5/24/2014 Women's Fly Fishing Poetry Retreat

Commitment To a Mystery: Faith and Fly Fishing

There is much I do not understand about fly fishing and faith. 

I think we are correct to speak of what we do not understand as mystery. Better to admit what we do not understand. Better to ask the difficult questions. Why speak in absolutes if we do not understand? Why pretend?

Yet, even without understanding, there does come a time when I believe I must commit. I have enough information. I know enough even if most of what I know is simply that I do not know. It is still enough.

At some point I simply feel accountable to respond. I don’t think I should wait around for my rational mind to understand. Not going to happen. Enough has been revealed from a single sunrise on a river or the rise of a trout.

Faith will always to some degree require a leap of faith. So, does fly fishing. At some point we know enough and we cast. We cast to the depths and leap into a mystery.

I don’t have to know everything. In fact, I don’t have to understand very much at all. Perhaps all I need to know and understand is that I am accountable to respond. When I first started fly fishing I did not understand much at all but I responded.

This is my conclusion after decades of perceiving God as a mystery. I am quite certain that I will spend the rest of my life perceiving God as mystery. I may never purely understand a thing about the nature of God.

But I can still leap. I can still commit. I don’t’ leap or commit to understand.  I leap because it is the only true response.

An appropriate reverence.

Mens Fly Fishing Retreat:2014 What is Spiritual About Fly Fishing?

What an interesting meaningful time together. Men getting together to fly fish and  talk about the deeper aspects of life and fly fishing.

After catching some nice rainbow trout, eating dinner, we gathered around a warm fire to consider the question. What can be spiritual about fly fishing?

I would call the discussion authentic and honest. Rather than what I would call “lofty”. We spoke of things with humility and uncertainty. We spoke of possibilities.

We spoke of the beautiful peaceful places that fly fishing often brings us to. How do we respond to the beauty and mystery of creation?

We spoke of how the rhythm of casting and the intense focus on the fly with the fish in pursuit can be experienced as a type of meditation.

We spoke of “connection”. The connection to something larger than ourselves and yet when done with others, a deeper connection to one another.

We spoke of being part of natural cycles. Insect hatches and their cycles. The seasons of a river.

We spoke of water. Flowing water. Baptism. Repentance.

We spoke of “calling”. Can a man be called to wilderness? To a river?  To a lake?

We spoke of spiritual rites of passage and considered if fly fishing could be a component.

We also spoke of the possibility that all our thoughts could merely be wishful thinking. Nothing but projections mislead by emotion.  We had to consider that maybe there is  nothing spiritual about fly fishing. But in doing so we are have to also consider the possibility that perhaps there is something spiritual about all fly fishing and all of life for that matter.

My own conclusion: There is some thing.

Something happened at that little pond in northern New Jersey where I made my first casts to large fish below the surface. Often alone away from the mainstream. On an edge.   Feeling protected and enclosed by the hillsides covered with lush trees that surrounded the small lake I fished. 

Yet, lost in some sense. Perhaps found. And that is something.

God Knows: Looking Back at One's Work as a Fly Fishing Guide, Teacher and Counselor

Sometimes I try to evaluate my life, my work as a teacher, counselor and fly fishing guide. Perhaps like most, I want my life to have mattered.  I wonder if it has all been in vain or did my work accomplish some purpose? Perhaps I brought some new meaning to someone. Perhaps I helped someone catch their first fish on a fly or helped someone catch the largest trout ever. Or, perhaps some in-depth conversation left some one pondering for years. Or, maybe a story I told children lingers in the heart of a young person for decades to come.

Strangely, it is not as though I have not received some feed back in regard to these questions I ponder. Some times, I run into former students and fishing clients.  Some times meaningful memories and stories are shared. There have been personal thank you letters.  There have been guide trips and field trips with both kids and adults when they expressed, “This was the most exciting moment of my life”, or “You were the best teacher/guide ever”, or, “This was by far the best I ever did fly fishing”. Sometimes I felt if even in the smallest way as though I was partially responsible for those positive experiences.  

