A River Runs Through It

I am, at heart, a romantic. For example: I love baseball, but not for the stats and the scores, or even the rivalries and excitement, but for the philosophy, even the theology of the game.  I love it because of the way the freshly cut outfield grass smells . . . I love the sound, the crack, that a well-hit ball makes against a wooden bat . . . I love the way baseball makes peanuts and beer taste like a four-star meal . . . and I love the experience that all these things come together to create. (For more, see A. Bartlett Giamatti's "A Great and Glorious Game.")

Anyway, this is all by way of introducing the fact that I have wanted to try fly fishing for a very long time! Yes, of course, Norman Maclean's wonderul novella, "A River Runs Through It" - which Robert Redford made into an Academy Award winning movie - has everything to do with it. Maclean and Redford captured the romanticism, even the theology, that lies within this intriguing sport.

Maclean wrote:  

In my family there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing . . . My father would say "Fly fishing is an art that is performed on a four-count rhythm between ten and two o'clock" . . . To my father all good things - trout as well as eternal salvation - come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy . . . only by picking up God's rhythms were we able to regain power and beauty . . . unlike many Presbyterians my father often used the word beautiful.

So while I have always felt it highly unlikely that this city boy would ever become a fly fishing aficionado, I have always wanted to have a fly fishing experience: to stand in a stream under a quite canopy of trees, to feel the rod in my hand, to strive for the timing and balance that is required to send a fly whipping through the air and then land perfectly on the water.

Lucky for me, I currently live in one of the best fly fishing states in the Union and have two good friends who are fly fishing experts. So when Dan Adams and Brenda Greiner invited me to join them yesterday afternoon for some lessons on the Salmon River, I was quick to say yes.

My teachers were very patient with me and I tried hard to be a good student. I was very pleased to develop, in Dan's words, a "fishable cast" early in the game . . . which is to say, I was successfully able to develop some power in the rod and get some line out over the water. And I never really had a bungle of line at my feet which is what I had feared would happen.

Throughout the afternoon I only got my fly caught on a tree branch four or five times, and only lost one fly. Dan and Brenda said that was very good considering they did the same or worse. However, they also caught more fish . . . a total of three between them. (To be honest, I had to laugh at the fish . . . they were trout about as long as your index finger: just a little bigger than the bait we use at Land O' Lakes!!)

Even though I didn't catch anything, it was a great experience. I definitely did get a sense of the beauty that is involved in the sport - not only because of the natural surroundings, but also because of the rhythm, timing and precision that is its essence. 

When dusk fell, because there were so many flies hatching on the river, we got to watch literally dozens of tiny bats come out for dinner . . . several of which made attempts at the fly I was casting! (That's when we decided it was time for us to get dinner!) It was a great ending to a wonderful new experience. Thanks Brenda and Dan!

 
(Yes, this is me fly fishing.  No, the hat isn't mine, it's Dan's - he put it on me for the picture. Yes, I understand Brad Pitt is jealous ;)