While away the Old Year passes, snow has drifted, up to most people’s asses, or just above my knees, and the flakes are still falling as darkness settles in, just a tad later than it did yesterday. With a long night ahead, and nothing to do tomorrow but move more snow, this is as good a time as any to inflict upon present to you a look back at the year that was 2012, here at Fish in a Barrel Pond. I do this not because I think you’ll enjoy some misty-eyed reflection but because, if I know my readers, some of you weren’t paying attention the first time around. I also know it’s the kind of thing that bothers Mike at Troutrageous! to no end.
January was nearly half over before the year’s first post appeared, in which I received a package from Sweden and shared another story not about fishing (See “A Package from Sweden and Another Story Not About Fishing“). I will post a review of the DVD in that package one of these days, but I’ll tell you now that I liked it and it was sent to me by an especially notorious character, Marc Fauvet, Master of the Limp Cobra.
(Speaking of cobras, the man in the Story Not About Fishing once tipped over backwards in his office chair, which is interesting to begin with because it means there was a chair that didn’t collapse catastrophically beneath his bulk before it had a chance to even think about tipping over. Four of us watched it happen but there was no way to stop it without someone getting crushed. Stuff fell off the walls when he hit the floor and the Styrofoam cups on his heavy wooden desk spilled their coffee all over his Important Papers. We wanted to help him, right then and there, but he bellowed at us to leave him the hell alone so we ran. He was still mad at us from the day before, when we had maneuvered him onto the platform of the big drive-on freight scale in the shipping barn. One by one we had stepped off, leaving him there by himself so we could see just how much he really weighed and we almost got away with it, too, but someone gasped when the indicator on the scale settled down, and when Robbie saw what was going on he flew into a rage. Now, it was a day later and he was on his back, stuck in a chair (the impact really wedged him in there good) between the wall and his impossibly huge mahogany desk, turning purple and screaming at us as we tripped over ourselves trying to leave. We were, after all, working for the world’s largest importer/exporter of exotic animals and knew very well that when something the size of Robbie goes down it is sometimes best to just get the heck out of there and let the situation sort itself out. We did sneak back in a few times to check on him before he finally rolled onto his belly and got to his feet, but we spent the rest of the day in shifts, one of us posted by the door, with a tranquilizer gun and a pair of heavy-duty winches. You know, just in case.)
The rest of the first month of 2012 included video of wind-whipped Snow Wraiths, litter bugs from New Jersey, a delightful poetic interlude, some interesting ice, a visit to the frostiest place I know, and I posted a piece about the pursuit of perfection on The Backcountry Journal.
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The View from Fish in a Barrel Pond 