Jim Bennett

T his is a birdwatcher's favorite time of year. Spring birds are back. I just saw my first hummingbird on May 17. Bird Feeders are full of seeds. Birdhouses are in all of the best places. Blue bird house trails are set along edge cover and openings. Backyard birders are watching to see which birds are back in their yards this year compared to last. Some record numbers, dates and species in a journal year to year. They are the most serious birdwatchers I know.

I had the best dream last night. I was dreaming about fishing. I always have wonderful dreams but this one was one of the best. I was on a trout stream fishing with a bamboo fly rod. Like most trout streams it’s hard to find a more beautiful place. The sound of the stream, standing in moving water, wearing waders or hip boots, they keep you warm and dry in cold trout waters. Birds are singing everywhere. Cedar waxwings doing a skyward ballet, chasing the insects I’m trying to imitate. Sometimes the flies I use are the ones I made, tied on a tiny fly vice. It’s peaceful and quiet with a symphony of sounds; water making music as it crests rocks and splashes wood that’s fallen into the stream.

T here is a wine cup showing a boy crouched on a rock with a fishing rod in his right hand and a basket in his left. In the water below there is a round object of the same material with an opening at the top. This appears to be a fish cage. This object is currently in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The cup is dated at around 500 BC. Today’s angler can relate to all of those items. As far as my dream about bamboo fly rods goes, they got their start around 1870 with a run of 75 years to the 1950’s, about the time of my birth. That’s when fiberglass took over.

I grew up when most anglers fished from shore. Any boats were left at the lake where you knew someone. Boat trailers weren’t popular until after World War II. Post war economics boomed and highway systems expanded in the 1950’s and ‘60’s. More people began owning small motorboats and had the flexibility to tow them by simply putting a hitch on their cars back bumper.

By Jim Bennett Wild River Trails T here is just something about watching a bobber go down. The only thing better is looking out and not spotting your bobber.

F ishing can be a lifelong activity. Those who learn the difference between fishing and catching will evolve and pass their skills along. Catching keeps you in the sport. Not catching chases many away. Snoopy Poles were my kids “go to” that opened a door for fishing. It got them involved into something I already liked to do as an adult. Today both my kids fish as adults. My daughter Erin and my son Josh both fish with their kids. As parents they are into the same evolutionary process I went through. They've both learned and taught their kids that catching is the fun part of fishing. They too have evolved from boats to kayaks as have I.

According to mountvernon George Washington was a fowler and a fisher, spending more nights under the stars than any of our founding fathers. He hunted with several kinds of guns

W hen I was a little kid, I remember turning over a rock and finding two armies of ants locked in battle; one large and one smaller sized. The larger ants had invaded the smaller ants home. The bigger ants were winning the war battling one on one but I remember groups of the smaller ants taking single bigger ants down. Why do ants have wars? To protect territory and colonies or new food sources. The battle lasted longer than I had patience to watch.

I magine yourself as being one of the first European explorers who traversed the New World, heading west. Most of that region was a giant expanse of prairie. The original prairie at that time stretched from Wisconsin to western Montana, from central Texas to Canada. No one had a name for it. The French referred to it as a meadow. The English explorers were more in awe of it and adopted a French romantic term used today, “prairie.” Those grasslands contained one person per 5000 acres. Native people living off the prairie hunting buffalo, pronghorn antelope, elk and deer using hides for clothing and shelter. They enjoyed eating some prairie plants and often used prairie grasses to construct temporary homes, according to “Native American Prairie.”

“There was a no fire warning when we headed into the Boundary Waters, (BWCA), a fire ban. It had been hot, but when my son Dane and the rest of our group headed in, early June, it rained every day. We were prepared. There'd be no campfires so we brought gas bottles and cook stoves. We had a pop up screen tent that we used to get out of the elements, to cook and eat in. That was the lifesaver,” according to Dave Tupy, New Prague, Minn.