Ricky Craven is not, he repeatedly assures you, retiring. He’s still a competitor. He still wants to race in NASCAR’s Nextel Cup circuit. He figures he’ll race again … some day … if everything works out.

But Craven will tell you that his desire to do so is different now than it was 20 years ago, when dreams of racing in front of 100,000 fans on Sundays fueled the competitive fire of a talented but raw kid from Newburgh, Maine.

Nowadays, Ricky Craven doesn’t need to sit in a race car in the nation’s toughest tour in order to feel validation. Instead, he has decided that if he drives in the Nextel Cup again, it will be on his terms, in a ride of his choosing, for a goal that excites him.

Go ahead. Ask him. Just don’t tell him that it sounds as if he’s retiring.

“I think that [retirement] is the perception of some people,” Craven said on Thursday afternoon. “The word doesn’t work for me. I’ve given very little consideration to retirement.”

What Craven has given plenty of consideration to is this: He’s not the man he once was and is discovering that he likes that fact.

“You need to be extremely selfish to succeed. To be a professional athlete, you have to be very selfish,” Craven said. “And that was much easier when I was 25. It was much easier when I was 30.”

Now, just four months away from his 40th birthday, Craven doesn’t look in the mirror and see that same selfish race car driver.

Instead, he sees more than that: A husband. A father. A fly fisherman. A man who is more willing to sit, look, and enjoy things he’d never really taken time to consider.

“If my wife was here, she’d tell you that when I was home over the last 20 years, there were times nobody was there,” he said.

Instead, Craven’s mind would be miles away, scheming new ways to shave thousands of a second off a lap around one of the country’s fabled tracks. Maybe he’d be in Daytona … or Martinsville … or Loudon. But home? Not really.

When Craven stepped away from the Tide ride in 2004, stopped living on the road 250 or 300 days a year, and really looked at himself, he realized a few things, he said.

Among those: He had spent a lot of time away from his family and young children. And he had missed a lot.

While participating in far fewer races in the Craftsman Truck Series in 2005, Craven spent more time at home, and more time at his cabin on Moosehead Lake.

In the fall, for instance, he helped prepare daughter Riley for her eighth-grade basketball tryouts.

“I’m glad I didn’t miss that,” he said, softly.

Craven said learning to look at life and his career differently have brought rewards of a different kind.

“Maine has worked against me, in a sense,” said Craven, who pointed out that visiting Moosehead Lake has become even more special as he has learned to enjoy it.

“My father-in-law and I went to the cabin and fly fished for three straight days,” he said. “We came home every day and built a fire. Late September. The last week of September. We watched the Red Sox at night with the door open and the fire in the fireplace.”

And the next day, they’d do it all over again. That’s when a not-so-subtle change began to occur.

“We’d get up the next morning and be standing in the river,” he said. “I saw foliage that I grew up with but I never realized how beautiful it was. Now why did I recognize, why did I see it at 38, but I hadn’t seen it at 37, 36, 35, 34?”

Craven pauses for a beat and gives you the answer.

“I didn’t notice it. It wasn’t important. I’ve [had] that tunnel vision,” he said.

Craven has found solace and strength in the little things, it seems.

But he has also found that enjoyment has made it tougher for him to remain in that tunnel, looking straight ahead, turning left every now and then.

“When I come up here, I lose ambition,” Craven said.

Craven has lost ambition in one noticeable way: He has no desire to bang his head against the garage wall any more, knowing deep down that the team he’s driving for can’t compete for a title. He has spent plenty of time doing just that … and he won’t do it again.

“When I stepped out of that car in 2004, I made up my mind that if I’m going to sacrifice my family any more, it damn well better be for the right reason,” he said. “And running 20th isn’t the right reason. Just being a race car driver isn’t the right reason.”

Which is not to say that Craven is retiring, of course. Far from it.

Despite the youth movement that has dominated Nextel Cup moves in recent years, Craven thinks there’s still a place for a wily veteran with ability and experience.

But until that phone call comes, Craven will continue to be a husband … a father … a fly fisherman. And he will make the most of the opportunity.

When he has time, Craven admits, he enjoys hiking to a secret spot and trying to fool the wary brook trout he encounters.

Ricky Craven is still a race car driver, you see. But he may be a more well-rounded person now than he was during his ascent in the sport.

“I’m going to [go to that secret spot] for the rest of my life, and my son’s going to do it with me, and my friends are going to do it with me,” he said. “It’s priceless. I’m just getting into that. And I’ve got some catching up to do.”

West Grand anglers beware

Even with a week of more seasonable weather behind us, ice anglers need to realize that many of the region’s lakes still have plenty of dangerous spots that might not be readily apparent.

On Friday I spoke with Wdn. Brad Richard, who passed along a word of warning for those who want to head Down East in the near future.

West Grand Lake, one of the region’s top togue and salmon waters, is still far from safe, Richard said.

Adding to the danger: The lake opens for ice fishing on Wednesday, and many anglers will likely head there to enjoy the opening flurry.

Not so fast, Richard warns.

“It’s not good by any means,” Richard said.

There are two problems, Richard said. First, the weather has been warm. And second, the flow at the dam between West Grand and Grand Lake Stream is very high.

“They’ve got four gates [open],” Richard said. “It’s enough [flow] that in the springtime, you couldn’t fish in the stream [with the water level so high].”

That flow causes the level to constantly change, and combined with warm recent weather, the ice has not had a chance to form.

Richard also said that Pocumcus and Junior lakes, which are connected to West Grand, are also affected by the dam’s flow, and anglers there should also exercise caution.

Richard said the parking lot at the dam traditionally serves as a staging point for ice fishermen who park their vehicles and drive snowmobiles or ATVs onto the lake from there.

That’s not an option at this point, as there’s open water halfway to Munson Island, he said.

Richard said that in many areas there is no ice near shore, and numerous pressure ridges are forming in other parts of the lake.

“The best advice is to check [the ice] very, very often,” Richard said.

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.