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

A Blessing For Sophia

2007-01-04T22:13:00.000-09:00

Fishes and tales

And a fisherman's daughter

Walks in the rain,

She walks to the water

To the sea.

-Daniel Lanois, Fisherman's Daughter

May you always know banks and shores, still and flowing waters, sandbars and sloughs, marshes, ponds, and oxbows, tides and eddies, creeks, brooks, seas, springs, streams, rivers, riffles, rapids, oceans, lakes, falls, pools, holes, and drifts.

May you live life abundantly knee deep in living waters, and leave your mark on every path you choose.

New Year Haiku

2007-01-01T00:00:00.000-09:00

What fish feel,
birds feel, I don't know--
the year ending.
-Basho, 1687

Trout rise like the sun
to hand tied flies. I rise like trout
to the new year.
-The Mad Fishicist, 2007

Happy New Year. Thanks for reading.

Feel free to submit your New Year Haiku to the comments section of this post. Might be fun.

Kaamos Cure

2006-12-30T07:57:00.000-09:00

"The fish is swift, small-needing, vague yet clear,
A cold, sweet, silver life, wrapped in round waves..."
-Leigh Hunt, The Spirit

The world outside my home is buried in dark and snow. The waters stopped moving months ago. It's enough to make a fisherman lose his spirit. But a trip South and some open water have reminded me why I fish in the first place: there is life beneath the surface. And the waiting is always rewarded.

Patience always proves there is life beneath the surface.

Thanks to TUG for the advice and to OPAX for the Finnish lesson.

And happy first birthday to TMF.

In Good Company

2006-12-06T13:47:00.000-09:00

"neither this fish nor the salmon are caught with the hook, nor do I know on what they feed."
-Meriwether Lewis, Journal March 16, 1806

When you're shivering thigh deep and you've tied on your hundredth fly, there's satisfaction knowing that Lewis got frustrated with steelhead. It's also helpful to know he was obsessed.

Historians have asserted that Lewis spent the majority of the Winter of 1805 and 1806 at Fort Clatsop in the grips of a deep clinical depression. At least now we know the cause.

In the Beginning

2006-11-29T22:54:00.000-09:00

"The lightly-jumping, glowrin' trouts,
That thro' my waters play..."
-Robert Burns, The Humble Petition Of Bruar Water

The Hellenists saw her in the nighttime sky and gave her the late winter months. Early Christians adopted her form as a sign of brotherhood. The Hindus called her Matsya. The Celts gave her to Finn McCool to fulfill his destiny. Norsemen crossed her with a girl and made her sing. The Haida Indians of British Columbia crossed her with a boy who became a shaman. A Maori hero called Maui caught her with a great hook and she became New Zealand's north island. The Incas worshipped her so passionately that the Spaniards could only gain converts by replacing Mamacocha's head with the Virgin's.

She crossed time and culture to become my story.

Her shaking registered 2.9 on the Richter scale at a Bristol Bay tsunami warning center.

Giving Thanks

2006-11-23T09:10:00.000-09:00

Place gifts of silver in our hands.
Give us this day
our daily fish.
-Pablo Neruda, Ode to the Sea

Thanks for fish and fishing,
For wool socks and gloves,
For hunting and fishing partners
Like W.L. Gore, A.W. Danner, and C.C. Filson.
For rutting bulls and full curl rams
For mud flats, flood plains, rim rock, and ridge tops,
Headwaters, tributaries, sloughs, and pools.
Thanks for roe and redds
For tin cups of coffee
And Spring migrations, Fall runs,
The light in June,
And the night in Winter.
For alpine lakes and glacial lakes
And phosphorescence in the bay,
For the Aurora and thunder
And the rain that brings the river back to itself.
Thanks for safe passage overland,
For birds in the hand,
Fish for the pan,
And wood for the fire.

Thank you Lord for life, for life, for life
And for giving me
The need to fish
Until my arms can't hold a rod,
To hunt until I cannot see to hunt,
And to walk
Until I reach Your shore.

Ars Piscatorius

2006-11-20T21:06:00.000-09:00

It's certain there are trout somewhere
And maybe I shall take a trout
but I do not seem to care.
-William Butler Yeats, The Three Beggars

He's not casting to fish but to possibilities. And every cast has a thousand black spots, pink cheeks, and a survival instinct to fly.

Love and Metaphysics

2006-11-12T05:10:00.000-09:00

The Bait

John Donne

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.

There will the river whisp'ring run
Warm'd by thy eyes, more than the sun ;
And there th' enamour'd fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.

If thou, to be so seen, be'st loth,
By sun or moon, thou dark'nest both,
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare, or windowy net.

Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest ;
Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies*,
Bewitch poor fishes' wand'ring eyes.

For thee, thou need'st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait :
That fish, that is not catch'd thereby,
Alas ! is wiser far than I.

Maybe I love Katie so much because she put me on the hook end of the line. Maybe I love fish because I know how they feel.

At water's edge I find my love for her swelling like a tide that never ebbs.

*Ed. Note: Emphasis added. Fly fishing described in a 17th century love poem. Not bad for a carpe diem Anglican minister in James I's court.

