My family and friends know I am not a great saver of things, if I haven’t used something in a while it’s gone. For example I don’t save old wire or screws in the chance I may need them later for some project. I figure if you haven’t used it in six months chances are slim you’ll ever really need it, or be able to find it. So it comes as a surprise that I have saved a few bottles of Sterling Cabernet for thirty years. I bought the stuff at the winery in the Napa valley while a college student in the San Francisco Bay area.

          It was a bit of an extravagance at the time.

          Over the years I have faithfully tended to it, keeping it in a cool dark place and turning it once in a while. I thought that my wife Liz and I would use it for toasting the life events during our marriage. You know the big things, birth of children, paying off the mortgage, college graduations and the birth of a grandchild.

          But no the vino just layed around becoming more and more complex and worldly.                                   

         Last summer we took our annual trip to the St. Joe River in Idaho and I brought one of the bottles along so we could enjoy it in the solitude of the cedar forest campground. The sixth night out I decided this was the time. We were having a beautiful dinner of steaks, Caesar salad and corn on the cob. The evening was perfect, the last light off the river was shimmering as I cut the foil and pulled out the dark wet cork. I let the wine breathe for a while and finally poured a sip. The stuff had turned to a brown swill. Nasty, thirty years and it was unfit to drink.

         And so this is what you get when you wait for the time to be right, the truth is that you’ll never know when the time is right.

         In my fishing life I have never waited for the perfect situation to go ply the famous rivers of Alaska, Canada or the American west. I just went. There were always plenty of reasons not to spend the time or money on another fishing adventure but now I can’t remember any really important ones.

         Unlike that bottle of wine I think I have become more complex and worldly, now I want fresh wine and new rivers.