A Tale For Any Season

Maybe that guy needed to go fishing.  The Grinch.  He just got off on the wrong foot maybe.  No fishy friends, no fly shop tucked inside that distant valley.  Nobody willing to take the time.  Poor thing, The Grinch, wallowing in his cave plotting the next best method to spread his misery.  Oh to get his mitts on a fly rod.  What a fine whip it would make to mush little Max down the white mountain face.

How about Ebenezer?  The cold old man, angry, shackled to the idea that death is best lived out on earth.  Licking his lips at the sight of peddlers on cardboard mattresses.  A face carved deep by grimace.  No music there, in that gloomy carol and hardly a tune for Christmas.  That just doesn’t do.

Rudolf’s nemesis,  The Abominable snowman.  He too is an angry chap:  Roaring, pillaging, ripping the limbs from his quarry, without care as to why.  Giving in to some deep seated temper, this savage, wooly beast bestowing his fury across the North Pole.  What's his deal anyway?

Or sadness. 

What was his name, George Bailey?  The tale of a man who had lost the will to live in a world that had left his dreams behind.  Hope shattered, gone, until he is visited by an angel named Clarence looking to earn his wings. 

In each of these tales, they all find their way eventually.  It seems that Christmas, the time of giving of sharing, of holly hung merriment – or rather, that season of sleepless stress, depending on who calls it – helps to unlock the cuffs, shatter the walls.  Fill up their hearts and plug in the lights around the tree…

They all make for a great story.  Great stories find revolution.  A change of heart as they say.  Looking at something that you might see every day but choosing to look from a different perspective.  Epiphany.   And inside these infamous tales still lighting up TV screens around the world, it is a human star that melts the wax from the wick. 

A change of heart.

The wax from the wick.

What about the Grinch?  Well the Grinch, he came around after hearing the joyous notes of song coming from a circle of hand holding Whos.  The Abominable?  He just had a nasty toothache after all and was taken by the dentist’s fine work and his very own inclusion in the holiday cheer.  Ebenezer.  He woke up, reborn, hugging Tiny Tim Cratchit after finding the tears in his dreams were too much to bear. And George Bailey found happiness after seeing a world where he never existed and realized just what A Wonderful Life it was.

There is a point where water becomes different.  It isn’t just a pond or a river or a puddle anymore, but rather something more.  You see it from a different angle.

Call it what you will, but this is the start of a revolution.  A shift.   Stories are born here, tales may die here.  Show someone this place and you just might get your wings.  Just like Clarence.

Have a good time,

Duffy & The Gorge Fly Shop