Aldo Leopold, in “A Sand County Almanac”, described a satisfactory hobby as “being to a large degree useless and irrelevant.” He goes on to add, “A hobby is a defiance of the contemporary” and that “every hobbyist is inherently a radical”.
When I was eleven years old, I started fly fishing on my own in New Jersey. In looking back I can now realize how by choosing to pursue fly fishing, without even knowing it, I was becoming somewhat of a radical. During the early 70’s in northern New Jersey, I rarely saw anyone else fly casting streamers or poppers for Largemouth Bass in the ponds I fished. People would sometimes ask, “What are you doing? Why are you whipping the line through the air?” Or, even just the fact that I spent hours and hours fishing, preferably alone, while most of my peers were engaged in more mainstream social group activities, I must have been viewed as odd. And even now, in this age where fly fishing has become in vogue, as an adult (or any other fly fisher for that matter) who fishes not for food or money, can be viewed as a bit of a radical, especially if he fishes alone for hours and hours.
Like many people who have become intrigued by fly fishing, I cannot explain exactly what it is that causes a task that is essentially, useless, to be so fascinating. In looking back when I was a kid, I wonder if without even knowing it, if it was a form of my own “defiance of the contemporary”. It doesn’t make much rational sense for an 11 year old kid to pursue something that would lead to being alone and viewed as “different”. I now get the feeling after working for decades as an educator that there is some unwritten creed among young people these days that goes some thing like, “Don’t do anything where-by you look alone, different, or foolish”. Oh no! God Forbid!
Yet, at the same time, over the years, I have wondered what it means to become a “fool for Christ” as the apostle Paul put it and what Jesus meant when he spoke about being not of this world and that we would be misunderstood. The life of Jesus was anything but practical as he asked his followers to sell all they had and give to the poor, to not store up riches, and to leave every thing behind. In essence, to live like fools.
Maybe fly fishing is one of those “foolish” tasks we can do that is largely “useless and irrelevant” and therefore makes us a bit of a radical and an individual who lives in “defiance of the contemporary”. Perhaps fly fishing in some small way can help us to understand what it means to be free, to not be completely engaged in the “game” of the world in which most things are done for rational reasons and for some practical purpose that is sensible rather than foolish and usually involves the underlying motive of making a profit. It becomes sad when everything we do drives us toward only the goal of making money, moving up a ladder and giving us the illusion of security. The fly fisher engaged in the useless task of trying to catch a fish, defies this game of the world, and at least during his time on the river, allows him to becomes the radical fool. And I think, at least at times, this is a good thing.
And finally, somehow I get the feeling that to play only the game of the world and to never be engaged in anything that might be called useless and foolish (such as fly fishing) is to miss out on what it might mean to become a follower of Christ and miss out on life itself.
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