“All my life’s a circle…”
Dateline: Grove, Oklahoma
“The journey not the arrival matters.”
T. S. Eliot
We’re back.
Did you miss us?
Last time we had a regular season Elite gig, Tak won it by 7 pounds on Lake Martin in Alabama.
That was 74 days ago, or two months and 15 days since the dudes in the fancy wrapped boats did the catching bass dance.
But check this out, what’s coming up, including the gig here in Grove, Okla., out there on Grand Lake we will be doing this:
Out of the next 10 weeks we will be fishing Elite tournaments six of those 10 weeks.
Over the next 67 days we will be fishing Elite tournaments 35 percent of the time.
This is basically what my next 67 days looks like as we crisscross the middle part of this country: 3,238 miles, 53 hours of windshield time and I’m not dragging a boat behind me.
Oh by the way, back at the Classic in a story I wrote I said that if you couldn’t make the Classic I would be happy to grab a piece of it for you, and I did. I have a bunch of the confetti that fell from the ceiling when Jordan Lee won it, so if you come out to one of these upcoming gigs and see me, come on up, say hello and I’ll give you your piece of the big shindig.
It belongs to you as much as it does to us.
Happy to hold it for you.
In the decade I’ve been doing this I don’t remember any tournament stretch quite like this, and I’m not even adding any of the Opens events that many of these anglers also participate in, not to mention the desire in all of us to try and sneak home for a couple of days.
Now while it is tough on us, for you the fan it should be very cool.
Bottom line is these Elite anglers are going to be pushed to the limit, some will rise to it, others will stumble. So even though we are sitting a fair amount into the regular season, the AOY crown will be a race of attrition, of desire, of holding it all together … and is wide open as we begin this run.
For you as a fan, buckle up, sit back and enjoy the drama. Enjoy just how good these guys are, you may never see them face a challenge like this any time soon.
“…sunrise and sundown…”
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
I drove 1,410 miles from my driveway at home to here. I did it not because I’m cheap, B.A.S.S. would have paid to fly me here, I did it because I wanted to see the place.
The place being what’s out there between the coasts.
Mid-me since I’m a pretty much a coast kind of guy.
If you trace my life what you’ll see is that for most of it I’ve never lived further than a half day’s drive from Ocean Atlantic or Pacific, and many years I could smell the salt water from where home was.
I’ve also for most of my life lived with a limited field of vision.
Nothing medical just geographical.
I’m a city guy, building block my view.
I’m a suburb guy, trees block my view.
Think about that for a moment, go outside and tell me how far you can see.
You got down the block vision.
You got the guy next door house vision.
For many of us if you want a long view longer than our block, we need to look straight up.
I’m not complaining, it’s my norm, but when I want a view, there’s a lot in the way so imagine then what it feels like for me to step out of my truck and stand and by just turning my head have a view from horizon to horizon.
Don’t imagine, I’ll tell you what it’s like, it’s like being naked.
When you are born and raised in a crowd, born and raised with stuff around you all the time it is like being swaddled in that baby blanket, stand out in a field in Oklahoma with nothing in the way, nothing surrounding you but Oklahoma, dudes it is amazing and it is freaky at the same time.
Those of you who live with nothing in the way, please take a moment and see it as I do, magical.
“…moon rolls thru the nighttime…”
“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware.”
Martin Buber
True story, last night I was out until a little past midnight standing on a dirt road next to a smelly cow pasture.
I might as well have been on Mars.
I have written a bunch of sentences in my life, can’t remember ever writing one that had the words “I” and “smelly” and “cow pasture,” in it.
Nope.
They say life is a journey, they never though mention how to pack for it.
I have with me my camera, a tripod brought specifically for this adventure and some sort of real manly “tactical” flashlight.
Oh, and I’m wearing those $9.99 all rubber and to big and tall black boots you buy at Walmart, just you know, in case…
I can’t see the cows but I can smell them, I can hear them as well which is pushing me closer to being a vegetarian.
The good news is I’m driving on a “dirt road,” not an “avenue” or “boulevard” so I put the Tundra in full 4-wheel drive mode, once, you know, I got the owner’s manual out of the glove box and read up on how to do that.
If you can say you are off-roading on a dirt road that’s what I’m doing and I’m doing it “tactically.”
For those of you who live out here in this “mid” space you need to know this, you have something I don’t have but wish I did.
You dudes, you’ve got dark.
I mean dark.
A flock of unseen cows dark.
You win on dark. My dark has light in it, I can see my hand in it and if we had cows on our street I could see our cows in our dark.
Cows disappear in your dark. Serious dark out here. Frankly it’s professional dark.
In my light dark when I go outside and look up I can see the moon and a couple of stars plus the flight path for Kennedy and LaGuardia.
Go out here and stand next to a smelly cow pasture and look up, you see the universe, you see the galaxy we live in, you can see the Milky Way, the Milky Way.
And when I stood out there and saw the Milky Way, saw the “billions and billions” of stars, suddenly I didn’t smell the cows, and even though I couldn’t get the camera to get the photograph I just stopped trying and stood there leaning against the hood and looking up.
Know this, I know what I’m looking at, took Astrophysics in a university that only had light dark, but you folks out here in the “mid” of it all, you have the universe, at least half of it above your head that you can see, you win in the looking up game.
Hands down, toss the towel in win.
“…till the daybreak comes around…”
“The most beautiful in the world is, of course, the world itself.”
Wallace Stevens
To my buddies the Elite anglers out here, yup we have a crazy schedule but do yourself a favor and let up some on the gas pedal and look around.
As you drive around out here in this “mid” thing, pull over some night when you are out there away from the city and small town lights, pull over, step out from behind the windshield and look up.
What you will see will be the universe we live in, what we are a part of, and yes all of us do have a bit of “star dust” within.
Every living creature on this planet, all the humans, no matter what race or creed, at our core is the stuff you will see when you look up.
When you look up you will also see just how small we really are on this blue rock in space, the only blue rock in space we’ve ever found, and what may be it when it comes to life.
When you look up know that the water you fish on came from up there, for billions of years this planet was on fire, when you look up know that life, all life here came from up there.
I don’t know if I believe in God or not, but when you stand out there alone in the dark dark of this “mid” place I can tell you for a fact, I stood there looking up and wondering, maybe down deep knowing, that something was looking back down at me.
At us.
“…all my life’s a circle…”
I want to leave you though with a quote from someone who actually did look down on this place we are looking up from.
One of the very few people who have left this planet and had the chance to look back and tell what it was like, astronaut Alan Shepard.
Alan Shepard, Rear Admiral, the first American to travel in space and to later walk on the surface of the moon.
A test pilot with nerves as big as you know what, a matter of fact, no nonsense kind of guy, when asked what it felt like to stand on the moon and look our way said this: “If somebody said before the flight, ‘Are you going to get carried away looking at the Earth from the moon?’ I would have said, ‘No, no way.’ But yet when I first looked back at the earth, standing on the moon, I cried.”
This is the what I saw here on my first night in this area:
Yeah, back down here on Earth, the view is “Grand” as well.
db
“…the years keep rollin’ by.”
Circle
Harry Chapin