The Colors of May

Put your worries on hold, they’re not going anywhere.
Contemplate the number of May evenings you have left to live.

Rejoice in the unique colors of the season that few others will notice. The special significance of translucent gray wings shadowing pale yellow bodies. Of limestone green, a color unknown to the geologist who will insist that limestone is a chalky gray color but who misses the point entirely. We know better.

We know how the mixing of those colors won’t be found on the color wheel, but may lead us to red spots with white halos. Or blue patches on golden cheeks. Or brown blotches shimmering in a slight red cast, all framed in buttery yellow:

It is quite appropriate that the flies of May have ‘ephemeral’ in their very name. The colors of May are ephemeral, transitional. We may never truly possess or recreate them, but we cherish our brief encounter with a delicate dun that alights on our shirt sleeve. Or with a wild brown trout admired for a few seconds in our net:

Or with a thunderstorm that builds, flashes, then moves on, lacking the energy of July’s prolonged heat to sustain itself:

Soon, even the bright greens of the fresh spring foliage will be gone, photosynthesized into the deep greens of summer:

Limestone or freestone,
Headwater or tailwater.
Wet, dry, or somewhere in between.
The magic of the transitional, the ephemeral, the ethereal.
May waits for no one.

Brothers of the angle, grab your gear and make haste to trout country…it's on!