The year and season is over. All the waiting, tying, casting, landing, and loosing of the last year is now written into the history books. For some it will go down as one of the best, with seemingly endless exotic trips, big fish, sun-drenched streams, boiling storm clouds, and fellowship. For others it will be a litany of cursed days strung together by lost jobs, the complaints of significant others, broken down rigs, and failed daydreams.

Yet, there’s not a lot of time to fret these past pleasures and pain, no gains in senseless meanderings of the mind, no excuse not to make the coming season one for your personal record books. You are hunters and marksman and your story is being told with every fly that lights upon a riffle—lyrics echoing around the embers of the camp fire.

My reels have new line, leader, and tippet. Fly boxes are in the process of being re-stocked. My mind is being sharpened toward new destinations. I will relish in the first 70 degree days of late spring as the snowmelt passes. I look forward to the aching legs and weathered skin of summer. I’m already transfixed by the blaze of autumn leaves and painted speckled flanks brought to hand.

Stepping out of the loft for a break, I found the night clear and frozen amid the winter stillness—millions of stars setting their course before me. And I thought The End is nothing more than another new beginning.