A World With Dew Still On It; Fly Fishing New Waters

Norman Maclean recalled, "Every afternoon I was set free, untutored and untouched till supper, to learn on my own the natural side of God's order. And there could be no better place to learn than the Montana of my youth. It was a world with dew still on it- more touched by wonder and possibility than any I have since known."

Sometimes I get a glimpse of paradise. A world with dew still on it as Norman Maclean recalled.

Such was the feeling while fly fishing with my friend Jim on the North Tongue river in the Bighorn mountains of Wyoming. The meadows were vast and untrammeled with thousands of wild flowers as far as we could see. Vast silence filled the air.

 The fish were wild, frisky and willing to take our flies. We hooked fish in every pocket. Fish abundant.  We never crossed paths with another fisherman. Never thought of "sitting on a hole". We saw moose. We fished pocket after pocket of water and kept moving with excitement as we wondered what was around the next meander. Waters never fished by us. Rarely by any one.

I could not help but compare this river to my home river of the South Platte. I do love the Platte but it gets hit so hard by fishermen that the fish have become very selective to the point of being tame if not "beat up".  There is the very real sense that the fish have been altered by man by his over abundant presence. There is not that feeling of wildness, wilderness, nor, of paradise. Too many people casting over the fish. Too much noise. But not here in the middle of the mountains of Wyoming. This was a land with dew still on it.

Jim and I kept saying to each other; “This is perhaps how Eden was; I feel like we are in paradise”.  I kept remembering how the Platte was once like this river. But not anymore.

Maybe we need to remember paradise.  Perhaps we lament its loss in hope of figuring out a way to bring it back. Not sure that is possible anymore.Or maybe we remember it because it is our hope of what is to come.