Opening Day of trout season in Vermont is as fickle as any other notion of spring in our glorious state. Eliot was correct; April is indeed the cruelest month! On this year’s opening Saturday, after nearly 15 years of hiatus from the vagaries of the day, I was with three friends dragging two canoes across knee deep snow down a logging road to a pond. Dragging in was at least down hill; for the way out we chose to drag across level, snow-covered swampland portaging by sections of the outlet brook. Drag, sink to above boots, drag, drag, drag, sink. And so it went. Bookends to our day, a day which yielded only two fish to one guy. Nice brookies, but still; we all worked pretty hard!

Even so, at the end of the day, cold, a bit wet, no fish for supper, and snow in my boots, I realized I’d had fun. Lots of laughs. Exercising the muscle memory of tying tackle, casting line, packing the canoe. The familiarity of rituals and friendships. Opening Day means all that, even with the snow. Next time out there’ll be less snow and more fish, but the same friends.