Sometimes Sarah gets frustrated with fly fishing and traipsing around in fast flowing rivers with me searching for trout, and it’s true, sometimes I push too hard.  She’s always asking to use a worm.  (Oh, the horror!)  So, last weekend while we were rendezvousing with Emily in Park City Utah for a visit, we picked up her first spinning rod at Cabelas.   I took Sarah fishing yesterday at a local pond to try out this new PINK spinning rod which LIGHTS UP when its reeled.  (Lord… where did I go wrong?) 

She did pretty well and managed to catch a few nice fish… this bluegill and some beautiful smallmouth bass.  Not bad. Unfortunately, the weather turned and today it’s snowing, so I guess we put the snowshoes away too soon. Snowing about a foot in the mountains…

We finally got around to building the coop for our chickens.  It sure beats the cage in the house…

We dug the garden yesterday and plan on planting this week sometime.

I’m not really one for making New Year’s resolutions but there are a couple of things I am hoping to improve upon this next year and I suppose today is as good as any to get started. 

To begin with… I aim to improve upon my blogging skills.

Perhaps you have noticed that I haven’t posted to this blog in quite some time.  I assure you it has not been from lack of material or adventures to write about because there has been plenty.  My problem begins with living in a 12 x 12 cabin for 5 months and finding it difficult to get quality online time.  One day leads to another and before you know it a few months have pasted. Yes, I realize that there are ways and I can and will do better this next year.  

However, the real problem was that I began feeling I had lost focus on what I had originally set out to accomplish with this blog.  My hope was always that this would be primarily a unschooling, family and storytelling venue.  However, I started finding that I wanted to write more and more about my fly fishing experiences which don’t really fall into that category.  I’ve now stewed a while on this conflict and have decided to try running two separate blogs.  This will contain information about homeschooling, family and other artistic/creative endeavors and my new blog, www.thrashintrout.com will be my fly fishing only space. 

I plan on double posting for a little while while I migrate readers and organize thoughts.  That’s the plan at least.  Please check out www.thrashintrout.com and subscribe if it interests you and feel free to comment.  I am hoping this will inspire me to keep both focused on topic which will in turn organize my thoughts more effectively. 

There are some other things which I will expand upon in the near future like, getting out of Las Vegas, making better connections with other homeschool families, running and finishing my book. 

Until then Happy New Year!

Camp began this week so Saturday I decided to take a few hours and fish the Lower Madison before the impending stressful week.  Rumor had it that Salmonflies were beginning to hatch and the fishing was getting pretty good.  Sarah and I drove around for awhile trying to find a place which was conducive to my fishing, her exploring and River’s running around like a wild banshee.  Finally we found a satisfactory spot which played to our needs and I began fishing while Sarah waded around near the bank and caught aquatic insects in a seine net. 

It wasn’t long until I began catching fish, all respectful sized rainbows and browns and was having a good ole’ time picking them off on small dry flies.  Right about the time the fishing started to slow I caught a fingerling rainbow about 3 inches long.  Sarah thought this mini-fish was the cutest thing since the Jonahs Brothers and had fun talking to it and letting it swim around in the net for a few minutes before letting it go.  After the “cutest, little, baby fish in the world” she decided that I should catch more and proceeded to coach me in possible flies and locations to catch other “baby fish”.  I of course informed her that the object was not to catch the babies but the daddies.  It was about then when I hooked the largest fish of the night; a very nice rainbow which was probably about 18 inches.  I was happy, while Sarah seemed genuinely annoyed that it wasn’t cute like the other one.

I wrapped things up and we were sitting on the bank talking when a drift boat floated by with a Guide and a couple of clients aboard.  The Guide nodded to me and said something about it being a good night.  I agreed and as they floated by Sarah shouted out “My Dad caught a 3 inch fish!”  I could hear them laugh as they drifted on around the bend and leaving me with a bruised ego.  I looked over and rolled my eyes at Sarah who only shrugged her shoulders and said, “What?  It was cute!”

I think we will need to work on the art of the “fish story”.

I, on the other hand have been a closet farmer for pretty much as long as I can remember.  I started a vegetable garden when I was around 9 years old and can recall raising roses and experimenting with splicing in some hope of creating an award winning hybrid.  I never did, and soon gave up roses for the greater payoff of tomatoes, zucchini and onions. 

It’s possible that I inherited my hidden “farmer gene” from my great grandfather.  He was a farmer, and while I have no real memory of him, I do remember vividly, walking his farm the day before they auctioned it off and secretly wishing my Dad would place a bid.  I could clearly see myself clad in overalls plowing the fields of the old family farm with a mule team by day and whittling on a big front porch at night. 

I spent the better part of my youth harboring these romantic notions of simple farm life and self reliance.   While other kids played baseball I could be found living out nostalgia on local farms with “old timers” six times my age; listening to their stories and searching every conversation for a nugget of information.  I like to think that it was on these farms, which dotted the fledgling suburb of Northern Kentucky like little time capsules that I got my education.  Farms, that were rusting relics in a growing community that would soon fade away into oblivion, were to me; experiential frontiers, living books from which I could not be pulled.  

The Thirs Farm was one such remnant of yesteryear.  Paul, Walt and Bob Thirs were three brothers, bachelors all, who had grown up and worked on that family dairy farm for as long as anyone else in the community could remember.  The Thirs farm was where we got our milk, along with some homegrown produce when it was season.  We would drive up the long driveway to a small cinderblock building that sat, nestled in a cluster of other sheds, barns and coops, with our empty glass milk bottles and exchange them for full.  There never seemed to be a time when you couldn’t find the “Thirs Boys” (which is how they were referred) sitting in that milk room around a cast-iron potbellied wood burner, chewing tobacco, spitting into the coal scuttle, reminiscing and selling fresh milk.   During the summer and fall they’d sell off vegetables and homemade apple cider, squeezed from the apples in their orchard in a large wooden press.  They were a unique feature of my hometown and one that had an enormous impact on my life.

