This Land is …

Along the Clear Fork

I wanted to get an early start on the day. It started as one of those mornings when you’re unsure if you ever went to bed the night before. I stayed up to watch Game 6 of the World Series, which might go into the books as the best World Series game ever, or at least until another thriller comes along. The alarm went off before dawn and I was a bit rattled with less than five hours of sleep.
It was a gorgeous, star-filled sky that greeted me as I loaded my fishing tackle into the car. All those stars, not the kind for navigation, necessarily, more like the kind you can wish on. I was heading back down to the Clear Fork, a branch of the Mohican River, where Susan and I fished five days ago. I used to fish the stream a lot and our excellent day last Sunday whetted my appetite for more.
A giant go-cup of Starbucks in place, and Adele blasting out of a half dozen speakers in my car—I was on the road. Temperature just lifting it’s head above freezing guaranteed I’d be warmer in the water than on the land.
Ninety minutes later I swung into the dead end gravel drive that skirts the grain mill in Bellville and was on the water a bit after 8. Not bad.
On my third cast I had a great strike. The kind that keeps fisherman on the water longer than they should stay, and brings them back next week, filled with hope like a high school kid who thinks the best looking girl in the class winked at him and it was not some dust in her eye.
Some law-breaker was burning leaves at this early hour and it gave me hunger pains. Power to the people.
I worked a familiar stretch of water for four hours with nothing to show for my efforts save a squeaky rotator cuff. I managed to get myself into a spot that was deeper and a bit more challenging than I anticipated so I opted to head back to the car by cutting across an open field, rather than negotiate my way back on the stream. That’s when I saw the sign. Make that plural, signs.
Square, cobbled together pieces of wood that had nothing on them, at least from my vantage point, spaced about 10 feet apart. I walked over and read the other side. It said, in effect, No Nothing, Especially Fun. The stream was posted! No trespassing.

Immediately, Woody Gutherie’s comment came to mind. When he saw a sign that read “No Okies,” he said what was on the other side of the sign was meant for him. I wasn’t trespassing anyway, I was fishing.

A beautiful stretch of land forbidding fishers and anyone else from entry. What are the property owners afraid of, litter? So they mess up the place with hand-made signs and pieces of twine, guaranteed to keep the likes of me out—unless one approaches from the other side.
Songs can be like tattoos. In 1943 Woody wrote, “This Land is Your Land.” The song is as relevant today as it was then. It was and is about greed; the haves versus the have nots.
We are the 99%.