Fishing with God

Mornings are cold in the North Woods. Even in late spring. So cold, in fact, you can see your breath.

There’s frost on the silver top of my old thermos. Carefully I pour hot black coffee into that thermos, steam rises from the opening until I tightly screw the lid on. The worn wooden floor creaks beneath my feet. Loud enough that I hope it will wake the others. It doesn’t.

I check the tackle box; line up the fishing rods, careful not to scratch the wall. I find the bait in the fridge and place it into the old red cooler; the one with the peeling sticker that once said “Big Bass Bait Shop”. Years later it reads “Big ass ait hop” I wonder if that was by design or happy accident.

Out on the porch, I lean against the railing with a cup of coffee, hot and black. Up before the sun, my senses are alive. I can hear the sound of deer not too far off, bedding down before sunrise. An owl hoots in the distance, the crickets fall silent. The frosty chill still hangs in the air, waiting for the morning sun to burn it off.

Though I can’t make it out, I know the wood pile is stacked just off the porch. I take pride in that, knowing its there stacked just the way my own father taught me forty years ago.

I inhale the scent of pine and dirt and lake and coffee. I search the eastern tree line for the first break of light. The trees look black against the blacker sky. I wonder if the boat motor will need gas. It is the same flat bottom boat that my dad and I used to row out to the fishing hole. The trolling motor was added in recent years but the same old oars sit unused in the bottom of the boat.

I remember each and every sunrise in that boat on the lake with my father. "Why so early Pop?" I'd ask. "The fish aint gettin any hungrier," he'd say. I remember how everything fell silent, grew darker and became perfectly still in the moments before the first break of light. As if the entire forest was waiting, waiting for the day’s first miracle. I believe it’s where I first became aware of God. It was the first proof of His presence that I had ever witnessed.

God had showed himself to me countless times over the years in these woods, on that lake, in many ways. A doe and her fawn at dusk, the way moonlight glimmers off freshly fallen snow, that time I lost my footing on the river bed and a perfectly placed branch saved my life. I saw God’s hands while my father taught my first born son to tie on a lure, right there on that lake. I saw His love when my youngest boy split his bologna sandwich and handed half to my father; and he ate it, never mind that those tiny hands had just been digging in the bait cup. When I was nine I saw His mercy when our pail was full and Dad tossed the fish on my line back into the lake. Though at the time I didn't see it as mercy.

I take a sip from my chipped enamel mug and toss the rest over the side of the porch. The sky turns from black to midnight blue as the tree line begins to glow with the first glimmer of the sunrise. I bend down to scoop up the heavy urn of my father’s ashes before I turn and walk through the screen door, letting it slam behind me.

“Rise n shine boys!”

I smiled to myself as they tumbled out of the bunks in matching plaid pajamas, rubbing their eyes. “The fish aint gettin any hungrier.”

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My oldest son recites a somber prayer while the little guy wipes a tear from his cheek. Our boat cuts through the still water, winding through the reeds and lily pads. I leave a trail of ashes in our wake. Half of a bologna sandwich bobs in the water.