Hot. Humid. Three-tee-shirt days, soggy-sheet nights. Even the fish are perspiring, I think. I visualize them lying on their backs and panting in the somewhat cooler depths of the ponds and pools. And it seems like every time I gear up, slather on the sunscreen and venture out into the pool the clouds gather, thunder rumbles, and I pull for shore, because I don't think that sitting on the water in a metal boat waving a flyrod during a lightning storm is wise. I could be wrong, but why risk it? The fish aren't biting anyway. Might as well go back to camp and...and what?

I adhere to the age-old rule: never tie flies in months without an "R".

Cribbage? I hate to play cribbage alone. I find myself giving myself good cards in the crib. Not exactly cheating, but morally suspect.

Fortunately my saintly Swedish grandmother taught me how to read at the age of 4, and I haven't stopped since. If I can't be fishing I prefer to be reading (well, there are one or two exceptions to that rule). Fortunately, Rangeley has a wonderful, quirky little bookstore, Books, Lines & Thinkers, owned and operated by high school dropout Wess Connally (he didn't drop out as a student, actually -- he quit teaching high school to run the bookstore full-time). I was looking for Herbert P. Shirrefs's informative book, The Richardson Lakes, Jewels in the Rangeley Crown, published in 1995 by the Bethel Historical Society. Wess had been cleaned out of that book, which is now sadly out of print, but he pointed down the street to Linda Dexter's shop, Ecopelagicon (now there's a word for you!) as a possible source. Meanwhile Wess and I discovered we had a favorite author in common, Cormac McCarthy, so I picked up one of McCarthy's pre-All the Pretty Horses novels plus J.T. Hall's True Stories of Maine Fly Fisherman and a nifty little reprint of an 1876 guide to the Richardson and Rangeley lakes.

Ecopelagicon, just off the main drag, is a source for not only books but lots of neat stuff plus kayak rentals (visit the website) Linda Dexter had only one copy of the Shirrefs book on her shelves, and to it was taped a notice, "For Display Only." But, she said, she had a stash in the attic. She pulled a cord and one of those retractable ladders came out of the ceiling; up she went and descended a minute later with one of her last five copies, which I happily purchased.

When I've done my reading I'll let you know what I learned. But if the fishing picks up, the reading will slow down.