But on most days, in spite of this feedback I do not feel so highly of myself. My conclusion to my own self evaluation tends to lean toward not feeling very adequate. Most often it feels as though my life and work did not matter, that I was quite dispensable,  which in the big scheme of things is probably closer to the truth. Perhaps I am being hard on myself.  Maybe, not. Probably not.  Who knows?

It is only most recently that I am finding some comfort in letting go of my self worth  based on my own self evaluation because the only truthful answer to the question, “Who knows”? is God.  God is the only one who knows. God knows the truth. God knows and that is something. It is enough. It has to be enough.

This may sound terribly simplistic.  And I tend to dislike simplistic thinking. But there is something powerful and satisfying in the truth, “God knows”.  I can let it be. I can let it go. I can let go of any evaluation of my life.  In fact, perhaps the truth is that there is no other way to let it go.  To not let it go would be to forever try to please others spinning on some hamster wheel. 

So, it does not really matter how much I think I have helped people or how many lives I think I may have made a difference in. At the same time it also does not really matter how much I think I messed up or how many failures I think I made in not reaching people. Maybe it doesn’t matter how I feel I failed in counseling people or in helping people catch fish.  Maybe at times I was the worst guide/teacher/counselor and perhaps other times I was the best. Who knows?

In the end, my own assessments of who I am do not really matter. Only God knows the truth about how I have lived my life.  And that is enough to escape the judgment of others  and more importantly, of myself. That is all that really matters.

God only knows.

Secret Places To Fly Fish Near Colorado Springs

 "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field”

The parable of the kingdom of heaven portrayed as being  a treasure hidden in a field often reminds me of those times when I felt I had found a secret fishing place. It felt as if no one else knew. I had the treasure all to myself and those I wish to share it with.  It was my secret place. It was a sliver of the kingdom of God and like the man in the parable I was willing to give up everything else to be there.  

I remember having this feeling when I hiked up into the middle and upper portions of Cheesman Canyon. The Deckers area was always popular but it was the secrecy and seclusion of the canyon that beckoned me to make the hike up and around boulders.  Back in those days I hardly saw people fishing in the canyon and if I did, I could always just hike a little farther and find new secret holes.  There were big wild rainbows in those holes. As I hooked those big rainbows I remember laughing that no one else was there. I had found a secret treasure.

There was the ‘dream stream’ before it became everyone’s dream stream. I remember standing in those meanders in the midst of those vast meadows wondering if I had truly found a treasure that would last forever. South Park was paradox; a huge open God forsaken place and yet teeming with trout. The huge expanse of the land and sky intimidated me and yet at the same time I was drawn to fish those quiet, lonely, secret meanders.

            I remember when the upper several miles of Eleven Mile Canyon became treasure after it was designated as Catch and Release, fly and lure only water. The trout population grew abundantly and quickly. This too, was a piece of paradise; a secret place in our own back yard hidden by huge granite walls.  

The Arkansas River tail water in Pueblo felt like a winter treasure. Here was a place to catch large trout (some very large), in the winter and often be comfortable.  Who would have thought the steel city would hold such beautiful trout in an urban area?  This too, at least for several years was ironically a hidden urban treasure.

These were and still are the best fly fishing treasures in the Colorado Springs area. Over the years I have been willing to give up quite a bit on my schedule to fish. At times I would cut work to fish or drive to these places after work to catch a few hours of fishing. Or, on weekends I would post pone those normal domestic chores and responsibilities to fish. Why fertilize the lawn when there is treasure to be found? And at least in the beginning, (even if it were only in my imagination), these places were somewhat secret. Of course, over the years, that changed. Word got out. Articles were posted in the newspapers. The people came. Lots of them. The guides came. I was and am one of those guides.

Without blaming anyone, sadly these places no longer have a sense of secrecy for me. For me, this new awareness has taken something special out of these places and has diminished the feeling of these places being a treasure that I had once found. It is difficult to have a sense of secrecy and discovered treasure when virtually every hour of every day someone, (even if it is me), is standing in those places. Almost every square inch of river bottom is stepped on every day. When the rivers filled up with fishermen I went to the still waters; Spinney and Antero. This preserved a sense of secrecy for a while until, like the rivers, word got out and the crowds came there too.

