Fathers, Mothers, Sons and Daughters: Fly fishing as a Rite of passage

It seems that many of us have a sense that getting kids outdoors and doing activities such as fishing is a good thing. We may not agree why we think the outdoors and fly fishing can be beneficial to young people but there does seem to be a general consensus of, “Lets get kids outdoors”.

As a counselor, educator, father and fly fishing guide, I have thought about this topic for decades. My conclusion is that I think fly fishing can at least begin to be a component to a rite of passage for young people. Having observed young people for the past 30 years I have become convinced that some kind of a meaningful  rite of passage is needed in our culture to help young people move into adulthood. But I don’t think it is as simple as a father or mother hiring a guide for his son or daughter and making sure he/she catches a fish.

If a parent tries to guarantee that his child will catch a fish he is misunderstanding the process of a rite of passage and of an encounter with nature. Over the years of my guiding experience I have had this sort of thing happen quite often.  The father or mother  will pull me aside before the trip begins asking me (in so many words, some direct, others indirectly) to make sure their child gets hooked on fishing by catching a fish. The parent will stress, “The goal is for my child to catch a fish”, and often a parent might add, “He/she does not have a long attention span and if he/she does not catch something right away he/she will become bored and lose interest”.

A true journey and rite of passage has certain components that I believe are needed and one of those components is quite simply that there are no guarantees, or, at least not in regard to catching a fish. Nature is not under our control.  In the Bible when God finally spoke to Job out of the whirlwind I find His line of questioning very interesting. “Where were you when I laid down the foundations of the world? Tell me if you have understanding”. And then He goes on to question Job about the natural world that Job is not only ignorant about but also has no control over. “Have you ever commanded a single morning”?  “Who had begotten the dew”?  “Have you seen my storehouses of snow”? 

We cannot be afraid to have our children feel ignorant and not in control about certain things.  We cannot be afraid to allow them to fail. The self esteem movement has resulted in a sort of creed, “My kid must always feel good about himself”. I think this has gone way too far to the point where we always have to be holding our child’s hand.

Any heroic journey and rite of passage has a component of solo time. Many young people are rarely alone (And alone with cell phones, computer games and gadgets is not what I mean by alone time), that I think we need to do all we can to allow kids to be by themselves. Of course to ensure time alone, families are going to have to do some restructuring at home, setting strict limits and providing time outdoors.

I hope we can realize that ironically the period of being alone waiting to catch a fish is actually the time when some sort of a rite of passage can begin to take place. The young person learns and potentially is transformed by knowing that there are powers outside him/her self and that he/she is not in control. He/she learns that nature is more powerful. As the child tries to capture a fish he/she learns first hand that life is not all about him/her, that he/she is not the center of things and not entitled to anything. The fish can flat out ignore the young person’s attempts to entice them to bite.  This fact alone can be, in and of itself, transforming and a vital component of a rite of passage.

Perhaps it might be the best thing for a young person while fishing alone; thinking, pondering, problem solving, experimenting, to gaze at the sky around him/her; to then have a large Rainbow Trout slam the fly out of no where, peel off line faster than imaginable, and  leap through the air breaking the leader before the child can even guess what happened. And then the young person stands there decisively “defeated”, yet in awe, and bound and determined to try again. To me, that is closer to what it might mean for a young person to be “hooked on fishing”.