Genesis

A friend posted a recent picture of the north shore of Skaneateles Lake. Taken right in the village in mid winter.

It’s amusing how something as innocent as that can flood my recall.

I recounted to her that the location in the photo was the very site where I’d caught lake trout in January. And then brought them home, mere hours from life, and cooked them into paradise.

And then I was taken to mind a story. One that reminded me of how deeply I’m rooted.

When I was barely out of childhood, visiting my grandmother in still-rural Central New Jersey, I slipped out of bed in the pre-dawn light and biked over to a section of Bedens Brook that cut through a cow pasture and was guarded only by its remoteness and the phantom presence of a murderous bull.

I bellied under the field’s barbed-wire fence and caught fish from a pool under a tree. Those fish had never seen a hook.

I kept one largemouth bass, maybe 12 inches long, and presented it to my grandmother when I got back to the farm. At a still-early hour. She said simply, “You’ll make that for my breakfast.”

And so I did. I threw that bass in an iron skillet with some eggs. To the stoic satisfaction of my grandmother. And so, years later, did the Skaneateles lake trout come full circle.