What began as permission to fish in their pond eventually turned into carte blanche access for hunting, trapping, camping or just curious exploration.  I spent as much time as I could on that farm; helping out, listening to their stories, wandering the fields and “hollers”, or poking through a bone yard of old farm tools.  I had exclusive run of the farm, a virtual panoply of adventure, a unique and secret class room brimming with opportunity which was all mine. 

When I was about 16, the “Boys” gave me a plot of land to grow a garden.  I can’t really remember if I asked or if they offered but either way I found myself the proud owner of my very own piece of farm.  I was heading for the big time now, and this wasn’t a little garden plot like I had been tinkering with before; this was a full acre to do with what I pleased.  I was also given free rein to all the tools of the trade which included the old Massey Ferguson tractor, a plow and disks. 

Donning my overalls, and armed with a red bandanna, farmer’s almanac and a pouch of Red Man; I took to the field early one spring to stake my claim.  I soon learned that while callused, hard worked hands seemed like a romantic idea in my mind they actually hurt pretty damn bad.  However, I was ambitious and filled that acre with tomatoes, beans, onions, peppers, corn, squash and a myriad of other leafy and rooty things. 

As I wiped my brow and pumped some cold water from the well into a tin ladle; Bob, the oldest of the three who rarely spoke, informed me that I had only planted a half acre.  “The full acre is over to that fence.” He mumbled, as he spit a brown stream of tobacco juice onto the ground.

So, it was back to the fields and back to work.  Of course now I was out of seeds and starters so what could I fill a half acre of fertile Kentucky soil with?  Tobacco!  My pal Dewey had an uncle with a tobacco farm which we periodically worked on for extra money.   He gave me a bunch of tobacco sets so that I could try my hand at a real Kentucky cash crop.  I planted them and they took off like wildfire.  I really had no idea what I was going to do with all that tobacco but I had fun picking off tobacco worms, topping it, cutting and hanging it a corner of the Thirs’ barn to dry. 

That first summer I had far more produce than I knew what to do with and can remember hauling it in bushel baskets to Church every Sunday to pawn it off onto whoever would have it.   The tobacco hung, forgotten and alone, drying in that barn until it crumbled into dust and blew away.

In the following years I reduced the size of my ambitions a little but continued to raise a garden until I was almost out of high school.  Once I was in college my farming days were put on hold but I never forgot that little farm and the time spent and adventures had there. 

Today, that farm, those three brothers and my open classroom live only in memory.  

The property was eventually sold to make way for the growing suburb, is now called Thirs Landing and you could live there for about $250,000 if you’d like.  I never drive past there without thinking about Paul, Walt and Bob and the farm I called my own.   It was there on that farm where the seeds were sown for a lifetime of learning.  Not from books, tests and lectures but from connections made and experiences lived. 

There were other farms where I had similar experiences but non which held quite as much charm as the Thirs farm.  Of course… I haven’t told you about Pete’s Garage yet…

“Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” W.B. Yeats

We’ve had some unusually warm weather this past week.  Quite a departure from the 2 feet of snow and upper teens I was greeted with.  It’s been so nice, that Sarah and Mabby (our camp cook) resurrected the garden I started last summer.  As I watched Sarah digging in the soil I was glad that seeds were being sown and all the world is her classroom. 

Mabby and Sarah preparing the garden plot at Rockhaven.

Sarah tending Mabby’s baked good booth at the Bozeman Farmer’s Market.

This inspiration turned into a little pet project and a mission to construct a space set apart from the distractions of the busy world to promote prayer, meditation, contemplation transformation and creativity.  After nearly three summers of icing my aching  back and lugging over a thousand boulders from the west side of the Gallatin River to the east side by way of a small foot bridge this Classic 7 Circuit Cretan Labyrinth is nearly complete. 

A Labyrinth is an ancient symbol found in many cultures which represents wholeness and simplicity.  There are a few different designs but all have a circular image and a meandering spiral path.  When most people look at a Labyrinth they immediately think maze but a Labyrinth is no maze.  Actually, it’s quite the contrary because a Labyrinth (like life) has no dead ends, there is one way in and one way out.  You can’t get lost in a Labyrinth as long as you stay on the path.  Although, just like life you may often feel lost.  A Labyrinth can be looked at as a metaphor for life’s journey.  It always reminds me that I already have what I need and should just toss away the compass and simply walk the path. 

“What we call the beginning is often the end, and to make an end is to make a beginning.”    T.S. Eliot

“Say not, ‘I have found the path of the soul.’  Say rather, ‘I have met the soul upon my path.’  Kahlil Gibran

Sarah found this great Pandora Sphinx moth on the front porch of our cabin the other night.  She built a makeshift shelter for him and he stayed in there all night.  The next morning the two of them played until he decided that it was time to get back to what ever it was he was doing prior to his capture. 

Sarah said that I needed a hair cut.  I said okay.  Would you trust your 7 yr old to cut your hair with a pair of rusty kitchen shears?  I did. 

Sarah tying flies at night before bedtime.  It’s great not having a television or video games around.

Come on in, but please walk softly and listen carefully for you never know when your mind might be opened to wonders small and unseen.

Welcome.

Sarah building a “secret” rear entrance and a play area with a ladder for “fairies who don’t have wings”.  

  Working on the water feature, a small pond for fairy fish and cool swims on hot days. 

There, the perfect hideaway home for hidden folk, complete with a moss carpet, pine cone chandelier, rock and stick furniture and a fire pit for those cold Montana nights. 

Shhh… fairies dwell here.