FENCEROWS...“Armageddon”
By John Luthens
According to the Mayan calendar the end of the world is coming on Dec. 21. I couldn’t care less. I’ve already been through it. Resting on my desk this very moment, among other odds-and-ends that I should throw away, is a folded newspaper clipping to prove it.
A failed prophecy and a cluttered desk.
There’s enough for-real tragedy going on, that I hesitate to give credence to any kind of Armageddon prophecy. But if we are to move into the future, we should understand and learn from the past. Mine is but a simple understanding, but for what it’s worth, this is what I’ve learned about the end of the world:
It figures that the world was scheduled to end on the very day I’d picked to go trout fishing. It was bad planning on my part. I guess I should have paid more attention to the calendar. But it was too late to do anything about it when I noticed the billboard, driving north that May morning to meet my dad on a favorite old river.
The freeway sign told me to prepare for the end. There were others, popping up along the roadway, with more information telling the specifics. They blended in with hundreds of other road signs lining my five hour drive to my fishing rendezvous. My attention was limited; my mind occupied with trout stream fantasies. By the time I noticed the gloomy implications of the message, I was too far along to turn back.
Stopping for lunch and coffee at a wayside restaurant, I thumbed through a discarded national newspaper. On the back page of the paper, there it was again, in red bold faced type: JUDGEMENT DAY-WORLD WIDE EARTHQUAKE TO END IT ALL. It was an unfortunate turn of events. It was destined to happen that very day, and I was still two hours removed from soaking a line for hungry trout.
I hurried a little, fumbling with my wallet to pay the bill and scanning the paper for the apocalyptic particulars. “This is silly,” I thought. “Just because it’s in the paper, doesn’t make it true.” Then I saw the website line at the bottom of the page. Yikes-it was even on the internet-it must be true! I jumped into my truck and gunned it north, spitting gravel and shaking waders and tackle into a jumbled mess in the truck bed.
They say acceptance comes after the initial panic of denial. I calmed down when I finally turned onto the back roads. It had rained some. Farm fields were a fresh, wet green. Old trees caught pockets of sunlight in newly grown leaves; leaves that have grown and fallen for years, shading accumulated generations of field rock piles along straight-line fencerows.
In that way and in that pastoral environment, I wound my way to our fish camp above the valley trout stream where I’d fished away so much of my childhood. It seemed a shame that it would all come to an end on a day such as this. My dad’s truck was waiting there ahead of me, although he was nowhere in sight. I hoped the end hadn’t already happened here in our camp above the trout stream. Maybe my dad had already gone to a better place. Curiously, his waders and fishing rod were also missing. I hurriedly tossed up the tent, grabbed my own tackle, and headed into the valley while there was still some waning daylight left shining on the last day of the world, and before my dad could clean out all the best fishing holes.
Acres of white trilliums lined the wooded path down to the stream. Partridges drummed their springtime ritual from unseen places. A wild turkey gobbled from over a ridge. The trout stream was surrounded by life. The water twisted and flowed, oblivious it seemed, to the predictions of mortal man.
When the first trout darted from beneath a log to grab at the end of my line, I forgot about the end of the world altogether. The trout shook free before I could net it. No matter. There were other spots on the stream that I remembered. There was a deep riffle where I caught a thick-sided brown on a long ago opening morning. It was almost as I remembered it. A thrashing onto the run’s surface sucked my fly under, as another in an endless stream of trout that called the place home came to my creel.
The currents of water and time changed another remembered pool. Over a span of years, trout water rises and falls, fading from deep to shallow, and then deep again. Sometimes all that remains is speculation on the dynamics of nature. The pool had washed shallower and was no longer so dark and mysterious.
Further downstream was a freshly fallen tree, pulling swirls of water into its upturned roots. It looked right for a downstream drift to pull a weighted fly beneath; the perfect place for a crimson spotted brook trout.
I had three nice trout on the stringer when darkness settled, finding me quite a ways down stream from camp. A trout stream becomes quiet and surreal when night falls. The slightest noise from the streamside brush tangles can set your heart fluttering. Lightning flashed in the west, dancing on the ridges. It would rain again tonight; ominous; Very Ominous.
Dad was waiting at camp. He had a nice catch of trout-all of them bigger than mine. He usually managed to out-fish me. The end of the world hadn’t tilted those odds in my favor. I told him about the coming Armageddon. He casually mentioned that he had seen talk about it on television for weeks. I told him it was happening tonight-that it was supposed to have already happened, but maybe they were running behind schedule.
He wasn’t too concerned. He was more concerned about inspecting the rain-fly I’d put over the tent. He proclaimed that on the off chance tomorrow morning found us still alive and well, he didn’t want to wake up in a wet sleeping bag. We drove into town and ate submarine sandwiches for dinner.
What happened next was so predictable as to be obvious. The morning came and we went trout fishing again. Turkey hunters out for the last day of the last spring season stopped by our camp and chatted. We talked of turkeys and trout, and other such matters that seem so trivial in the large view of things, but are really most important.
It was on that Sunday, unfortunately, that devastation did come. Massive tornadoes ripped through the south and many people lost their lives. It was an act of nature that no one can predict. No man can read the future of such things. It is outside the scope of human understanding, but always it hurts the human heart when such things happen.
It hurts the heart every time. No calendar or doomsday prediction can ever fix that.
I went for a run that night, after driving further north to my father’s cabin where I would spend the week. My grandparents are buried in a small country cemetery along the path that my run took me. It was drizzling as I stood there. I prayed some. Before another spring would come to pass, my father would be there as well.
The end will come for us all some day, but it’s what we do before it happens that really matters. I ran back to the cabin and fried up the trout.