On My Own Terms

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Perry Palin
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Joined: 12/07/12 13:34

On My Own Terms

#1

Post by Perry Palin »

My mother died when I was ten years old. My dad worked at a job in town for low pay. He fought with alcohol and sometimes he lost. My two sisters, one older and one younger, withdrew to their own safe places in their own worlds, and I was free to grow on my own terms. I suppose the mothers of the other boys pitied me, but that didn’t mean they would let their sons run wild with the latter day Huckleberry Finn who rode a rusty bicycle with a fishing rod across the handlebars and a sleeping bag tied behind the seat. I mostly fished and camped alone. I was fine with that.

The country where we lived was second growth forest, abandoned to the bears after the loggers took all the big pines, and it was small profitless farms that hung on to narrow gravel roads. The streams ran for miles between the roads. I followed the paths to good fishing. The woods were aspens and hardwoods and balsams, with the rare pines on the hillsides and leaning white cedars in wide swamps. In the spring everything smelled sweet and fresh and green. Bloodroots carpeted the ground and marsh marigolds blossomed in quiet places. In the spring I heard geese calling overhead and grouse drumming in the woods. Redstarts and warblers chased mayflies over the water. I found moose tracks on the edges of the streams and I watched mink hunting along the banks, and there were otters in the water at times and beavers in their deep ponds. In slow places a great blue heron would lift ponderously into the air and fly upstream.

Fishing was a relief from the ruins of a family and the tedium of school. There was nothing at home or in school to compare with laying on a high bank and watching the brook trout shift in the current over golden gravel to catch the drifting flies. There was nothing to compare with listening at night to the barred owls calling across the forest, or laying on my sleeping bag and watching through an opening in the tree tops as the Milky Way turned a million stars in the sky. Nothing to compare with waking to the songs of the small birds in the trees, and pulling on dew-cold shoes, stirring my cooking fire, drinking boiled coffee and eating fried eggs and buttered bread, and walking down to the stream to fish in a summer dawn.

crowebeetle
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Re: On My Own Terms

#2

Post by crowebeetle »

Nice writing. I enjoyed it and can feel your time in the woods by the running water - thanks for sharing it.

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Flykuni3
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Re: On My Own Terms

#3

Post by Flykuni3 »

Beautiful, many thanks on this 4th of July.

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GerardH
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Location: Wyoming, MN

Re: On My Own Terms

#4

Post by GerardH »

Thank you, Perry -- I've enjoyed your prose over the years on the WI fly fishing forum and it's nice to catch up with your again.

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jhuskey
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Location: IL

Re: On My Own Terms

#5

Post by jhuskey »

Salute Sir!

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Holland
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Location: Ouachitas & Ozarks

Re: On My Own Terms

#6

Post by Holland »

Thanks Perry.

snorider
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Re: On My Own Terms

#7

Post by snorider »

Thank you Perry, very enjoyable read, and fun to guess where you grew up! Blood root puts you east of the plains. White cedar, and big pines? Moose? Mink? That sounds like my own youth in MN. So you grew up in a swath from Maine to the great lakes along the Canadian line. Based on the "big swamps" I am guessing MI? Thanks again for sharing the stories of your youth, sounds like you adapted well and made an adventure out of it.
Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it. T.R.

Perry Palin
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Joined: 12/07/12 13:34

Re: On My Own Terms

#8

Post by Perry Palin »

snorider,
I grew up in the Lake Superior watershed in NE Minnesota. There are more geese and fewer moose there now than there were in the 1960's. The cedar swamps are still there. The pines on the hillsides were left behind when they were too hard for the early loggers to reach in their winter work. I have always lived within an hour of trout streams. I return to the North Shore every summer for a few days of fishing for the brook trout.

To all,
Thanks for the kind remarks on these paragraphs.

driftless angler
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Re: On My Own Terms

#9

Post by driftless angler »

Loved it Perry, thanks!

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