Selection from Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac"

The Alder Fork -- A fishing Idyl

We found the main stream so low that the teeter-snipe pattered about in what last year were trout riffles, and so warm that we could duck in its deepest pool without a shout. Even after our cooling swim, waders felt like hot tar paper in the sun.

The evening's fishing proved as disappointing as its auguries. We asked that stream for trout, and it gave us a chub. That night we sat under a mosquito smudge and debated the morrow's plan. Two hundred miles of hot, dusty road we had come, to feel again the impetuous tug of a disillusioned brook or rainbow. There were no trout.

excerpts are from "A Sand County Almanac, with essays on conservation from Round River", by Aldo Leopold and published by Oxford University Press (1966). For more information about Aldo Leopold, see: www.aldoleopold.org An inexpensive paperback version of Sand County Almanac published by Ballantine Books is widely available at book stores or on-line.