Recollection

Images of colors become flashes of hallucinogenic images. Images that began as a budding idea that pierced the veil of reality. A thought incidentally walked through the portal to become what we know now as a memory. Maybe it was real, maybe it was just a figment of your imagination. In our hearts we know it happened, but the insane also believe their memories are truth. It is a shame that memories are not tangible. Pictures might just be a white sheet of paper that our mind paints to be an image of the past, or maybe we just portray that to the outer world. Who really knows?

There is a specific place that contains many of my memories. Ones that stand stagnant in a pool awaiting my arrival. Like old friends, crossing that threshold where the memory began, I smile. It is an acknowledgment of sorts, as well as a respectful admiration. Driving along the river, I slipped in and out of reality. Those hallucinogenic thoughts being revisited, if they ever really happened in the first place. The salad bag, the thin ice, the lost fish, the island, the slow day that Sanders broke the silence, the cutthroats, the shared beers and cigars, the carp, the stone, the massive hatch, the jerk, and my first Elevenmile Brown are just a few. The things that happened on this day were a culmination of all of those, small reminders of those big memories.

Wading the river, the many thoughts found there way in. I spun a web as if it were through the act of casting, catching drifting memories as well as fish. This river, an old familiar friend, somehow spoke. We communicated through our silent connection, laying line out on the water as she moved it in directions she wanted it to go. A dance of mending, casting, and moving. I was alone on the river, we bonded. As we spoke, she told me of a memory to come. Throughout the day she showed me images of the present that became the inspiration to write of the past today, which is now gone. She holds them there now, within her canyon walls, always awaiting my return.

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