(Photo by Len Harris)
By Len Harris
It comes from the Northwest with bad intentions. My eyes ice up and my casting is labored. It changes directions and thwarts my best cast causing it land in the frozen underbrush. My hands are chapped and cracked from its endless attack. I finally get a decent cast against my bitter adversary. The reward is short lived because of no eager trout discovered on the cast. It blows the snow across my water and causes the water to dance and mock me. I plod on and thank the wind for reminding me that I am still alive and life is not supposed to be easy. The wind whispers in my ear and tells me that it is March and better days lay ahead. Continue reading The Whisper of the Wind
By Karl (Trout Whisperer) Seckinger
You can make friends anywhere I suppose. It’s just harder for me to make friends at the dentist office or during a tax audit. Census workers always knock during dinner, politicians wave from parades, and I’m not the best dressed at the local grocery store. I once over heard a lady whisper to her kids to stay away from that scruffy dressed man. I looked around for the guy, until it donned on me, she meant me.
So I was in the super natural forest again this past week resting at one of my favorite portages catching my breath looking just as scraggly as ever when along comes a complete stranger with, as it turns out, his wife and their golden retriever all under the same upside down canoe. The couple carried everything except the dog, pretty smart dog I figured. Continue reading Friends-IN-the-Forest
By Mike Sepelak
“Now, I ain’t never gone fly fishin’, but I did fish for trout in Colorado one time. Not up in the mountains or anything, just down in the farmland. We fished in this little creek that just dug right down through the middle of them wheat fields.” Continue reading Early On The Road
By Roger Emile Stouff
“It’s so silly isn’t it? How we grown men take up trout fishing not simply to pursue trout but to find some place, some special place, where we feel at ease. a place to belong. God loves a man that smells of trout water and mountain meadows, cheap whiskey and branch water. Which way’s heaven? Follow the trail and keep close to the stream.” - Arby Mulligan, Hymn No. 1 (the only hymn) of the Owl Creek Gap Church of Universal Harmony, in On The Spine of Time by Harry Middleton
Continue reading Fact and Parenthesis
By John G. White
I believe it was the Spring of the 96th year of my father’s grand total of 98 when I was down to Northeast Missouri for a visit. His broken hip was the draw this time.
Continue reading Matching the Hatch
By Larry Offner
Easing the kayak into the water on a cool morning
The launch Continue reading Why Paddle?
By Karl (Trout Whisperer) Seckinger
Some of you can guess at my age and from this glean the fact that I have actively fished for better than forty years. Encased in those years for me and perhaps yourselves as well was not just the hope of knowing that a large fish was more than possibly in your mind but as I, you KNEW it really existed in the depths of some lake. Continue reading The Vanities
By Roger Emile Stouff
Not getting out much. Who can stand it? Polar bears, I guess. Grouse and ducks, and foxes. Continue reading Seeing
By Mike Sepelak
Silence. Crisp, wintery silence. No, not exactly silence. Something better. Continue reading The Silence of a Solitary Fisherman
By H.B. Rushing Jr.
The year was nineteen sixty nine mid March in the town of Baton Rouge Louisiana. A humble but proud man and his young wife had a son. Here I am the eldest of three children, nicknamed “Blackie” because of my dark complexion. As the years passed and I grew into the boy that was my father’s son, all the older people in family would say “he is his father’s son.”
Continue reading The Great Beast
Due to the increasing obligations and demands the three of us have on our time, we’ve made a few changes.
We’ll no longer be publishing “issues” in the traditional sense. As submissions come in, when we are able to process and up load them, new material will be posted to the site. We believe this will make it easier for us, by not having to process, upload and style an entire issue at a time.
You can use the “Posts” button at the top right hand side of this page to receive notices of updates in Firefox only. Other browser users can bookmark this page and check it now and then for new material.
Others may manage subscription options by using the Subscribe2 link in the right column. This includes getting email updates.
Truthfully, we almost canceled Far & Away at the end of 2009 due to the demands of continuing it, but struck upon this idea as a way to keep it going, especially in light of the great response we’ve had from both our readers and our contributors.
Wishing you all a very happy New Year,
The Staff
By Karl (Trout Whisperer) Seckinger
The cabin sits on a hilltop with a benched elevation of 1665 ft above sea level, north of Lake Superior. Depending on what map I look at shows an ordinary high water level of between 550 and 610 ft. We have assembled on high. Continue reading The Wake
