"Man Crippled in Fishing Accident, Nowhere Near Water." The headline flashed across my mind as I reached for the practice lure. The orb hung there, just beyond my grasp, like a defiant Day-Glo orange Christmas ornament. I heard a creaking sound. Whether it was the limb I was standing on or my knees, I couldn"t be sure. But I knew my nearly forty-something, two-hundred-pound body had no business being there. I shot a quick glance through the branches below. Graham and Anders, my five-year-old twins, stood there shoulder-to-shoulder, squinting up at me in awe and with more than a little amusement.
"Maybe we should come up, too?" Anders asked hopefully.
"No, I think I"ve almost got it," I lied.
The cast that sent me up a tree occurred minutes into the boys" first fishing lesson.
"Watch this," Graham said, whipping the rod forward and releasing the button on his tiny new reel. We watched the lure arc from his rod tip, rise and disappear into the foliage. Should have bought more lures, I thought. At the same time, I couldn"t help but admire the distance.
So there I was, thirty feet off the ground, perched on a magnolia limb no thicker than my wrist. Stretching to the brink of shoulder dislocation, I was finally able to grab the lure and snap the line. I stuffed it into my pocket and climbed back down, trying to make it look easy.
Other than climbing trees to untangle a few dozen monofilament bird nests, the practice session went well. I knew of a small stretch of trout stream about an hour away that would be just right for our first real fishing trip. I promised to take them the following weekend.
The big day began at 5:30 a.m. I put coffee on and crept upstairs to confront the first obstacle I"d face with my new fishing buddies; the boys aren"t what you"d call morning people. By the time I"d dressed their somniferous little bodies and strapped them in their booster seats, we were an hour behind schedule. The boys finally woke as I parked on the shoulder of the dirt road that meandered alongside the creek.