Falcipennis canadensis

2006-11-10T19:41:00.000-09:00

"A man who has played much base-ball need never use a gun when after spruce grouse."
-Theodore Roosevelt, The Wilderness Hunter

They aren't fast or dangerous. They don't have sharp beaks or talons. When in danger, they don't release a pungent odor. All they have is camoflauge. Generation after generation knows that to sit still is to survive. I estimate that I walked by thirty of these birds that day, and only five moved.

Thymallus arcticus

2006-11-05T22:17:00.001-09:00

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling...
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Brook

He weighs ten ounces at best, but somehow his rise makes my heart skip like an old 45. His dorsal fin is more a sail than a rudder. He is small but strong. In a month, his Arctic home waters will try to freeze, suffocate, and starve him to death. Maybe he'll survive.

When the sail catches wind, he is a poem etched in flowing glass.

Thanks for the photo, Andrew.

Applying the Scriptures V

2006-11-01T22:00:00.000-09:00

He said to me, Son of man, have you seen this? Then he brought me, and caused me to return to the bank of the river.

Now when I had returned, behold, on the bank of the river were very many trees on the one side and on the other. Then said he to me, These waters issue forth toward the eastern region, and shall go down into the Arabah; and they shall go toward the sea; into the sea shall the waters go which were made to issue forth; and the waters shall be healed.

It shall happen, that every living creature which swarms, in every place where the rivers come, shall live; and there shall be a very great multitude of fish; for these waters are come there, and the waters of the sea shall be healed, and everything shall live wherever the river comes.

It shall happen, that fishermen shall stand by it: from En Gedi even to En Eglaim shall be a place for the spreading of nets; their fish shall be after their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many.

-Ezekiel 47:6-10 (emphasis added)

The waters will be healed. It's a promise. But these fish and these waters have proven something greater: the waters will heal.

It's a promise.

Gobble-uns

2006-10-31T00:09:00.000-09:00

An' little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
An' the lamp-wick sputters, an' the wind goes woo-oo!
An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is gray,
An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenched away,--
You better mind yer parunts, an' yer teachurs fond an' dear,
An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the orphant's tear,
An' he'p the pore an' needy ones 'at clusters all about,
Er the Gobble-uns 'll git you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out!

-James Whitcomb Riley, Little Orphant Annie

Pretty lady

2006-10-29T23:32:00.000-09:00

'...for you are to unnerstand that they used at first to call her "Pretty lady", as the general way in that country is, and that she had taught 'em to call her "Fisherman's daughter" instead.'
-Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Ch. 5

Fish and the memories of fish disappear,
but I'll never forget the wonder I saw on your face,
the single finger you placed on its skin,
and the steady whisper,
"fishyfishyfishyfishyfishy..."

"It is time that I wrote my will..."

2006-10-21T11:22:00.000-08:00

I choose upstanding men
That climb the streams until
The fountain leap, and at dawn
Drop their cast at the side
Of dripping stone....

-W.B. Yeats, The Tower

I'd fish alone, if that were the point. But every fish here and hundreds more would not exist without a story. And the story wouldn't become epic without a partner.

Like Rich's 27 inch rainbow--the biggest trout I've ever seen on the Russian River.

And Scott's steelhead on the swollen Situk, caught in waist-deep floodwater that's normally shin deep.

And Andrew's prehistoric char that looked like nothing ever caught before or since.

And Freddy's first twenty incher: a brother's pride swelling like the Situk in May.

This page can only give statistics, but sitting around a campfire, or a card table, or a pot of hot coffee with my friends, these fish become legends.

Upstanding men, the story is the point.

Lost and Found

2006-10-18T20:41:00.000-08:00

"I fished upstream coming ever closer and closer to the narrow staircase of the canyon. Then I went up into it as if I were entering a department store. I caught three trout in the lost and found department. "
-Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

I let this fish go. More than likely I'll never see him again.

But that won't keep me from trying.

"A Pretty Good Thickness"

2006-10-16T08:34:00.000-08:00

"these bear being so hard to die reather intimedates us all; I must confess that I do not like the gentlemen and had reather fight two Indians than one bear; there is no other chance to conquer them by a single shot but by shooting them through the brains, and this becomes difficult in consequence of two large muscles which cover the sides of the forehead and the sharp projection of the center of the frontal bone, which is also of a pretty good thickness."
-Meriwether Lewis, Journal May 11, 1805

The bear is watching salmon in the deep water; my brother is watching the bear. What the bear doesn't know is that, behind him, on the edge of the slack water underneath the two leaning cottonwoods, lie at least two twenty-plus-inch rainbow trout. Maybe the bear will leave before it's too dark to fish there. He's young. It will take him a while to catch a salmon. Then, he'll eat the eggs out of the hens and the protein-rich brains out of the bucks. The rest he'll leave for the hovering seagulls. We'll wait for him to move on. A great drift deserves this sort of cautious patience.

A nearby bear always changes the angling experience. We focus less on fishing and more on escape routes. Somehow the bear's presence also makes the experience more natural, more wild. We become competition; we become competitive. But we know our limitations, and we let the bear have his hole. In this world, he eats first.

