The Mad Fishicist

Bye Bye Blogspot

2007-04-30T17:25:00.000-08:00

It's been fun.

What is it?

2007-04-15T08:28:00.000-08:00

The Making of a Mad Fishicist

"What is it?" she asked. "How should I know?" he asked. "What should we call it?"

That's pretty much the beginning. Most of what's happened since then has been about changing altitudes and latitudes in a search for cold water fishes in their home waters. It's never been the fish. If it was, it would be over. It's about the search.

There's a river. It's fast here and there and it's cold everywhere and it's home. There's some water piled up high in front of a big rock. It rises to a point until it breaks into foam. There's an eddy behind the rock. There are no guarantees in life, but there is this rock. Look for fish there. The biggest fish are in front of it.

There's a baby, too. The kind of kid who can make your day if you can make her laugh. Actually she's a knockout. They don't come like this often. When they do, you get on your knees and you stay grateful. And you take her fishing. And she takes you to the sun.

There's also a girl. Actually she's a knockout. She's more of it than she knows. Actually she's all of it. She's the search and the end of the search at once. When you find her, when you catch up, it starts all over again. You forget what it's like to need. And you keep searching because you know the end.

There's a moment. It happens every now and then, but usually you can't see it till it's over. It's never been about the fish, but it has been about this moment. It's the moment when the girl, the baby, the river look back at you and you don't have to wonder. You know it's right. That's when the fish come. That's when the laugh comes. That's when the search begins and ends, begins and ends, begins and ends. Tops of mountains, sunsets...maybe. But wait until you've met this girl. That's the moment. It's never been the fish.

When it happens again, it will show up here. Could be sooner than you think.

Keep searching. Keep fishing. Keep finding. Stay grateful.

But don't stop searching.

The Mad Fishicist

Fly

2007-04-08T20:24:00.000-08:00

He who binds himself to a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise.
-William Blake, Eternity

When the birds came to the feeder, she flapped her arms and shouted, "FLY! FLY! FLY! FLY...!" Real joy is contagious. Soon, every adult in the room was chanting and flapping along with her.

I've wondered if I'll ever be able to say the same thing to her someday.

Today, I know I could not.

Fragment from the Pass

2007-04-06T07:40:00.000-08:00

"Nature's first green is gold..."
Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay

In among the ice,
where wind has blown the mountain free,
some of Autumn's last remains remain.

One Month From Today

2007-04-03T20:28:00.000-08:00

As of today, the Situk River is accessible only by snow machine or snow shoe (thirteen miles is a long way on snow shoes). As of today, the biggest wild steelhead on the planet are stacking up and pairing up in every drift and pool they can find. One month from today, the record snows should have receded enough for me to hitch a ride to the river. Then I should be reminded what it feels like to have a bent fly rod in my hands. And what it feels like to kneel in water to admire, measure, and release the ultimate game.

I'm bringing snow shoes just in case.

To Catch a Rainbow

2007-03-27T20:11:00.000-08:00

"...all my clear-eyed fish,
Golden, or rainbow-sided, or purplish,
Vermilion-tail'd, or finn'd with silvery gauze...
My charming rod, my potent river spells..."
-John Keats, Endymion, Book II

I've tried to explain why I fish. The answer seems to change with every attempt. Could be the challenge, the peace, the oneness with Nature, the river, the art, the presentation, the story, the sounds, the strike, the dance, the rocks, the birds, the bugs, the bears, the dark shadows in foam, the sun, the rain, the fish, the pals, or the wait. It's always something.

Today, it's the stripe.

TMF credits as credit's due:
Fish caught, released, and cropped :
Maybe we'll do it again someday soon.
HTML genius and fellow madman:
With thanks and much respect.

Equinox

2007-03-21T09:49:00.000-08:00

"That happy gleam of vernal eyes..."
-William Wordsworth, The Gleaner

Leaves and lives bud with every new hour of sunlight. The world is waking to giggles and curls and "Go, Papa, go!"

Today the Earth tips in our favor. The windows glow at bedtime. We hear the waters move. The trumpeter swan's mate for life has found her.

And somewhere in the Gulf of Alaska, a multitude as ancient as the sea itself is gathering. Their goal is fresh water; their clock is the sun. It is time to return to the river.

We'll trade our sled for bikes soon, and the world will thrive with giggles and curls and "Go, Papa, go!"

Prince William Sounds

2007-03-18T22:01:00.000-08:00

I hear the noise about thy keel;
I hear the bell struck in the night;
I see the cabin-window bright;
I see the sailor at the wheel.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, A. H. H.

A night on the Sound.
A sound hull.
To sound the sea floor for fish and safe passage.
Sounding murres and otters in the wake.
Not a sound but the lapping waves and the eagle's cry.

She is a temperamental lover who gives and takes without warning. Her sounds are life on the water.

