Nature makes me feel better
I know everyone has their ups and downs and, with that said, I am smack dab in the middle of my second cold of the year and, boy, oh boy, does it drag me down. I usually don’t get colds, but if I do it almost always is a real doozy that knocks me flat on my rear end.
Some people like to be pampered when they get sick, but not me. I am more like a badger. If you leave me alone, there is nothing to fear. But mess with me and I am sure to growl and snarl like a rabid animal.
After nearly a week of waking up in the morning and spending that first hour scraping one lung or the other off the wall, I finally went to the Doc in the Box. I learned that this year has been a particularly bad year for colds and allergies, no doubt caused by all the pollen that started early and still hasn’t eased up.
The doctor’s solution was a hodgepodge of antibiotics, steroids and inhalers that darn near filled a grocery bag, drained my bank account and has me feeling like I just stepped off some crazy planet in an alternate universe.
Sorry I went off on that tangent, but if this column starts getting a tad weird, at least I have an excuse. Quite honestly, I can’t even feel my fingers on the keyboard right now. Where is Siri when you need her?
But as much as I dislike taking all these pharmaceuticals, there is one thing I can add to the concoction that brings my feet back to terra firma — and that is nature.
Before giving in to the more traditional medical approach, I noticed that every time I ventured outside I felt just a little bit better. Being cooped up in the house just made me feel worse. I found myself growling at my beagles and hissing at my cats, so when it became clear the animals were avoiding me like the plague, I decided to give fishing a try.
I knew I wasn’t up to spending a full day out on the ocean, so I tried something I haven’t done in a long time — freshwater fishing. I just had to get outside, and at least with freshwater fishing I could head for home if I started feeling really bad or if the fish started talking to me, which I hate to admit has happened to me once or twice in my lifetime.
My first excursion happened when I was getting the first signs that something was beginning to brew in my body.
“A bit of fresh air will cure whatever ails ya,” I thought. So off I went to try for a fairly overlooked species, American shad.
Along with me was local David Donnell, and it was a picture-perfect spring day. I use the blooming of wisteria and Bartlett pear trees to tell me when to go shad fishing and, with both in bloom, we headed to a river where I have done well in the past. Most shad reports I had received were dismal, but maybe some good ol’ swamp air might kill off the bad bacteria that were taking over my body like some alien life form in a 1950s “B” movie.
There were a few of other boats on the river but none were catching shad, so I moved upstream to an area I had done well on previous occasions. We hadn’t gone far before the first shad hit, a big roe shad. Then another, and another and, oddly enough, none of the other boats seemed to notice.
It was fast and furious and, after catching several and losing just as many, my body overruled my desire to fish and home we went. That night I had a year’s worth of cholesterol in one sitting, eating shad roe.
Fast forward a few days and I was one sick puppy — but sick or not I had promised a friend visiting from Minnesota to take him and his 12-year-old son fishing. Up front with him, I told him at most I had an hour or two of energy, so I hit some freshwater lagoons for largemouth bass, something I hadn’t done in years.
Just finding freshwater lures in all my fishing tackle was a chore in itself, but locating a handful, all with rusty hooks, I took them to some ponds I hadn’t fished in years.
On the first cast, his boy nailed a 3-pound bass and, for the next hour and a half we caught bass after bass. For the first time in days, I actually almost forgot I was sick, though “almost” doesn’t count as my visit to the doctor proved.
Nature is a healer for a lot of things and whether all these meds work or not, I should be in the Gulf Stream when you read this. If you don’t see a column next week, then I’ll probably be laid up in bed again and my theory about nature will be out the window. But, hey, it was worth a shot.
This story was originally published April 8, 2017 at 4:51 PM with the headline "Nature makes me feel better."