I know I was not the first person to have found these places. More importantly, I was not the first person to feel I had found the treasure then to feel that secret treasure slip away. Long before me there were others who found the treasure. Others fished these waters long before me, long before I was even born, all in their own secrecy.  

So, I have to consider the very real possibility that maybe it was I who invaded their secret places. Maybe, in some way, I took the treasure from them even as I watch more and more people fish in runs and holes that are no longer secret for me or anyone.

And that is a loss of treasure which is sad for all of us.

Maybe We Are Telling the Wrong Fish Story

William Stafford’s poem, “A Story that Could be True”, describes a young man standing on a corner shivering in the rain and watching the people go by. He feels disconnected,

“He wonders at their calm” and how, “They miss the whisper that runs inside his mind any day”,  that asks the question, “Who are you really wanderer”?

The poem also tells us that this young man’s mother had died, and that he was exchanged in the cradle and no one ever told him the story of what happened.  He wanders. He watches people and feels far away standing in the dark and cold.  I can imagine he asks himself again and again, “Who am I really wanderer”?  To whom do I belong?

In thinking about this poem as a Christian I wonder if we might be telling the wrong story. Maybe we are telling the story of how being a Christian means we will almost always feel good.   Perhaps we are telling the story that the Christian life is only purposeful and meaningful.  And, that we will always feel connected and we will always know where we belong. 

Perhaps we are telling the emotional equivalent of a form of the “prosperity gospel” where by not only will Christians always expect God’s blessings in the form of material possessions but also in the area of emotional relational blessings. Maybe we are telling the story that to be a Christian we will always feel connected and we will never feel lonely.  Hence,  the “relational prosperity gospel”.

I do not think this is the story Jesus told. 

It makes more sense for me to metaphorically believe that I was exchanged in the cradle and that no one told me the true story of what really happened. 

It makes more sense for me to believe that I am a spiritual orphan in the world and just maybe, I was mixed up in the cradle. And when I admit that possibility I might then finally realize the true story. 

Perhaps that is the story that should be told. Perhaps this is the story that could be true and we should know. 

When it comes to fly fishing perhaps we are also telling the wrong story.  If the story we are telling and believing is that if we just keep buying new gear and learning new techniques we will always live in the eternal bliss of catching fish then perhaps we have lost our story. 

And we don’t even have a good fish story to tell.

Trying To Say Some Thing About The Depths of Fly Fishing in Deep Silent Pools.

What do you do if you strongly feel you have something to say but you can’t say it? I wonder what the prophets of old felt when they tried to say what they had to say?  I wonder if they even knew what they were saying.

I have a sense that I am trying to say something. But I can’t say it. I’m not even sure what it is.   It’s just something I sense. Perhaps kind of similar to how a fly fisher senses that there is a big fish in the run they are fishing and the fish is going to take the fly. “I don’t know how I knew. I just had a feeling that fish was there and had taken the fly”.

What have I been trying to say over all these years most often has something to do with fly fishing in the early morning or skiing in the woods in the late afternoon during a snow storm or running down mountain trails through the clouds?  With fly fishing the something I sense is far more than the feeling that there is a big fish some where under the currents I fish. It is something more. Something “under the rocks”,  perhaps under everything.

And that is my problem. What is this something more?  How do I say it?

What is this something more that I sometimes feel in these moments ?  What am I trying to say about these moments that it seems I can never find the words. It seems the more words I use the less I say about what I am trying to say. .  

Is it something largely unsayable?  Something I do not know. Or, at the very least,  I do not know very well.

I know it , some what, only when I experience it and then it passes into the unsayable past of memory where words cannot enter.  

I wonder if you were there with me would you feel it or would it be gone?  Or, if you did  feel it, would you be at the same loss of words?   

Whatever it is it seems to be of depth and mystery.

Nothing of cliché’s.

Some thing beyond names. 

Some thing of life.

Some thing more than the fish caught or the ski turns made.

Some thing worthy of my praise.

Some thing of God.

Some thing I cannot say.

Maybe this is it? What I have to say. That I can’t say it;

and this not being able to say it,  is something. 

And for now it is enough.