~ At some point, in every man’s life there comes a point of reference you pull from, or a transformation of sorts. That point of reference can pertain to many things. For me, setting a hook is one of my points of reference.
I love to fly fish. I dry fly fish. Sure, I have two rods, the knowledge and ability to drop a nymph, scoot a muddler, and the gear to do it properly, but it’s merely added weight in my vest. When I fish, which isn’t nearly enough, I dry fly fish and this chapter is about the man who taught me the finer points of said art form.
As you age as man, you don’t show the emotion you once did as a kid. Even those of us that wear our hearts on our sleeves don’t always outwardly show it, but we still process it. The other day I was on the way to get some ice cream for Llyn (that’s my wife/best friend), who was carrying our 2nd son at the time and had a hankering for some of Wisconsin’s finest. My father called while en route. It was a Tuesday evening, another evening if you will, I didn’t think much of it. After the usual exchange about work and the weather, the subject of fishing came up.
Dad proceeded to explain the elements of his latest trip, in detail only the way he could, and in an anticlimactic way he proclaimed he was done fishing the Ronde on his own, that the incline was too much for him. I wept. Not outwardly, not in a way that anyone would know, but inwardly I wept, I knew what that meant. We carried on the conversation, I’m sure it was meaningful, but I don’t recall it to be honest. I listened, it was a good conversation but whatever we were discussing and I was doing at that point turned more into a functioning haze of going through the motions while in a cloud of thought.
I couldn’t help but shake that thought: My Dad was done fishing the Ronde on his own. If you’ve ever fished with a guy who truly knows how to fish, while subtlety bull shitting you the entire time, you know a version of my old man. Fishing with him is the perfect combination of feeling art, love, frustration, anger and bliss you can have. Somehow you can have fun, learn, be yourself and feel inadequate as a fisherman, all at the same time.
I think the reason for that rush of inward emotions was the thought of my boys not getting the joyous teaching moments I was privileged to, all while knowing the joy I’d get attempting to provide the same moments for my boys, in the same vein my father once did. Maybe those moments were my Dads point all along, or maybe there wasn’t a point at all, or maybe the point was simply heading upstream. Who knows. All I know is I’m grateful for what’s happened and what’s to come.
As I write this, I think about my wife, and a conversation we had when she was pregnant with Rivers, my oldest boy. As we discussed our future/parents aging, she told me, “I think the hardest thing for you will be accepting what you can and can’t do with your Dad/taking Rivers fishing.” As she often is, she was right. That acceptance doesn’t come easy, but I take solace in knowing my Dad’s full of shit about not fishing the Ronde on his own anymore though. This is the man who use to always make us take the path least traveled to get to every fishing hole, “The harder it is to get to, the less people that have fished it,” he’d say, or some other variation along the way, all while branches slapped you in the face, thistles raked your pants and you went knee deep in northwestern black mud-I will say though: you learn to always wear pants and carry your rod backwards real quick.
9 times out of 10 it was a pain in the ass to get to the best hole, but just like my wife, he was always right. And lord knows the first time we take Rivers to the Ronde with a fly rod, he’ll insist we take the path least traveled. After all, you can’t have a namesake grandson with a name like John Rivers learn how to fish the wrong way.
If there’s any advice to this story, it’s simple:
Wet a line, only good comes from it. ~
Living the Dream 