When I try to extract lessons from fly fishing that apply to my life, one that most often comes to mind, is that no matter how confident and well-placed the cast, there comes a time when the drift needs to be mended. A good drift is an elusive search for perfection. It is that natural-looking path a dry fly follows downstream as it attempts to imitate an insect on the surface of the water. The fly lands delicately like a dandelion seed blown across the lawn and it rides the seams without revealing a hint of the line to which it is attached.
Along this path the vagaries of unseen river currents conspire to put a belly in the line pulling it ahead and dragging the fly unnaturally across the river. The trailing wake tips off any waiting fish, alerting them that something is suspicious. You can sense as it’s about to happen and you know what to do. Lift the rod and break the surface tension. Bring it across your body and lay the line down back upstream of the fly to restore the drag free path.
Occasionally our lives need mending as well. Without realizing it we can accumulate all sorts of baggage. The weight of poor choices, regrets and unfulfilled desires conspire to pull against our happiness. It tarnishes our hope and dims the star we steer by until we find ourselves headed off course. Don’t be afraid to initiate change. And be sure you don’t wait too long to do it.
Fly fishing forces out the irrelevant. Demanding absolute attention and in return supplying a surplus of stimulation. It leaves little room for distraction. Everything about fishing saturates the senses – the sights, sound and smells of wild places, the physics of casting a fly and the expectation of a jolt of life connecting to the end of the line. Things become clearer. Dreams become sharper. Worries, jealousies and grudges get rinsed away. I feel a better person after a day on the river. I can see the person I would hope to be all the time. A person who is fully present.
All water is in motion. From a molecular level on up. A glass of water sitting on the table in front of me is animated. Turning over, evaporating, bouncing around within the walls of its container. But a river, the race down a gradient, is when water comes to life. The thundering of water pounding on the rocks that dare lean into its path. Farther downstream the gurgle of satisfaction as the river achieves the resting level of the next pool. An effervescent burst in the foam line as the current spills into the deep pool and circles around into a back eddy.
For me there is no substitute for the sound of a wild river. I’m entranced. Time changes to a different, lower, octave all together. But we can never entirely escape. Many thoughts come to you when you stand waist-deep in moving water. Life is rushing past. What have you failed to notice? What have you let slip out of reach? At my age these thoughts form up as questions that now seem to have a time limit in which to answer them. Is it mortality’s far-reaching finger running a trial balance on my life? What’s the verdict and is it too late to do something about it.
One revelation that comes to me when I fish with someone who spends a lot of time on the river is how little I know. It is humbling. I am envious of their proficiency; how comfortable they are and how competent. The practiced ease with which they back the trailer into the water and slide the drift boat off. The way they know what length of tippet to use, or what fly to start with. These aren’t guesses. They are cashing in the dividends of fishing the same place three times in the last week, and the week prior, and several more before that.
Instead, I am in a constant state of discovery. Everything seems vital and I have no gauge of the importance of things. It reminds me of the feeling that makes a mile drive on a rough and unfamiliar road seem three miles longer.
We come across tracks on a sandy bar – more like a ledge below a chest-high undercut bank. A deep and perfect trail of a wolf pacing parallel with a set of moose calf tracks that ran right along the edge and sometimes in the water. I look up with the realization that I have no authority here, and instead of feeling unwelcome or insignificant, I feel connected to this place in a deeper way.