We don't want salmon anyhow. There's at least two twenty-plus-inch rainbows underneath those leaning cottonwoods.

Lowe River, 10/11/06

2006-10-12T22:00:00.000-08:00

"A river man, or a man of the woods, or of any farm-life

of these States or of the coast, or the lakes or Kanada,

Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for

contingencies,

To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents,

rebuffs, as the trees and animals do."

-from Walt Whitman, Me Imperturbe

The levee that keeps this river from channeling through our neighborhood failed on Tuesday night. When we left, our road was crumbling and water was rushing toward our home. Today, we returned under blue skies. Water levels everywhere are back to normal. The puddle in our driveway is the only reminder of how close we came to losing our few possessions. My favorite memory of the evacuation is stopping to watch a salmon cross the highway at a swollen stream.

We live two miles away from this gorgeous box canyon. It's the only road out. Read more here . Or for a more beautiful perspective, click here.

Talkeetna Bluebird

2006-10-03T22:51:00.000-08:00

...you were glad
when you reeled in and found
yourself strung, heel-tip
to rod-tip, into the river's
steady purchase and thrum.
-Seamus Heaney, Three Drawings

The little raft seemed almost too little, but I was drawn downstream by gravity's current and the promise of another perfect drift.

Stop Motion Romance

2006-09-23T23:44:00.000-08:00

He Wants the Cloths of Heaven

by W. B. Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.

Schöner Stern, mein Herz ist voll. My dream is real.

Argumentum fraternus

2006-09-18T16:35:00.000-08:00

"The other blessing was my brother. Though three years my senior, he never seemed to be an elder brother; we were allies, not to say confederates, from the first."
-C.S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy

Used by God to make me better...
...for generations.

Thanks brother. Happy birthday.

Requiem for a Supper

2006-09-12T15:19:00.000-08:00

"it is this speceis [sic] that extends itself into all the rivers and little creeks on this side of the Continent, and to which the natives are so much indebted for their subsistence."
-Meriwether Lewis, Journal March 13, 1806

This very fat hen coho/silver salmon took a red and silver tinsel streamer on the incoming tide of the Valdez Arm of the Prince William Sound this morning. She was on her way to a fresh water stream to deposit her many thousands of eggs, but she was fattening up for the final stage of her migration. Very soon, she would have stopped eating for the rest of her life to focus on finding a suitable mate and nest. Then she would have stayed by her nest, violently defending her eggs from danger, until her body began to deteriorate. The decaying process begins for a salmon while it is still alive. First, she would have turned a dark red while her fins frayed. Then the red would have darkened to black and the black would have faded to gray and then to white as her movements became less and less purposeful. The current would have become her greatest obstacle to guarding her eggs. Small pieces of her soft, white flesh would have peeled away and washed downstream. The white mold on her head would have grown over her eyes so she would have appeared to have no eyes at all. Still, she would have hovered by sense of smell over her nest until her muscles had rotted so much that she would have sunk to the bottom and laid over her nest until she died completely. Then her many thousands of eggs would have hatched, and the alevins would have stayed under the gravel nest she built until they were strong enough to enter the current and partake in the nutrient rich smorgasbord that had once been their mother's body. One of those hatchlings would have returned in four years to provide the same protection and nourishment for her own offspring.

But she decided to have one last meal of red and silver tinsel.

She tasted great with salt, pepper, dried dill weed, and olive oil.

Sore legs, no horns

2006-09-05T15:35:00.000-08:00

"they feed on grass but principally on the arromatic herbs which grow on the clifts and inaccessable hights which they usually frequent. the places they gerally celect to lodg is the cranies or cevices of the rocks in the faces of inacessable precepices, where the wolf nor bear can reach them and where indeed man himself would in many instancies find a similar deficiency; yet these anamals bound from rock to rock and stand apparently in the most careless manner on the sides of precipices of many hundred feet. they are very shye and are quick of both sent and sight."
-Meriwether Lewis, Journal May 25, 1805 (emphasis added)

The only way to get closer to heaven is by flying.

I'd rather walk.

Things Stay the Same

2006-09-02T20:10:00.000-08:00

BROTHERS

"We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which came and went on the western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there."

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Away

2006-08-24T23:30:00.000-08:00

"These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye..."
-William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

They need to come home soon; they have my heart.

The Song of Wandering Aengus-W.B. Yeats

2006-08-17T07:14:00.000-08:00

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

When I am too old to take myself fishing, Sophia, remember this day and take me with you when you go.

Summer '06 Awards

2006-08-14T14:13:00.000-08:00

Father of the Year

Always doing fun things his daughter loves to do, no matter what.

Uncle of the Year

After all these years, still showing father of the year how to do things right.

Things Stay the Same

2006-08-13T22:21:00.000-08:00

A CLASSIC POSE

"Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him."
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

60

2006-08-11T21:44:00.000-08:00

"Teach a child to choose the right path, and when he is older, he will remain upon it."
-Proverbs 22:6

Thank you for doing it for me, and keep doing it for Sophia. Don't ever think I'll let her forget the paths you've shown us.

