream. I mean, a fella doesn't need too much thinking interfering with his fishing, now does he?

Or could it be my love for creeks and rivers stems from their effect on the eyes? Watching a fast-running stream dash madly along in white-water frenzy never fails to set my heart racing. Seeing the sunlight dance over a shallow clear-water shoal convinces me I know exactly what a million diamonds at once look like. A sedate, tea-colored ribbon of water oozing molassesslow through cypress knees beneath a canopy of gnarled boughs draped with Spanish moss lulls me into peaceful reverie and motivates me to thank God I'm a Southerner. In such places as these, the fish need not bite if they're not so inclined. Heck, sometimes they might even prove distracting.

I think all of this has much to do with my present-day running-water affection. But maybe there's another thing, too. Something that goes a lot deeper.

For me now, a rapid or leisurely journey down a moving stream is much like the trip I've taken through life for more than half a century. Throughout that excursion, I've spent a heckuva lot of time not paying attention. The years have ticked off and life has pretty much just flowed along, carrying me past far too many things I've failed to take the opportunity to appreciate.

Now, for whatever reason (a realization of mortality? a bitter sense of loss?), I've changed my attitude. It's a proper, more appropriate, journey now. I find myself more and more taking the time I wish I'd taken when there was more time to take.

There's no better place to do that, friends, than on a simple ride downstream. Such a journey is a course parallel to life itself. It unfailingly reminds me now that stopping to "smell the roses' or "look inward" is more than just a tired cliché. It awakens me to the indelible reality that I shall sorely regret continuing to approach life with a blind, business-as-usual mind-set.

And, too, it hits home hard that it's not the beginning, the middle, or the end of the trip that matters. It's the journey itself, be it a long float from headwaters to stream's end or no more than a short paddle from one bridge to the next.

As waters flow, so, too, do I.