I check all my stuff. I have all the gear I need to catch a brook trout. Then I think to myself, do I have what I require today between the ears for what this place can do to me. Every time I hit this little stretch of water I feel a ghost. It lives right here next to this patch of water. Woods that border it seem more like a marsh on a bad hair day with nothing more than alder brush for walls and I'll be hanged before I figure out if in life it was a her, or a him, that's taken to haunting this trout mecca. It's a dark spot the sun can't reach, coldest air, even in mid-summer, and if the wind could reach into a spot like this, that little spirit would play tricks with it. It sure has with me, first loss was a wicker creel, to many knives to mention, and once I lost my shirt, honest to goodness. Like it was pick't right out of my knapsack. I back tracked for hours and it was gone. Dang near drowned here once and just before I fell headlong into the water I coulda swore I felt a nudge at my back. My imagination, another's mischief or some protector? Is it the place, or a breeze, the tall grasses sway, yet the leaves overhead hang still, and every time I feel it, the hair on the back of my neck comes up moments after I arrive, like the unknown has my timing down. I look all around and the picture hasn't changed. It's the same sane place, just woods with brush and water, so in my head I don't let my mind run away with it, well not too far or fast on most days. I often think if the ghoul reads my mind were gonna go at it during one of these outings. Face to space, perhaps, but I've got some serious questions. I don't have to come here to fish, but does this place or the memory of this place call me back after I've been away too long. Like, hey you chicken, you afraid, or you gonna come back?? So I do. I'm not afraid and the fishing is never the thing. It's the odd feelings this place leaves me with. I've left here in the late evening feeling followed. I have come in here in the morning like I was supposed to meet someone, who has never been there, well not flesh and bones real anyhow, yet. The trout whisperer