Happy birthday, Dad.

SOME THINGS STAY THE SAME

2006-07-24T09:56:00.000-08:00

Fish Admiration

"...I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were fabulous fishes..."
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Mommy

2006-07-19T13:37:00.000-08:00

Sophia watches you like you watch Audrey Hepburn movies. She studies you. She admires you. She follows your lead. Someday (if all my prayers come true), she will be just like you. She'll know how to run a household and put up with daddy. She already loves watermelon and pretty shoes. She'll live her life with grace and peace. She'll work and play and rest hard. She will not compromise. She won't have to, because she's been watching you. And she will be a fine mommy.

I am amazed by Sophia like I am amazed by you: hourly, exponentially, and eternally.

Magic

2006-07-10T01:20:00.000-08:00

"Or whipping its rough surface for a trout..."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Adirondacs

Red cheek and stripe. Hypnotic spots on a streamlined body. Nature's perfect predator and prey. I'm starting to believe that what I love most about these animals is the finding--the magic of making invisible things visible, and letting them disappear again.

Argumentum Maternus

2006-07-08T07:46:00.000-08:00

He made this woman to raise me--a plan impossible to ignore.

Happy birthday to my mother, mentor, foundation, and friend.

link

Satisfaction

2006-07-02T21:58:00.000-08:00

"A voice said, 'He was a big one.'" It could have been my brother, or it could have been the fish circling back in the air and bragging about himself behind my back."
-Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

Fishing has always left me wanting more. One more fish. One more cast. One more hole...

Fishing with my brother has finally left me wanting nothing

For more pictures and commentary, click here.

His Father

2006-06-18T08:14:00.000-08:00

"Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was always his delight, rejoicing always before him..."
-Proverbs 8:30

Take the Father's love, and make it a father's love: the most important responsibility of my life. It took me thirty years to learn, but I never knew class was in session. Thank God I had the right teacher. And I'm still learning. Maybe I won't know how I did until my kids have kids.

Look around, Dad. How'd you do?

Today is a very happy Father's Day. Thank you for showing me the Father's love.

25

2006-06-08T04:11:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday Katie. All the men I am together do not deserve this kind of love. To the woman/wife/mother who lives beyond my dreams:

My proudest self is the one in whose arms you have been made complete.

Fish On

2006-06-05T22:43:00.000-08:00

"Never did a caudal appendage beat the sea with such violence."
-Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

A tired steelhead will bend its body into an S. Then the current takes up the fight. The fisherman pulls, but the fish stays curved while the force of the water moves against its opponent. The powerful tail is set against the massive shoulders. All the fisherman can do is hold on tight and wait for the fish to relax. The fish knows that the river will not readily relinquish her most beautiful possessions. The fish knows that a man can not stop the river. But sometimes the fish does relax. It's humbling and almost embarrassing that the battle ends only when the fish decides to let the river stop fighting.

Argumentum decoris (why I am not an atheist #3)

2006-05-30T13:15:00.000-08:00

I am surrounded by beauty.

In Memoriam, JGK

2006-05-26T22:19:00.000-08:00

"I know that this shall turn out for my deliverance through your prayers and the provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope, that I shall not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness, Christ shall even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.

For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain."
-Philippians 1:19-21

Lord,
Thank you for our time with John. Thank you for the way he made Katie laugh and how he made Sophia feel at ease. Make us mindful of his salvation that others will follow on the path to righteousness. In his passing, may Christ be exalted. Keep us until we see our uncle, brother, and friend again.
Amen

This Incredible Fish

2006-05-20T07:44:00.000-08:00

"A steelhead always knows where he is going, but a man seldom does."
-Steve Raymond, The Year of the Trout

This buck steelhead was hatched somewhere very near where this picture was taken. For three years he stayed here, avoiding hungry trout, dolly varden, kingfishers, mergansers, floods, and freeze-ups. Sometime during his third summer, he made his way out of the safety of his little pool toward the ocean. He passed through white water, log jams, and spawning salmon all the way to the big water where the danger was escalating. Now he had to learn how to dodge gulls, puffins, salmon, sharks, whales, porpoises, gill nets, cormorants, cod, industrial sludge, and everything else bigger than he. Somewhere along his journey, he tangled with either a shark or a net. The scars on his side and belly are proof of that. For two years, he grew more and more powerful until he was strong and big enough to start the dangerous part of his life. Steel-backed and chrome-sided, he found his way back through the gill nets and purse seines to the mouth of the Situk River after thousands of fish miles through the Gulf of Alaska and beyond. On a certain day in late April, the incoming tide washed him into fresh water for the first time since he was four inches long. His body stopped needing food. He fought white water and log jams for miles, stopping only to rest during the brightest part of the day in slow, deep drifts. This is where he started seeing hooks. They swung in and out of his reach as he contemplated each and every one. The closer he came to his natal drift, the more his body began to change. His teeth grew sharper. His sides and his cheeks turned red. His back turned green. His spots became darker and more defined. His beak hooked. The red on his body incited riots among the bucks. They tore into each other with life or death violence. The hens waited patiently for for the males to finish their contests. When he overcame his rival, he settled with a hen and rubbed her sides with his powerful tail until she began to deposit the first of her thousands of eggs. Then Scott drifted a red leech pattern with a colorful yarn egg and this steelhead had finally had enough. He darted forward and smashed Scott's fly and the dance began. Out of the water three, four, five times, this steelhead had been through too much to give up now. He shook and pulled and ran and ran until his energy waned and he slowly made his way to hand. Gently, Scott lifted him out of the water. I took this picture. We looked at him for a few short seconds, and released him back to his hen--she wouldn't allow another mate to take his place.

