In a Rut, But at Least I Have Crumpets

(If you stopped by hoping for a fishing story, perhaps you’ll enjoy this: “Fishing Hurts”)

It is easy to get stuck in a rut this time of year. The hours of daylight may be increasing but winter is just getting started and spring seems a long way off. Most years we get a bit of a break from the cold and snow when the “January Thaw” sets in and temperatures climb to above freezing for a few days but this brief warm spell is one gift horse I always look straight in the mouth.

Thawing means melting. Ice and snow change to water and dirt turns to mud. If that dirt happens to be a road, things can get interesting fast, especially with fuel trucks, UPS vans and people from other places driving back and forth. Most of the people from other places this year are from New Jersey, renting a house up the hill during ski season. I don’t know where they are headed four and five times a day — there just ain’t much to do in our little village — but up and down they go, making a real mess of things but mid-winter thaws are temporary. Cold weather returns and the road freezes again, leaving the rest of us to deal with the tracks those people made while we (wisely) stayed home.

Ruts to the east …

ruts to the west …

and the Town road crew will do what they can, but until a good snow evens things out, this is what we are left with until spring when the bottom drops out and real Mud Season begins.

I manage to stay home for days at a time when blizzards strike or the road turns to soup. When someone says, “But what do you do for excitement?” I usually tell them, “Well, we just don’t go around getting excited, I guess.” I read books, tie flies and go for walks in the woods. I watch old movies, write silly stories and I poke around on the internet, which brings me to the real reason for this post.

The Outdoor Blogger Network has become one of my go-to places on the interwebs and I have met some fine folks through this relatively new site. I would like to warn you about introduce you to one of them, Owl Jones, who seems to be a decent sort of fellow despite the fact that he lives in Georgia. Owl is a prolific blogger, posting so much he has something like 37 blogs to hold it all. I like Owl. He is willing to share his knowledge and experience with everyone, and he does it in a humorous way, but he doesn’t know everything (yet).

Poor Owl. In his recent post “GOOD GOOGLIE-MOOGLIE” he discusses a fly shop with a special Tenkara section, complete with tea and crumpets, but is not sure what a crumpet is. Jumping on the chance to help Owl in his quest for internet domination, I am happy to expand his horizons a bit with this:

I know what crumpets are but I don’t know how they are made. To me they resemble thick pancakes that should have been flipped. Smooth and dark on one side, with what appear to be former bubbles on the other, the crumpets I know are rather bland and tasteless, just begging for syrup or jam.

Always happy to help my fellow anglers in any way I can.