After a foot of snow earlier in the week, another foot fell last night, and Satan’s Snowblower is waiting impatiently for me as I type this.

It seems like a long time ago, but it was only two weeks ago I found myself standing on the back deck of the Trout Underground/Man Cave World Headquarters – located in the mountains of Northern California – in a t-shirt. A t-shirt.

That's next year's trout water - with free Bonus Moon!

That's next year's trout water - with free Bonus Moon!

That, my friends, is wrong. WRONG.

That’s because we fly fishermen are dark, moody, tragic types – a barely socialized subset of humanity prone to wearing aluminum foil hats and dying in houses filled with stacks of newspapers and cats.

We, my friends, need to peer into the abyss every once in a while to remind us that life – even life featuring only intermittent episodes of fly fishing – truly is great.

For most of us fly fishermen (except maybe those genetic freaks who live in equatorial climates), winter serves as that abyss – the dark, troutless void that balances the Green Drakes, PMDs and October Caddis of the other seasons. (For some, air travel fills that role.)

In truth, most fly fishermen need winter the same way some pine cones need catastrophic fires to drop their seeds, and friends, the Trout Underground is just now at the point in winter where I’m starting to drop a few seeds.

And yes, California needs the water – and this isn’t one of those catastrophic snowfalls that jam the gears of civilization and put four-wheel drives in ditches – but two feet in a week is a nice start, though I’m already suffering from PSSTSS (Post-Satan’s Snowblower Traumatic Stress Syndrome).

That’s because Beelzebub’s snow removal tool is patient and cunning; it waits quietly, but strikes with cobra swiftness. Earlier this week, it broke at the far end of the driveway, which required a haul up a hill and back to the garage.

Repaired, it then cleverly sucked in a hidden newspaper, which required knuckle-busting disassembly to extract. Finally, in the last minutes of the job, the cursed machine’s control levers simply fell off (a pentagram-shaped push nut had broken, as if we needed final proof of the Cloven Hooved Deceiver’s influence).

It’s not pretty when a man wearing a yazoo hat with furry ear flaps throws a temper tantrum in the snow, but sometimes the abyss does more than just stare back at us. And yes, somebody’s got to keep an eye on next year’s trout water, else some sleazy multinational will steal it away.

More deep thoughts on snow removal after the driveway’s clear.

UPDATE: Haha! Satan’s Snowblower has broken again… Well played, demon machine.

See you in the snow, Tom Chandler.

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