When it comes right down to it, we are all creatures of habit.
We are governed by a desire for things to remain the same – in spite of the inevitability of change.
Some have what can even be described as a ‘superstitious need’ for things to remain unchanged. Some of us are more superstitious than others.
For example, I have bought a fishing licence on the same day for 49 years. My first was purchased on my 16th birthday. My father paid for the licence. As I recall, it cost two dollars. The following year, my sister saved up her allowances to buy a fishing licence for my birthday present, as she has every subsequent year since. Things seem to have come full circle, and she now only has to pay a whole five dollars for my ‘seniors’ licence.
Over the course of the past 50 years or so, I have owned a fair number of fishing reels, as well as a lot of different fly boxes. From my father’s old metal Wheatley box, to the new high-tech, hard plastic and hermetically sealed with an o-ring boxes that I use now-a-days, they have all, each and every one, been stuffed into the same bold Woods shoulder bag that I have carted around since I was a kid. That canvas bag, with its leather trim, was a gift from my father and has gone of on every fishing trip I’ve been on since the day he gave it to me half a century ago.
To further illustrate my point about being not only a creature of habit, but also someone whose fishing trips are, more often than not, governed by luck and/or superstition, I have, pinned inside the Woods bag, a small badge with a fading picture of Jerry Mathers from the late 1950s, early ’60s television show Leave It To Beaver.
The Beaver and I have gone on many a fishing trip together.
Some habits are more of a statement about the individual.
The first thing I do when I arrive at a lake to go fishing is take my wrist watch off and put it and my cell phone in the glove compartment of the vehicle. The second is stand there and take a good long look at the lake. In part, I look to see what activity, such as insect hatches, may be taking place. However, to a greater extent, I am looking out at the next few days of my life. I am looking at how I wish things could be and trying to leave the way things are behind me. I am communing with nature, with the dragonflies buzzing in and out among the reeds and the birds sitting on the bullrushes singing.
The second thing I do is haul my stuff inside and make something to eat – a feast in honour of the next few day – an offering to the body as well as soul.
No one has ever accused me of being overly organized, but when I’m in the boat, I do like to have everything in its place.
I stow my gear in the bow, put the Woods bag down on the floor to the right by my feet, and set my lunch on the seat beside me, to the left. My net, when and if needed, is always on the right-hand side, handle stuffed into the seat brace.
Everything in its place.
What might, at first glance, appear to be a semblance of organization is, in fact, more of a deep-rooted, superstitious desire for things work out – for my fishing trip be successful -–for me to catch at least one fish. My reasoning being, if I put things in the right place, in the right order (as in order of the cosmos), then maybe things will work out – sort of the way things always worked out in the end on Leave It To Beaver.