The warm glow of Indian summer is gone. The sun is but a faint yellow circle upon a slate gray horizon that hangs a low, heavy ceiling over the fading hillside colors of northwestern Oregon. Fall salmon are surging up the coastal rivers in their indefatigable quest to spread their epic life-force across their natal waters.
Chasing them with a fly rod is an annual ritual for me. The fortuitous conflux of perfectly drifted fly pattern and aggressive salmon explode into chaotic battles that test every fiber of tackle and resolve. Pulling with all my might on a stout nine-weight rod against these silver torpedoes gives me a bedrock appreciation of what it means to never give up.
Hip-deep in chilly current, wading-shoe cleats bracing for purchase against the shifting and slippery river rock, fighting for every reel-turn of fly line, I feel connected to something ancient and authentic. At the same time it rejuvenates me, it breaks me down into my base elements to reveal fundamental truths about myself, my mortality, and my natural place in the universe.
Life, death, struggle, the beginning and the end; it's all here. And it's beautiful.
I'd like to be fishing today. But the rain that has pushed the rivers out of shape has made the day better fit for tying flies rather than fishing with them. Since I passed my fortieth winter I have grown to enjoy my hours at the tying bench as much as time on the water. It offers a different sort of contemplation. Putting hook in vise and dressing it with colored thread, fur, and feathers, whether to approximate one of the time-tested patterns of the masters, or to break away from tradition to create something of totally original symmetry, I find it hard not to think about the fish it will catch in the new seasons to come on my favorite waters.
My lifetime collection of tying materials fills a rainbow stack of clear boxes. Much of the best quality stuff came from my father, who first taught me to tie flies. But the stuff I'm using to tie my salmon patterns today came from my father's late best friend, George. Like my father, George grew up in Akron, graduated from an Ivy League college, then migrated to the Pacific Northwest, where he enjoyed fly fishing on many of the region's most famous salmon and steelhead rivers.
As I admire the fine French tinsel, flawless English hooks, and premium hackles that I cherry-picked from the remnants my father collected from George's estate, it is obvious that George had a passion for the sport and a keen appreciation for beauty and quality. I can't imagine that these things wouldn't have given him great satisfaction.
Which stands in direct contradiction to the sobering truth: George secretly drank himself to death and was fairly miserable. I don't know why.
It's been several years since George's ashes were spread over his favorite Washington stream. Yet still I look at his old stuff and wonder how something that gave him so much pleasure could not redeem him? It is a mystery because fly-fishing is intrinsically optimistic. It is hopeful and life affirming.
I miss George, his crooked smile and sardonic wit. I think of him often as I tie salmon patterns with his old materials, and retrace his steps along streams such as the Kalama, where I also marvel at the life force of salmon.
And continue to wonder and fail to reconcile how it couldn't sustain him.
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2 comments:
Perhaps while in a deep contemplative state that fly fishing affords, George began to identify with the souls in the water rather than the souls on the shore. Life being an upstream struggle only to be met on the way with constant pain followed by certain death — wether it be by pure exhaustion, hook, tooth, or claw.
Even the Chinook that make it to the spawning grounds are wasted, their milky life-force washed away by the rushing current flowing over silted gravel beds — the once natural waters now ruined by the logger’s run off.
Once, all salmon were born in snow melt in the surrounds of basalt bedrock. Now, most are born in concrete tanks flushed with filtered water. The few natives that do originate in the headlands of the wilderness are doomed to a journey that forces them through treacherous turbines and bacteria invested warming water.
On their way to extinction, the life of the salmon seems utterly meaningless. Why all the struggle? For what? Why such a miserable existence? Just thinking about it depresses me— thank God the bars are still open.
Interesting and well-stated point, LeRoy. The existential bummer about the fore-knowledge of our ultimate demise no doubt make some write it all off as nothing but a futile trip, while others find greater meaning in the struggle.
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