Winter skies creep into the twilight here on the north coast of New South Wales. I awakened this morning with the feeling that I have a lot to look forward to. This season beckons those giant, delicious red winter skies which linger over the purple sea, Mmmm.
The image came to me today of myself as a fly-fisherman, who, at the start of the season, makes a coffee in the early morning with a new jolt of joy in my heart, knowing that I shall be fly fishing for the next month or two.
I actually tried fly-fishing once many years ago when visiting a friend in Alaska. Very cool exercise, perhaps not unlike T'ai Chi, but with the addition of a meal afterward. I caught a King Salmon to everyone's surprise. We should have eaten it that night, but I wanted to bring it back to France to offer my friends Anne and Sam Bjorklund of Beaurecueil, who fed me for several bachelor years after I had arrived in France when I was still young and skinny.
The fish was frozen for a few days, then packed up in a container of ice to survive the 18 hour trip to Aix. Sadly, when I arrived we put it again in a freezer for another few weeks before the planned dinner. When it thawed out it looked pretty miserable, full of worms, so I quickly went off to pick up some fresh fish at the supermarket!
I can be so stubborn! It was a foolish decision but I really liked the idea of bringing Anne Bjorklund a freshly caught King Salmon from a cold river in Alaska all the way to Provence in the July heat. We lost the fish, and sadly, two weeks ago, I learned that we lost Anne who died peacefully in her sleep in Memphis Tennessee.
Just for fun, I post several older paintings done back in 2019 or 2020, I believe. They reveal the incredibly diverse variations (and possibilities) that can be done here on a beach in Australia at the dusk hour.
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