An eastern brook trout walked up to the bar and ordered a black and tan. He was looking pretty dry. “How long have you been out of the water?” I said. “Going on twenty years now,” he said. “Long enough,” I said. I told the bartender that his drink was on me, and he showed me a fin. “I’m Peter,” the trout said. “Randall,” I said. We shook fins and sat in mostly silence for a couple of hours drinking black and tans and finished with a round of White Russians. Then just like that they were closing up for the night. “I’m sure I’ll see you around, Randall,” he said. I said goodbye and he was gone, a meteor sighting in an otherwise starless sky. It was a decent night though. I’d made a new friend. But it was the same story. He’d been kicked out of his river for not being able to come up with the rent, and since then it’d been a waterfall of downward mobility for him. I myself knew exactly what he was going through. Still, you never know. Someone can show up at your door one day and change everything. Despite what they say about money not growing on trees, I’ve found it actually does, metaphorically speaking. It just depends on what kind of tree it is, and whether it sheds its bills every fall to conserve energy and remain a tree. I hoped my new friend would find his place near one of those opportunities someday. Connecting to one is another story, however. Still, it seemed a crime against nature to think he wouldn’t. I swam home using Little Black Creek, a tributary we fish had been told we should never take as a detour, back down to Swanson Lake, thinking maybe something new would reveal itself as faithfully as I’d decided to follow my fins, wherever or however they should go. When I got to the lake my new friend Peter was floating belly up by some coffee-colored foam. I couldn’t tell what happened. Maybe he drowned, I don’t know. I held him close to my chest and spoke to him all the sweetest and most reassuring things I could come up with, as it seems I’ve always been pretty good at that, then released him to the moon to watch him fall softly into it, knowing his consciousness could still approve of that loving send off, and eternally generous act of compassion we both knew in the two hours we spent together could never be turned out.