We have learned to listen to the sea.

ee cummings on Spring

2007-03-15T21:45:00.000-08:00

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere) arranging
a window, into which people look (while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here) and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things, while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there) and

without breaking anything.
-ee cummings

It's still far too cold to go to bed without a fire in the wood stove. But tonight I split wood by sunlight instead of porch light.

I haven't split as much wood as fast yet this year.

The light changes everything.

Applying the Scriptures VI

2007-03-08T00:25:00.000-09:00

"...behold, I will send swarms of flies upon thee..."
-Exodus 8:21

Playing Moses to my Pharaoh, a friend has greatly increased my supply as well as my chances for success.

Hopes rising like the evening hatch.

Here's to trout and moving water, the cause and cure for madness and the search for deeper meaning. Kippis!

The Fishicist New Year

2007-03-05T19:43:00.000-09:00

"See how Spring opens with disabling cold..."
-Gerard Manley Hopkins, See How Spring Opens

She's the first of many migrants to return. Won't be long until the geese, pintails, widgeons, herons, sandhills, hummingbirds, canvasbacks, sparrows, scaups, eiders, warblers, redheads, spoonbills, robins, thrushes, and kingfishers follow. After these come the fish: kings first, then the reds, rainbows, pinks, chums, dollies, and silvers. After the fish come the orcas, harbor seals, sea lions, Dall's porpoises, fishermen, and cannery workers.

But she's the first. Her landing inaugurates the new year.

Her landing is what I've been waiting for.

Two Months From Today

2007-03-03T14:15:00.000-09:00

"You have already learned from the river that it is good to strive downwards, to sink, to seek the depths."
-Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

I have learned from fish and rivers.

The sun rarely shines over Yakutat, Alaska. The fish and river don't seem to care. The river is focused on its purpose downstream, the fish on theirs upstream. They will not be stopped.

Two months from today, come rain or more rain, upstream or down, I will sink into the Situk again, seeking the depths for curved graphite and living chrome.

I have learned to not be stopped.

Covering Love

2007-02-27T07:29:00.001-09:00

You're amazing.

I've watched you learn to crawl, stand, walk, dance, run, and jump. You had no idea that each would lead to the next.

I've watched you learn to talk. When you say, "Dankoo, Papa," my world becomes you.

I've watched you learn to sing. The words aren't important. What matters is the smile. And the volume.

I've watched you learn to love. Mama's the finest teacher there is. Keep watching her, and you'll never run out of kisses.

Now it's your turn to be amazed by someone else.

Your new baby brother or sister is coming sooner than you think. You'll have to show him or her how to crawl, stand, walk, dance, run, jump, talk, and sing.

And if you can teach the new baby how to love like Mama has taught you, you'll never run out of kisses.

Man Saves Own Life...Again

2007-02-22T04:57:00.000-09:00

"Then he took up the oar with the knife lashed to it. He lifted it as lightly as he could because his hands rebelled at the pain. Then he opened and closed them on it lightly to loosen them. He closed them firmly so they would take the pain now and would not flinch and watched the sharks come. He could see their wide, flattened, shovel-pointed heads now and their white-tipped wide pectoral fins. They were hateful sharks, bad smelling, scavengers as well as killers, and when they were hungry they would bite at an oar or the rudder of a boat. It was these sharks that would cut the turtles' legs and flippers off when the turtles were asleep on the surface, and they would hit a man in the water, even if the man had no smell of fish blood nor of fish slime on him."
-Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

Once when he was fishing for yellow fin tuna off the coast of Baja California, my grandfather's small skiff was capsized by a great white shark, and he floated in the water with a whole shiver of the precambrians for hours before finally getting his boat upright so he could row back to the safety of the harbor.

I think.

He faced death more times and in more ways than many people have faced life.

I think.

Anyway, the veracity of the story is not the point. What matters is that we believe it could have happened. I've only met one man who could have lived a life as close to the edge as he tells it. I think he's always known that his toughness was never in question.
The shark story is only one in Grandpa's canon of which he is the main character and hero. The stories have become part of my canon as well.

It probably didn't happen the way I remember he remembers it. It's probably not even close. But tell that to the preschooler who crawled into his grandfather's lap to hear a story after everyone else had gone to bed. Or the kid on a camping trip in the desert who was just learning that the wilderness was his world, too. Or the teenager watching his seventy-two-year-old grandfather split wood on a searing summer day (the man could swing an axe). Tell it to the young man listening to his uncles tell the same epics, if slightly different, with all the hyperbole and overstatement they inherited from their father.

Tell it to the young father practicing the stories because his daughter is just about the right age to start forming a canon of her own.

In other words, the story is true.

Ask Me

2007-02-19T20:52:00.000-09:00

by William Stafford

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

I pulled Sophia in her sled to the frozen Lowe River today. She kept asking about the "wawa." I told her it was under the snow. Then we both got in the sled and rode down the bank and across the river. Twice.

