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I turned forty-one on Wednesday of last week. If you’d have asked me a decade ago what my impressions were about reaching thirty-one, I’m sure I’d have laughed and dismissed the question entirely without a thought. I mean, come on, thirty-one isn’t even a third of a century old! This year’s birthday, however, felt somehow different and it took me the better part of the week to figure out exactly what’s been keeping me from enjoying a good night’s sleep. You see, this year’s birthday might have come and gone nearly unnoticed (like most of the others in the recent past) if I hadn’t heard two honest and innocently delivered remarks from family members: “Wow, you’re on the uphill climb to fifty!” and, “Well, I guess you’re officially middle-aged now.” I’m still smarting a bit from that last one.

On top of the piano in our dining room are all of the cards I received marking this undistinguished birthday. Yes, all four of them. My sister and brother-in-law sent me a card that looked pretty neat when I first removed it from its envelope. The cover of the card shows an artist’s rendering of an angry looking muskie, its gaping, toothy maw ready to smash a jerk-bait to smithereens. After hearing the aforementioned sobering remarks regarding my advancing age, the muskie’s eyes on that card now seem to follow me around the room, its mocking, snapping mouth symbolic of each subsequent birthday taking yet another big bite from my quickly diminishing years.

Another fact that struck me recently is that some friends and I will soon celebrate our twenty-fifth annual spring trout trip to the Whitewater River near Elba, Minnesota. Some members of the original group have long since moved away, while others’ passions moved away from trout fishing altogether, but two steadfast members of the group – Paul Bury and myself – haven’t missed more than a few trips between us. The dusty yellow-white gravel roads, cold spring-fed rivers and late night conversations around the campfire draw us to the Whitewater Valley each year. It is a trip that I indelibly ink on my calendar each spring and one that I simply cannot afford to miss; it affirms life-long friendships and celebrates some of the first truly warm days of spring.

Earlier tonight, as I laid in bed patiently waiting for my two-year-old to fall asleep after reading books, a smile crept over my face as I recalled a cool fall day, eight or so years ago, when an old-timer, Earl Snell of Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, reluctantly sold his prized fishing boat to my father-in-law, Ron. I remember that at some point in our conversation, I was leaning up against the old Starcraft when Earl, who evidently spent every waking moment with a wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek (as evidenced by the strategically placed Folgers cans in the boat), spit a brown gob of snoose on my Sorel boot and said in a wavering voice, “Damn it, I hate to have to sell her, but I guess I’m gettin'’ too damned old to fish…Damn it, anyway.”

Earl was ninety-something at the time and an old fishing buddy of Ron’s dad. Clearly, he was too old to do a lot of things, including seeing exactly where he was spitting. But, in talking with him, it was abundantly clear that of all the things in life that he missed, he’d miss fishing in his old boat the most.

Come to think of it, maybe forty-one is pretty young after all. Sure, old Earl complained to the end, but he had it pretty good. He was ninety-something and I’d bet that he fished a good eighty-five of those years. Heck, at forty-one, I may still have fifty years to fish with my sons. I’ll stop complaining…I can live with those numbers.

Dan Brown’s weekly outdoor column is brought to you by Frankies Bait and Marine in Chisago City and St. Croix Outdoors in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin.

Dan Brown is a director at the Chisago Lakes Achievement Center in Chisago City. In addition, Brown is a fly casting instructor and trout fishing guide at Seven Pines Lodge in Lewis, WI. Recently Brown was featured on Ron Schara’s Minnesota Bound and ESPN II’s Backroads with Ron and Raven, as well as KSTP channel 5’s Eyewitness News Morning Show. He is a Taylors Falls resident and can often be found on the area lakes, trout streams and the St. Croix river.

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