By now, he has fertilized her eggs and he is completely spent. If he can make it back downstream, past the spring brown bears and the log jams, he will reenter the Gulf of Alaska to find food. He will become chrome-bright and grow strong for his next trip up the Situk.

He'll never bite at another hook again.

The Stolen Child

2006-05-19T06:37:00.000-08:00

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats
Full of berries
And the reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters of the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.

For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.

-William Butler Yeats

Fairies, trout, and a tragic refrain. Watch the world weep as the child falls into the fairies' trap. It's the classic Irish welcome and warning: things may look better somewhere else, but there's a price you may not understand until you've paid it.

Someday I'll read this to Sophia at bed time. I can see her growing wings as she drifts to sleep among the waters and the wild.

Steel Dreams

2006-05-17T07:48:00.000-08:00

"Nothing in steelheading is always."
-Bob Arnold, Steelhead and the Floating Line

It's been more than a week, and I can't get these incredible animals out of my mind. I wake at night to false strikes and rolling fish. In a dream, I fought one for thirty minutes before I figured out it was a very large goldfish.

But there is more to steelhead than fishing.

Sometime during our first day out there was a short hail shower. The stones splashed into the Situk like tiny exploding diamonds. I reeled in, stepped back, and watched. A small hail pile formed in a fold on my rain jacket. A very large steelhead broke the surface on the opposite bank. Upstream and down, there were no other fishermen. Even the birds had stopped their singing to watch and listen. As with other hailstorms, the sun was still shining at an angle on my back, and the explosions grew brighter and more intense. It became impossible to separate the river sounds from the hail sounds. Then rain. Then sun. Then I casted again to a much more colorful and explosive gem.

Still Amazed

2006-05-14T00:17:00.000-08:00

"The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of 'Mother'..."
-Edgar Allan Poe, To My Mother

You are a mother
whose mother arms
stretch wider than you'll ever see.
You are a mother twice:
once for our baby
and once for me.

Thank you, Angel.

His Mother

2006-05-13T22:11:00.000-08:00

"Even He that died for us upon the cross, in the last hour, in the unutterable agony of death, was mindful of His mother, as if to teach us that this holy love should be our last worldly thought - the last point of earth from which the soul should take its flight for heaven."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, His Mother

Mom,
How can I make you proud?
You made me this way, be proud of yourself.

How can I honor you?
Your sacrifices lift you up farther than I can reach.

How do I repay the life you've given me?
It's already more than I could ever want.

How will you know it was worth it, in the end?
See it in Sophia--your love's legacy, my mother's touch.

Friday's Poem with commentary

2006-05-12T00:02:00.000-08:00

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

-ee cummings

(Since auntiebeck asked)

EE Cummings was one of the most widely read American poets of the first half of the 20th Century. I don't understand much about modern criticism, but I can tell that Cummings' place in the master's pantheon is secure. Modernists worked hard to destroy their readers' concept of a good poem, apparently because they didn't want to look like copycats (modernism way oversimplified). So for Cummings, the way a poem looked on the page or how it sounded when read aloud was as important as the themes within. Better yet, if a poem was impossible to read aloud, Cummings published it. Consider:

l(a

one

iness

Not Shakespeare, but included in just about every English language poetry anthology in the last fifty years. In normal order, it reads: l (a leaf falls) oneliness. The concept of loneliness is pictured as a leaf falling. He wasn't the first to use the metaphor, but he was the first to arrange it on the page as lightly and as quickly as the leaf really falls. Cummings loved the shift button for the punctuation, but he almost categorically ignored it for capitalization. His themes run the range from the sacred to the profane and from political missives to nursery rhymes.

I found this poem just after my senior year in high school. I memorized it. For a while, I repeated it every morning before I got out of bed. I'm not sure what was so inspiring for me then, but I think now I identify most with the lines "how could...any... human merely being doubt unimaginable You?" The implication is that we can see God by just being. That an unimaginable thing becomes obvious the moment we stop trying to imagine it. To me it says, "Be grateful for life. Experience each day. Look and listen." These are the days God reveals himself to us--the days I keep trying to describe in this journal. Someday I'll get there.

O. mykiss irideus psychosis

2006-05-08T06:36:00.000-08:00

After a week of chasing these strong, smart, aggressive, big, beautiful fish, I only want more.