Fly Fisherman

2007-02-09T14:14:00.000-09:00

We both use sharp hooks and feathers, but he catches far more fish far more beautifully than I could ever imagine.

No other angler takes his limit then rides a thermal column to the next river.

"But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on,
Leaving no tract behind."

-William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act I Scene I

On the Banks of a Yukon River

2007-02-07T07:52:00.000-09:00

There on the banks of a Yukon river
I wondered if love and life
could be more perfect.

Now I know my love was
a child learning to walk;
a seed searching for stalk;
a bird lost from his flock;

and I wonder if life and love
could be more perfect.

Happy anniversary, my Belle Etoile.

Need

2007-02-04T15:59:00.000-09:00

"I can bring you salmon out of the streams..."
-W.B. Yeats, The Blessed

Quiet, current-powered, and powerful, the fish wheel scoops salmon out of the river and lets them fall into a live well. All I have to do is net the fish and fletch them for the freezer. Not a beautiful method, but grandly effective: a guarantee of meat for the winter.

The only similarity between the fly rod and the fish wheel is need. My mind wouldn't survive winter without the one; my body without the other. Then there is each moment's reminder that I couldn't possibly deserve this fisherman's life.

Usually we fish for fishing, but sometimes we fish for a living. Either way, we have no choice.

Of God and Winter

2007-01-31T05:38:00.000-09:00

The breath of God produces ice, and the broad waters become frozen.
Job 37:10

We worry, wonder, and whine about winter. We get depressed. We think we need to go fishing, to see the sun, to wear sandals.

Then the sun crests the mountain for the first time in months.

We step outside. We see peaks in every direction.

The clarity is striking.

We don't survive here. We don't exist here. We don't wait for summer here.

We have a gift. We have breathed the breath of God.

We live here.

Not Your Typical College Dorm Room Bull

2007-01-29T09:12:00.000-09:00

"...I wished to see a moose near at hand...."
-Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods

Each of us had something the other wanted. Over the course of a winter, I gave him stale bread, ramen noodles, pancakes, and potatoes. He gave me moments like this.

Photo by Jackye Stephens

Catch and Release, Reason #511

2007-01-26T13:22:00.000-09:00

"It was only a fish when he reached it, but ah, such a fish it was!"

-Frederick Buechner, Godric

I scooped this coho salmon fry out of a puddle on the Lowe River floodplain then released him into a side channel under some overhanging willows. Seemed safe there. The anadromous life is never easy, but I thought drying up with a rain puddle seemed particularly cruel.

That was three summers ago. I've seen this picture dozens of times since then, and I always wonder if he made it to the sea.

Maybe he survived his tour of the Pacific Rim. If so, he'll be back in August.

Maybe he'll show his appreciation by tagging one of my flies.

When he does, he will become the most satisfying meal of my life.

TMF's 100th post.

River Winter

2007-01-21T22:04:00.000-09:00

"...a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees."
-Czeslaw Milosz, Esse

The water's slower now; it's thicker. Maybe the river is saving its strength for Spring when it can host bears and birds and men and the fish they want and need.

Or maybe it's enjoying the solitude of a silent sunrise at 10AM. Of a lone eagle watching for one more salmon carcass to run aground. Of a moose that has long since given up the search for willow buds and is stripping bark from the young cottonwoods along the bank. Of the last merganser family finally heading oceanward to meet the river at its terminus--or its source. Of the blue and crystalline glow from the snow under a full moon. Maybe the river is slower now because longer days mean shorter dances with the Aurora.

We drink from waters we do not understand.

Spring will come, but Winter is good.

Winter's Antidote

2007-01-19T16:00:00.000-09:00

"The fisherman in his boat, far out beyond the headland,
Listens, and leisurely rows ashore..."

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Bells of Lynn

I have shoveled enough snow. I have chopped enough wood. Spring breakup is still a long way off, but I want to be ready. Building this raft has thawed my brain. Planning the first float trip has warmed my imagination with fish migrations, river maps, flow charts, put ins, take outs, and portages.

Rapids will be shot.

Fish will be caught.

Forget the shoreline.

When the waters start to move again, I will be upon them.

Love's Extended Metaphor

2007-01-15T08:07:00.000-09:00

"Beauty like hers is genius."
-Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Genius in Beauty

She climbs mountains like I fish. The climb is her cast and presentation; the summit is her quarry. Her descent releases the mountaintop back to the mountain.

The difference is that the river is never more beautiful because I fished it.

With apologies to Mr. Burns

2007-01-11T19:08:00.000-09:00

The trout in yonder wimpling burn
That glides, a silver dart,
And, safe beneath the shady thorn,
Defies the angler’s art...
-Robert Burns, Now Spring Has Clad

But proper cadence of the hook

Through weeds from deep to beach,

The trout takes leave of shady nook

For my egg sucking leech.

-The Mad Fishicist, The Angler's Reply