Back when I was a young man with a young wife and our first-born child, I was in the Marine Corps and we were stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. On rare occasions I would get a weekend free of duty plus the following Monday off because of some federally recognized holiday or due to the fact I burned a day of leave. On those occasions the wife and I would be longing for home and the people we loved so we would make the decision to make a run at Oklahoma. From Camp Lejeune to our home place of Sulphur, Oklahoma it was a twenty-four hour drive.

We would load the back seat of our 1969 Impala, which had tread-bare tires, with clothes for the weekend, snacks, and the baby. Then, we would set sail. We drove straight through only stopping for gas. The wife and I would take turns driving and sleeping while the baby had a blast every agonizing inch of the way. Actually, for most of the trip she slept or informed us she had to go to the toiley, as she described it at that time. 

We would get to our home-place and have a full day to visit the place we loved and the folks we loved for a full day and then it would be time to make the long trip back to base. Looking back now I realize just how torturous those trips were, but they served a purpose. They got us some time with the place we loved and the people we loved.

The Marines called such trips “Swoops”. 

These days I find myself “swooping” to Blue River. On most days at my workplace I can figure a way to manipulate the time clock, or my schedule, enough to slide out the door by 1 p.m. If I pull that off on any given day, I can be in the vehicle arriving at Blue River, having waders on and rod affixed, and on the water by 2:15 p.m. I can get in two good hours of fly-fishing before my regimented afternoon-evening schedule begins. I need to be home by five o’clock most afternoons because it is start supper, catch thirty minutes of national news, have supper, clean the aftermath of supper, catch a shower, spend an hour of quality time with Carol Jean and then hit the rack.

I find parallels in my swoops to Blue River and the ones I made back in the Marine Corps. For instance when I swoop to Blue River, my trip there is always rush, rush, rush, hurry, hurry, hurry, stress, stress, stressed.   My shoulders are tight, my neck is stiff, and my respirations are way higher than they should be. The same was true on the swoops to Oklahoma from North Carolina. Return trips are much more relaxed. On my swoops back from Blue I drive slower, I’m more relaxed, my shoulders and neck no longer hurt and I just feel good. The two hours of fly-fishing probably gets most of the credit for that. Our return trips from our swoops to Oklahoma had a similar effect. We didn’t hurry as much and we actually would stop at a restaurant on the way back to have a decent meal. Seeing the folks and home deserves all the credit for that. And then there are the tires that my young wife, baby, and I would swoop on. They were absolutely tread-bare and sometimes I look back and wonder how we made it. These days the tires on my trout mobile are getting pretty thin and I go without a spare. Funny what trout junkies will risk for a few hours of pleasure. 

Maybe after I get Santa Claus paid off for bringing Christmas to my love ones and friends, I can find an after-Christmas sale on tires, and then I’ll keep on swooping to beautiful little Blue River.