Sand

June 26, 2020

I went fishing yesterday after I got my work finished.  I had planned on going to one of my usual spots on a side relief of the Arkansas River.  As I drove through town, I realized I would only have a short amount of time to fish, as I needed to drive back to meet Melissa early in the evening.  I noticed a sign to a park along a creek emptying into the Arkansas.  We had driven down the road to this park several months ago and it had some promising spots to fish.  I decided to take a chance and see if I could get some cats.

I arrived and chose what looked like a promising site with a worn path down to the river.  I opened my worms hoping to catch something small I could use as bait for the big ones.  Apparently, the survivability of the green worms was not up to speed as they were all dead.  At least they were not completely fetid, and I was able to thread one onto my hook and bobber and tossed in.  The rest had already molded together, and I threw them out.  I was using my Carolina rig again and I gouged my hook through a nice slice of Spam. Today I was going to make this work.

I had a similar experience as fishing the Tubes.  My rig caught on the bottom immediately and I lost the hook.  I next tried a bobber and when I cast the Spam flew off the hook.  The thin slices clearly did not work.  I switched bait again and realized I needed to go to meet Melissa.  We met up and decided to go home.  On the way we passed a restaurant that we had wanted to try on Sunday, but the lot was full.  Tonight, there were only two or three cars.  When we got home, I could not figure out why I kept rubbing sand out of my hair and forehead.  Then Melissa told me of the sand cloud she had seen coming down the mountain into Fort Smith.

THOUGHTS:  I had heard the sand carried by the wind was coming for Arkansas and would get here today.  While it looked a little hazy, I did not think about it being sand.  Melissa kept wondering where the fire was and why the smoke seemed to move as see drove home.  The Saharan winds blowing sand across the Atlantic is not new.  Scientists suggest the lush Amazon Basin is the result of wind-blown nutrients from Africa.  This storm is of historic proportions with dense concentrations of dust.  They also think this might mitigate the horrific hurricane seasons we have been having lately.  Once more the earth is showing its amazing resilience.  If you can, work to keep the conversation going.