Some things are rare in life. What are the chances of my client John and I
arriving on the Dream Stream and fishing virtually alone?
And rarer still, what are the chances of two men at mid life
(ok, I guess I am past midlife already), casting to the elusive large forms
moving under the currents while we talk about the deeper longings of the heart?
Can two men, two strangers, really talk about such longings of the soul?
What longings? There is the longing to connect to the huge fish that seem to avoid and reject
every offering we make.
But there is more; the longing to
connect to the beauty all around us, to each other, to life; To some “bigger” life and perspective that is
beyond fish caught or political debates or the score of some football game.
There are many things but as fly fishers there is the
longing to know why the giant fish rejects us time and time again and the hours slip away. But then there is the longing to know why a
particular fish in the next moment takes the fly and we are tight to a huge
mysterious Brown. And at times, those
fish stay on, and find themselves in our net and our trembling hands.
And then there are the things we do not know, and perhaps can never know. Regardless, to John it was "the
longing to know.” Know what? It varies for each of us. We all have our losses and want to know. John was thinking of deeper currents. Why
at times in life we find love, meaning and belonging, and at other times we
lose it and cannot find it? How can we ever know and understand such catches
and losses?
We caught some huge beautiful fish and we also lost some. We long
to know. We long to know where and if we belong in this vast valley under a wide sky. And we long to return.