It rained until the river flooded and became unfishable, and I still fished. Steelhead are a fever. I was infected the moment this fish smacked my fly. Each strike was heart stopping; each lost fish was heart breaking. But missed chances are chances, and I allowed myself to freeze and face dangerous waters for more chances. Every fish brought to hand was hard fought and harder won.

I wouldn't say I'm addicted, but I am.

Gone Fishin'

2006-04-29T16:36:00.000-08:00

BE
BACK
IN
8

DAYS.

I must be excited.

Why We Wait

2006-04-26T11:38:00.000-08:00

"The world is charged with the grandeur of God."
-Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur

It's been a long winter, but moments like this are not far off. My girls and I will be outdoors enjoying long days, short sleeves, long walks, sandals, rain storms, rivers, a world changed, the world charged, cottonwoods, fiddleheads, tents, campfires, kisses, wild salmon, wild berries, wild flowers, first times, sunlight naps, ball caps, catch, clapping, open doors and windows, barbecues, butterflies, buttercups, beauty, breezes, bugspray, bears, birds, new words, new life, and especially each other. It seemed like a dream from another life, but it's been a long winter. Now we're waking with the world, and it feels right.

Miracle Complete

2006-04-20T13:05:00.000-08:00

Her name's Emily Anne. She was born last night at 11:30. I think she's beautiful. Rosy cheeks, puffy lips, dark hair, and chosen for us by God himself.

Mommy's doing well, baby's doing well; answered prayers and dreams coming true.

Miracle in Progress

2006-04-19T21:32:00.000-08:00

My little sister is in the hospital right now waiting to meet her second baby. It's a battle and she hurts. But for nine months, she has been giving life to her child. Her body won't give up that privilege without a fight.

Tonight I pray for my sister and her little one. May God give them both the strength to separate physically and to begin the unbreakable bond of mother and child.

Sorry about the picture, Sis. I just figured you'd rather be riding a scooter in your pajamas than active labor. It's the least I could do.

Fish of a Lifetime

2006-04-11T20:56:00.000-08:00

"...It's well known that in the room
or in the woods
or in the hut in the fishermen's district
or in the crackling canefields
there is a very unusual silence,
a moment as solemn as wood,
and a woman gets ready to give birth.

It's well known that we were born....."

-from Pablo Neruda, Births

I'm not sure when fishing became an obsession or even if it is one. But I know I loved it then, and I know what it means to me now. It may have started thirty one years ago today in a bright but solemn room.

God said, "Let him love fishing, then give him Katie so he can know what love really is. Then give him Sophia to teach him that love is a voluntary, joyous sacrifice. Then let him go fishing again and watch what happens."

Fishing for me has become a means to an end.

Applying the Scriptures IV

2006-04-06T18:31:00.000-08:00

"...afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks."
Jeremiah 16:16b

Applying the Scriptures III

2006-04-05T22:08:00.000-08:00

"Behold, I will send for many fishermen, says Yahweh, and they shall fish them up..."
-Jeremiah 16:16a

A Contemplative Man

2006-04-02T14:29:00.000-08:00

"Perchance he is not confounded by many knowledges, and has not sought out many inventions, but how to take many fishes before the sun sets, with his slender birchen pole and flaxen line, that is invention enough for him."
"His fishing was not a sport, nor solely a means of subsistence, but a sort of solemn sacrament and withdrawal from the world."

"Whether we live by the seaside, or by the lakes and rivers, or on the prairie, it concerns us to attend to the nature of fishes."

"There are fishes wherever there is a fluid medium, and even in clouds and in melted metals we detect their semblance."

-Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

I don't know why fish are so good for friendships. Maybe the answer is in Thoreau, but I prefer to believe it's on a river with my buddies.

A Spring Flybox

2006-03-25T16:33:00.000-09:00

"Flies have a strong, marvelous power, and each is meaningful as a point of contact with nature. Embodied in the fly is a message that reflects the tyer's point of view about nature. By creating an enduring fly, you convey your message to future fly fishers."
-Nori Tashiro

In one week, I've filled my flybox to beyond capacity. Nothing in this box represents anything real or natural. But steelhead trout are anything but real. They are to rainbow trout what steel is to iron. As I write, schools of sea bright steelhead are swarming the Gulf of Alaska at the mouth of the Situk River. Their bodies are undergoing a chemical shift that will allow them to enter the fresh water. Their chrome will change to green and red and silver and they will stop eating. In a month, they will have found their way upstream to their redds in the river and its tributaries. The fighting that will take place for those redds will be far more violent but no less dramatic than the fighting that should take place as a result of this flybox. In just over a month, these flies will swing in and out of as many redds as I can find. May they be tempting enough to induce a bite and tied well enough to survive the thrashing.

"There's nothing more dangerous...

2006-03-20T13:35:00.000-09:00

...than a wounded mosquito."
-Eric Idle as Roy, Monty Python's Flying Circus

I'd hate to be the trout that tangles with this mosquito. It's my third dry fly. The first two were disasters.

Bead Headed Leech

2006-03-19T16:10:00.000-09:00

"The first fly I make
In the Name of Christ,
King of the Elements,
The poor man shall have for his need;
And the King of Fishers,
He will afterward give me His blessing,
And still me for the crests of the waves..."
-David James Duncan, The River Why

Fly box filling. Hopes rising like trout to a fly. Tomorrow I will attempt a dry fly.

