Fishing After School: Chasing Childhood Images.

 

“Oh childhood, O images slipping from us. Whither Whither?”  Rilke

Fishing after school brings back memories. As a kid, I would rush home, grab my fly rod and rush up to a private pond that was loaded with Largemouth Bass. Back then, I only carried a fly rod and kept in my pocket an extra white marabou streamer. No vest. No waders. Not even an extra leader.

This past week, after school, I drove down to Pueblo’s Arkansas River. Of course, I am no longer a student but rather I am an educator. Yet I felt some of that old excitement of being a child and looking for big fish. Some things never change. And some things do.

I now carry a lot of equipment. Too much perhaps.  I was geared up with two rigged fly rods, my vest stuffed with fly boxes containing thousands and thousands of flies and numerous pieces of tackle, leaders and tools and gadgets.  And of course, I had waders. How different from fishing during the simplicity of childhood when I only wore shorts and sneakers.

The big rainbows were there. I could see them just as I could see big bass in the shallows of the pond I fished as a kid.  My eye sight is still good.  In certain ways sight casting to bass was similar to casting to rainbows.  Spot the fish, put the fly in front of the fish. I didn’t need the extra tackle. Extra tackle does not help the eyes. I caught several large bows 19-22 inches and several smaller fish. As is most often the case, I missed many. It didn’t matter.

I only fished two hours. I accomplished what I had hoped for and brought something back unexpected.  Something from long ago, a deep and loving memory of being a child on a late sunny afternoon walking a pond stalking fish with seeing eyes, hope in my heart and fly line looping over head toward the skies.  

Oh images, do not slip away.  

A Little Stream

 From another world called Perelandra (by CS. Lewis).

In Perelandra, a book by CS Lewis, he describes a little stream that for me, reminds me of the the Dream Stream. Or how it used to be. 

 "Best of all down the middle of the valley and a welcome to Ranson eyes and ears as a glimpse of home or of heaven, ran a little stream, a dark translucent stream where a man might hope for trout."

Dream Streams give us a glimpse of heaven or home. They give us hope. 

2021 Retired From Guiding

If I had to do it all over again, I would have quickly released every fish I caught and would have skipped all the picture taking. In looking back, fishing had very little to do with the actual fish. It was Something else.

Another Big Storm, Maybe

I love the way the poet Rilke can feel a storm is coming. He says he can hear the far off fields speak to him. He can tell by the way the wind blows the branches on his windows that a storm is coming. 

He goes on to suggest that we need to just allow the storm to dominate us. This may be a storm of such power and weight that we have no choice but to bunker down and let it cover us. 

I hope so. 

It sounds like and looks like the storm is still on line to hit us.

Fly Fishing and Existentialism

Sartre said that by writing he was existing. Relating this to fly fishing my thought is that there are fly fishers who might in a similar manner claim they exist by fly fishing. 

I can look back to the pond I fished as a kid and make a similar conclusion. By fly fishing at a pond, I existed.  And in the years after the pond, I continued to need fly fishing mainly on the South Platte River where I existed as a guide.

Soren Kierkegaard added a religious component to his own existence and to his ideas on existentialism. He thought that until a person becomes deeply religious and authentic, we simply are not serious individuals. It is like playing Christianity or playing around with our lives and taking neither seriously.

What I appreciate about this type of Christianity combined with existentialism is that it forces the individual to take responsibility for his/her life and his/her choices. We can’t just dump all our problems on God and refuse to take responsibility. We have to choose but we choose while deeply aware of God watching us. Together, the individual and his awareness of God, becomes serious.

William Barrett described this seriousness in this way, “It is the simple and forthright seriousness of someone who at last has arrived at his center and who is therefore totally engaged in the project of his life and with all that entails. The person exists under the eye of eternity and therefore what he does in the moment is absolutely real.”

The choice to walk to the pond was real. I chose the path in a moment of time.  It felt weighty in that moment and to follow that path had a price because I chose to be more or less alone. In looking back at that loneliness, it now feels glorious, especially in comparison to all the crowds I now experience on the river. Oh, how I would love to be alone, or at least somewhat alone now on the South Platte River. I doubt such loneliness will ever return to the South Platte.

The eyes of eternity were upon me and I could feel their weight. The eyes of eternity were also upon me every day I guided the past 35 years and are upon me now as I try to adjust to booming guiding businesses and crowds on the river.

This will be a big adjustment for me to make.

What is the greater challenge? Being alone? Or being part of the crowds?

Or, feeling alone within the crowds.

 

 

The Dam

As more and more people flee to Colorado to fish I find myself looking back to my place of origin.  West Paterson, New Jersey is where I learned to fly fish at a private pond.  Isn’t it ironic that I now look back from the gorgeous mountain West where my soul has thrived for decades - to New Jersey?

So here I am in Colorado Springs, a retired educator and a struggling fly-fishing guide, dealing with crowds and traffic all over again. I say “struggling” only because it is difficult now to fish alone anymore.  

Is life really cyclical as some of our philosophers propose?  I am not comfortable with the increased noise, traffic and population - so shall I keep moving?

Strangely and more specifically, I am reminiscing about a dam my brother, I and some friends built on a little creek behind our house.  I was around 10 or 11 years old, my brother 3 years older.  The creek area behind our house was a green belt of sorts.  We believed no one owned it so we considered it our property. 

So one day we just started digging - moving tons of rock and dirt to form a dam. The water backed up and soon we had a pond. The pond that formed was substantial.  The dam was 5 feet wide so we could easily walk across it. The hole in one corner was 5 feet deep.

Ducks flew in. We brought in buckets of fish (most were largemouth bass) that we would feed in the hope that they’d become permanent residents. I rarely fished in the pond - I just liked to watch the fish explore their new home. I loved to throw live worms out to them.

Why was I so fixated on this small pool?

I can tell you why. Because that little pond behind the dam was Ours. We built it. We protected it. We guarded it.

And I would pay more than I care to admit to once again have it or something similar.  

I would walk home from school every day and check on the dam making sure there were no leaks and make sure the fish were still around. However, one day I came home and I felt something was different.

It was gone. The dam and the pond were just - gone.   A bulldozer had come up from the ball field below and with one big push took half of the dam out - releasing the water and the fish.

I would often wonder what exactly happened to the bass (and one giant carp and some catfish) as they went tumbling down the ravine. I could see them cascading and tumbling down in confusion. Their world (and mine) disturbed.  

Such childhood losses are difficult to assess. We found out that a neighbor had called the city and was concerned about our dam. This would be one of my first experiences feeling overpowered by people and agencies stronger than I.

What over weeks my friends and I had built with our hands (and out of the earth itself) – those without eyes to see destroyed in minutes with a machine.

I had to find a way to let it go - but I still cling.

Now when I go to “our” South Platte River it’s difficult for me to think of it as “mine”.  There are so many guides and clients and anglers all over the place.  If given the choice of having that one little section of creek, of having my dam and looking once again for my fish in that pool, I would choose that pool every time over what I see now.

I think of the old Iron John story. The boy is asked by his mythological mentor to stand guard of the pool and not let anything harm it. This task would serve as part of his initiation into manhood. In a very real way he is a type of Adam – stewarding the pool like Adam was to steward the Garden.

But how do we stop a bulldozer?