If I leave this fly line linger much longer, somebody watching might ask if it's fully retted to which I would have to respond, and then some. Luckily nobody is watching, and I could say the very same thing about the five toes on my left foot. Time for a slow deep breath. That boot filled with water while I was wade wallowing over a beaver's step dam. Beavers have the proper name given to those piles of wood because this one, not only toppled me, it punched a hole in the rubber footwear that once out of the creek, water could easily run back out of it. That piece of beaver chew ripped my boot fully a foot long gash. After righting myself and draining the water from my trout vest, a fly box is missing that will never be replaced in sentiment, if less the fly's, just adds to the anger. The beavers cut the sticks and even after almost a year of laying in the muck mud and water, that stick was plenty sharp. I'm glad it didn't do more damage than it did. The boot is wrecked, but my leg is okay and I'm thankful for that, but why did it have to happen to my newest, my best pair of summer weight waders. Why did it happen at all. And why, after walking this friendly gurgling playful water better than ten times this past summer so successfully, in not only numbers of hooked and caught brook trout, and not so much as a pin hole of a leak, in one last attempt I will end this stretch of water with no fish and a ruined pair of boots. With a half mile of back tracking ahead of me I wind in my line and take the rod down, I peel the reel from the rod seat and tuck into its traveling pocket. I breath. With one boot, I'm done. It's not worth it and I don't normally get mad at nature in its natural state, but today for several reasons, that by tomorrow really won't matter, I'd pelt every one of those sharp toothed rascals. I take the bank and just breathe trying to change my mind. I recall when I was very little if something went wrong with me, and never made much difference from a physical ailment to my skinning a knee, my grandma would give me a soothing syrup to make things better. It was lemon, some honey, in a cup of warm water. And I don't have that; nothing is making this non sense, make sense. Today with no body watching, and nobody at home, there is no consoling me. All I have is a good long soggy walk. The creek, in one day, after being so generous all summer, exacted its price, became far too expensive. Oh, today, I'm a big fan of beavers. The trout whisperer