Stan.

Ode to Stan.

Old rig. Hardwick.

Stan used to sit right there, on that small, weathered wooden rig at the edge of the lake. You can almost see him still, boots planted, line cast, breathing in the quiet as if it were something rare and sacred. He never came here to catch fish, not really. He came for the stillness, for the way the world seemed to pause and make room for him.

Now the rig stands empty.

The wood has gone a little softer with time, the edges a little worn, but it waits all the same,faithful, patient, just as it did for Stan every morning he arrived before the sun had fully decided to rise. The water mirrors the trees like it always did, holding the sky and the branches and the silence in perfect balance. Nothing has changed, and yet everything has.

There’s a sadness here, gentle but undeniable. It lingers in the untouched surface of the lake, in the absence of ripples where his line once fell. It rests in the quiet where his soft humming used to live. The world carries on, but it carries him differently now. And still, there is something warm in it too. Because this place remembers him.

In the hush of the fog, in the frost clinging to the grass, in the patient stillness of that empty rig, Stan is not entirely gone. He is in the peace he loved, in the calm that wraps itself around the lake like an embrace. The quiet he cherished now holds him in return.

So the rig stands, not abandoned, but devoted. Waiting, remembering, honouring.And if you stand there long enough, listening, not just with your ears, but with whatever part of you understands stillness, you might feel it too. Not just the ache of absence, but the quiet, enduring joy of having been there at all.