A Fall Flybox

2006-03-18T19:20:00.000-09:00

The last fish of a season. The memory isn't fading, but everything else is. Tying flies is refilling my flybox and refueling my patience.

My ktema es aei

2006-03-17T16:53:00.000-09:00

"They do not use flies for bait, for if a man's hand touch them they lose their natural color, their wings wither, and they become unfit food for the fish. [Instead] they fasten crimson wool around a hook, and fix onto the wool two feathers that grow under a cock's wattles, and which in color are like wax."
-Aelianus, De Natura Animalium (ca. AD222) Describing a Macedonian method of catching fish.

Here's my first ever hand tied fly. The pattern is called a Dennis Rodman or a Jerry Garcia. I'll call mine a Haight-Ashbury. It's tintinnabulatious. Or cumulonimbustible. It also should catch me some steelhead.
Click here for comparison.

thank you heath

Applying the Scriptures II

2006-03-08T16:07:00.000-09:00

Simon Peter said to them, "I am going fishing."
-John 21:3a

The days are getting longer. The waters are starting to move against their icy shells. I saw a Prodigal Trumpeter last week. And a mosquito. I am going fishing.

One

2006-03-05T08:19:00.000-09:00

This letter is dated 7/19/04.

Hey Baby-
I cannot WAIT for march 10 (or whenever you come out of your mommy's tummy). I have a few promises:

I promise to always love Mom no matter what.

I promise to always consult God for guidance when it comes to you and Mom.

I promise to give you my best.

You must know how loved you are already by Mom and me. I have spent the last week wondering what you will be like. I have wondered what you will be good at and what types of things you will like. Maybe you'll be good at math so you can help me when I need it (your dad needs lots of help with his math). Or maybe you'll love books like I do and we can make good trades. But whoever you turn out to be, I need you to know how your mom and I will always be there to support you and love you and to help you be the best person you can be. We pray for you every day, and you can count on our prayers for the rest of our lives.

Love,
Dad

This one is dated March 5, 2006.

Sophia,
I know that some day you will be free to seek your own love. My goal is to love you and Mommy in such a way that some day you will look for a love like mine. I see it as my responsibility and my privilege to set your standards high, so I pray daily that I can live up to it. Keep watching me with Mommy. Take good notes, and when you're 35, you can start looking.

Happy Birthday Angel.

Love,
Dad

On a Salmon Stream with Sophia

2006-03-04T11:54:00.000-09:00

"There is a faith, called fishing."
-David James Duncan, My Story As Told By Water

And another, called fatherhood. I belong to both.

photo by heath

Three Years in Profile

2006-03-02T15:05:00.000-09:00

Three years ago today we met.

I'm sitting in a fancy hotel room and I don't want to leave.
Nothing and nobody could kick me out.
The building is gorgeous; the architect knew I'd like it.
The room has no number.
There's just two words on the door.

The view from here is incredible, but it can sometimes get blocked.
If it were up to me, I'd go ahead and demolish anything that blocks the view.
It's that good.

I couldn't pass this room up.
The words on the door were calling me.
But wait until you hear about the room itself.

This room has class.
The designer knew I'd like it.
This room has a place for everything.
It's as if the room keeps growing to fit me and all my junk, as well as the fine art, decor, and furniture that were already there.

High ceilings, custom design, and it feels like home.
Everything here is made of the finest material.
Every item is handpicked.

If there's clutter, it's on purpose.
If something spills, I'll clean it up.
I don't want anything to spoil this fancy hotel room for me.
If anyone else knocks, I won't answer.
I want this room all to myself.

Oh yes, the two words on the door.
I'll bet you thought I wasn't going to tell you the words that called me to this room.
The whole reason I opened the door in the first place.
I'll tell you, but don't bother knocking.

The words on the door:
Katie's Heart.

Applying the Scriptures

2006-03-01T10:52:00.000-09:00

"Also take your rod with which you struck the river, and go."
-Exodus 17:5b

Of time and rivers

2006-02-22T12:59:00.000-09:00

"The river is the original river. The man, the first man."
Jorge Luis Borges, Manuscript found in a book of Joseph Conrad
translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid

Do you want to understand eternity? Spend an hour watching a river pass on its route to the ocean. From there it will rise to heaven and return to itself.

Listen to the river. In its voice is the timeless voice of God.

Mirrors

2006-02-20T18:45:00.000-09:00

"Look at her. She is your mirror."
-Jorge Luis Borges, The Moon

I'm reminded of a moonlight hike on the southern bank of the Turnagin Arm, Cook Inlet, Gulf of Alaska, Pacific Ocean. It was almost three years ago and I was too nervous to hold her hand. But already in the frozen blue light I could see that her face would become my mirror and so much more.

