This time of year, I smile a lot.  Warm, sunny days in early spring, nature coming full circle to be reborn… something interesting happens and I always wonder if anybody else notices the significance.

I’ve been wandering the small creeks and drainage ditches around the neighborhood, watching for the return of the minnows.  Where do they go, I wonder.  For weeks, nothing… no sign of life.  But like I told my daughter, “Oh, there’s life there.  Lots of it.  Just biding it’s time.”

Early season hatches are well known and documented.  The little black stone flies, the midges.  Then, with just enough consecutive warm days, the White-Gloved Howdy shows up followed by the Quill Gordon and the season roars into full swing with all the excitement of a red-carpet affair (for fly-fishers, anyway).

The powers-that-be rolled out the red carpet today.  And it wasn’t the stream-laden insects that clued me in… it was the jogger hatch.  They were everywhere!  Fresh red sweatpants, fully loaded iPods, shiny new shoes, jiggly winter bellies.  Oh, it’s on now!  I smiled.

As the sun dipped below the horizon lined with apartment buildings and urban trees, an amber glow enveloped the neighborhood.  I felt the stir deep within, just like the joggers and others venturing outside, pale-faced and overweight after a long hard winter.

I really wanted to fish today.  I had that feeling that things were turning, and I wanted to be at the water when it happened.  But that ole hound Responsibility was on my heels and hampered my efforts.  So I drove through the neighborhood at day’s end, and with a couple hours of daylight left, I hit the local park to check for the minnows.

I pulled in and parked, excited at the news that the soccer hatch was well under way… little humans running around damp fields, trying to get their feet to do what only their young hands had done all winter on the XBox or PlayStation.  The infamous soccer moms cutting others off and scowling, queens of their own realm, believing no woman in a mini-van picking up their kid from soccer practice after work could be busier than her since she just got off work and has to pick her kid up from soccer practice in her mini van.  (Cell phone glued to her ear, just like all the others, of course).  I smiled. 

I walked down the well-packed and muddy trail to the little creek that ran through the park.  Were the minnows there?

Sounds from the soccer hatch floated on the air, and on the edge of vision, one could make out the perceptible red flash from the jogger hatch.  In the urban woods, no sign on the trees and brush of refreshment… they still slept, but you could feel the anticipation in the trees and trodden grasses.

I followed the tiny feeder creek to where it emptied into the larger creek.  When you’re exploring waters, I find that very often you’re surprised at what may pop up unexpectedly.  This proved true today.  An early hatch of frisbee-footballers was underway and I paused briefly to watch them, stretching their wings after a long sleep and trying to get into the season around wild shorts, pale legs, and floppy arms.  It was almost sad.  I smiled.

The larger creek is still a small creek, and nobody fishes there, including me… yet.  Too urban, I guess.  But I’ve seen some good fish there in the shadows of the deeper pools, or basking in the sun-soaked flats.  This is a place that families come to play, office workers “get outdoors,” home-owners stroll under the illusion that they live near the wilderness and can hike right outside their back yards. 

But I pause.  I gaze at the water and dream, and think.  There!  Minnows!  Ah, they’re back!  Where did they go for the winter?  Don’t know, but they’re back.  The season is under way!

Shoulda been fishing today at the lake.  But that’s life, I guess.  So in salvaging the day, I study the creek everyone else looks to as just another thing to jog around, or throw a frisbee around.  Wait a while longer, I think.  They’ll be wondering what that fellow is doing throwing gentle fly casts on the slow creek.  Deep pools that harbor drum and carp, undercuts and riffles that hold respectable bass, flats that are home to voracious bream.  That’s what I’m thinking as some wayward, red-panted joggers flit by, faces just as red as their outfits.  I smiled.

The early minnows were dimpling the surface as they snatched up hatching midges.  From the deeper pools, larger rings told tall tales of larger fish lurking beneath.  A sound close by startled me… a gray squirrel scuttled up a tree, not ten feet away.  I smiled.

Studying the water again, another commotion.  Three mallards barked and jetted over the creek.  Yeah, they’re back, too.  It’s all back.  I smiled.

We all feel it.  That pull of rebirth.  To get OUT, into nature, whatever your definition or means.  I poke fun, but I know other people feel it too when I see them out of doors.  And though they may not realize it, it’s the pull of nature.  It’s what keeps us connected to the world.  The minnows feel it, the insects feel it, the squirrels and the ducks feel it.  In a couple weeks, you will see, that even the trees and grasses and flowers feel it.  This time of year is like a Robert Frost poem.  Just not many people realize that.

They think, “Oh, it’s nice out today, I’ll get fit.”  Or,”I’m calling the fellas for a quick game of frisbee football.”  Or, “Let’s have soccer practice today.”  I think, really, they just feel the pull.  Yet they don’t realize that, despite the digital TV, the internet, the iPods, the cell phones, the XBox, the economy, they are still part of a world rich in life with cycles that call to all living things.  But I know. 

And I smile.