"Train"ing

This morning, I awakened and walked to my 6:13am train. It was kind of an overcast morning, slightly gray with a mild temperature of 61 degrees.

As I cradled my hot cup of coffee and crossed the Beacon Falls bridge, I heard a wisp. The wisp of a fly – the sound so familiar - flowing back and forth at the end of someone’s fly rod. The river was running fast but over all of that noise, I could still hear the sound.

It is like the sound of a distant train that you could hear from your childhood bed as your lay there in the still of the night. Or the sound of peepers in the spring as the sun sets. Familiar. Real. Present.

I glanced down to the left and there was a man, standing in the river. On his back was a trout net. He wore a dark green fly fishing vest and donned a baseball cap backwards. Oh, how I wish it were a Saturday morning and I could put on my boots and join him. As my bridge crossing came to an end, I glanced back once more and there he stood with a small brown in his hand, delicately removing the hook. I stopped and watched him return the fish to the calm waters below me.

Wisp. Snap. Wisp. Snap. The sound lulled me on the train ride to work.