Losing the Waiting Game

2006-02-18T13:13:00.000-09:00

"Green-backed; silver-sided; female; valentine pink in her 'bow. Best part of the whole deal was the revival kneel: half my body and all of hers in the one cold current; her strength returning so soon; my hands so reluctantly opening; the galaxy of silvers/greens/black holes/pink melting so fast back into everything that made them."
-David James Duncan, My Story As Told By Water

Two months until I can catch another fish. Two months is a long time. Until then, I'll just keep reading.

Manzanillo, Costa Rica

2006-02-18T11:53:00.000-09:00

"In my heart I know the Man-fisher knows best: river-armed and ocean-handed, He tends his lines with infinite patience, gracious to those who love Him, a mirage to those who don't."
-David James Duncan, The River Why

There are fishermen everywhere there are fish. Somehow, God's grace extends to each without bias. From the Carribbean lobster diver who rides a bike to work, to me in my breathable waders, moments like this are gifts freely given and never ignored.

Candy Hearts

2006-02-14T07:17:00.000-09:00

"O ye frogs and fevers, ye coots and constellations, the fisher-girl was the loveliest of lovely sights!"
-David James Duncan, The River Why

Our life is a love song
With all the proper metaphors.
It was probably written in the late seventies,
When love songs sounded more like praise than anything else.
It's mostly about your eyes:
How they look when you first wake up
And the way they look at our daughter and me
And when they're reading
And watching a sad movie.
It even says something about your eyes when you're angry.
I love our song because my life depends on your eyes.
It's a song that I pray generations will sing
And through it they will learn a love like ours.
I'll never forget the words,
Even though the chorus changes every day.
I'll never forget the tune,
But that changes sometimes too.
It's our song to pass on;
It's mostly about your eyes;
A praise to unlimited love
And a new verse every day.

Enjoying the Promise (one year later)

2006-02-08T21:47:00.000-09:00

My cousin Andy was the perfect human representation of the sacred institution of grace. And forgiveness. And unconditional love. Our imperfections were magnified by his, and none of us would have known true grace or love or forgiveness without his sacrifices.

Now he's the first among us to become perfect.

Second

2006-02-07T07:08:00.000-09:00

Two years ago today we said we would. And we did.

If this is what the first two years of forever is like, I don't care if it lasts forever.

Thank you, babe.
I love you.

photo by focusunbound

"Listen! the mighty Being is awake"

2006-02-05T12:27:00.000-09:00

This journal is becoming the chronicle of my life’s perfect moments. Sometimes, several of these moments happen at once:

I'm leaning against a rock in the wind. The sun and the rain clouds are doing that dance they do sometimes when both have lost the will to fight for the position directly above me. The result is a series of rainbows that streak across the sky like the falling stars I watched last night.

I stretch out on a blanket of dark red high tundra, watching four ram sheep gathered to chew and rest for the afternoon. They alert to something far below in the valley between us, and I see a cow moose sprinting across a creek, her calf close behind. Something has made this mother move, and her calf is learning another critical survival lesson.

Farther down the canyon, I can barely see three bull caribou feeding in the muskeg. A Northern Harrier shrieks as he flies below me, and I see his white rump patch even from here. His fly-by upsets a flock of mottled willow ptarmigan; they are starting to turn white already in preparation for the far-too-soon winter.

The size of this valley is unbelievably humbling, and I try to avoid thinking about the long walk I will eventually make to those sheep above the rimrock. As if on cue, a giant woolly caterpillar makes his way up my leg and onto my glove. The caterpillar and I get on well enough, probably because he's the only creature within a day's walk that isn't mortally afraid of me. It's good to wait. The sheep will stay all day on their thrones above this violently red kingdom.

The wind blows a light rain to me; then the sun moves in to dry my clothes. I can hear the whistles of the goldeneyes that are resting from their Southern migration in a high mountain lake nearby. I get up to stretch and to take another handful of blueberries from the bush which the caterpillar seems to like better than my glove.

Right now, life is amazing. I’m experiencing more now than I ever have in school or at work or in a book or at church. I’m alone with God on a sheep hunt, and he’s showing me that everything is fine. Another rainbow streaks across the sky and then disappears. Then the sun again. Then a cloud. The rhythm is impeccable; the music is everywhere.

I have a long walk ahead of me, and everything is fine.

Chulitna River, 2002

2006-02-02T08:48:00.000-09:00

"Staring overboard with no other reference point but the river, you can easily persuade yourself that the boat is motionless and the river slipping backward beneath you."
-Ted Leeson, The Habit of Rivers

All I remember is the sound of glacial silt sliding along the bottom of the raft. And an overwhelming love for life.

How bright a soul forgiven gleams

2006-02-02T05:56:00.000-09:00

"It's for you my maker that I spend my mortal days
As you pursue to guide me through this haze."
-Hothouse Flowers, The Season's Wheels

A fine man in a fine band. Next time we meet, I'll remember to thank him for the music.

Fishing Clergy

2006-02-01T02:01:00.000-09:00

"My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things - trout as well as eternal salvation - come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy."
-Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

My dad's first fish and one of my proudest moments ever.

Behold

2006-01-29T21:03:00.000-09:00

"I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward; so that no beasts might stand before him, neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand; but he did according to his will, and became great."
-Daniel 8:4