The flow of the river followed the curve of the valley wall. A huge, flat, vertical sheet of rock provided a bumper, as the streamflow deflected against the limestone karst. Then it dramatically changed directions. While the river we’d been fishing had been flowing...
Sawyer and I were fishing the seventeen year Cicada hatch of 2008. It was a wonderfully consistent summer with cooler than average temperatures and higher than average river flows. Add with the occasional thunderstorm that tinted the water and kept trout active, and...
I planned to meet Smith on the water. Typically, we ride together or meet at some small woodsy pull off. But our start times didn’t quite align this time, so I told my friend to get a head start — I’d catch up with him later. As my life has become more complex over...
Tap, tap, ta-tap, tap, tap-a-tap. The rain is steady. And thick limbs on the hemlock above me are soaked. Even the bark on what was the dry side of the tree trunk is dark and wet now. But the hanging boughs collect raindrops and provide a canopied shelter for me....
The border collie always sensed incoming weather before I did. Under the perfect contrast of black on white, just beneath mottled pink skin and between the ears, was a group of unknown senses, not just for the weather, but for a number of intangibles I never seemed to recognize. He tilted his head and stared at me with confusion, perhaps wondering why I couldn’t hear, smell or sense the thunderstorm before I could see it . . .
The beauty of this life is in knowing that the best things don’t come around every day, accepting that it’s all unpredictable and trusting that the bad things will be followed up with something better. You have to let it all happen, and at the same time get out there and make your own way.
A good life is 50/50. That’s just the way it goes. Not much turns out how you planned. There are ups, downs, highs and lows. There are fears and joys, and somehow it all blends together in the end.
There’s something wonderful, calming and reassuring about that balance . . .
In his mid-twenties, my friend Jeff walked away from his job to be a trout bum for a few months. It was a bold move, but a strategic one. Jeff had enough funds saved up to float him from late spring all the way into the fall, and he simply wanted to hang out, drink beer and catch trout for a while.
Some people hike the Appalachian trail. Others take a year after school to travel across Canada or maybe backpack through Europe, if you have that kind of money. Jeff just wanted to fish the hell out of Central Pennsylvania and be a trout bum for once. So that’s what we did.
At the time, my own lifestyle was pretty flexible. I’d already spent five or six years exploring Central and North-Central Pennsylvania during the day and playing music in clubs and bars at night. Gas was cheap then, and it was nothing for me to wake at dawn and travel north for a hundred miles.
Rich had cancer, and it was spreading fast. We both knew this was our last trip together and that a dear friendship was coming to a close.
We fished a long morning, and eventually, I worked upstream toward my friend. From thirty yards, I could see the exhaustion in his face. Rich stood where a long riffle dumped into his favorite glassy pool. He breathed a long breath and gazed at the cloudy sky. Reeling in his line and breaking down his rod, he looked at me, and we smiled. We each knew we were at the end of something . . .
Fishing with a stick and line is a solitary endeavor by nature. It always comes down to the two hands of one angler: one on the rod, and the other in control of the line. Sharing the water with friends is great, but fishing, inherently, is not a team sport. It’s more like pole vaulting than a baseball game. It comes down to individual performance. And at its root, fishing is just a contest between one man and a fish.
. . . But we fish together to share our experiences, to learn from one another, to catch up with old friends and make new ones. We choose to fish together because the bonds formed on a river are like none other, and because flowing water and shared moments can heal friendships and mend grievances . . .
I walked around the bend and saw his blue truck, but I couldn’t see Gabe until the lean man sat up. He stretched and slid slowly off the tailgate, onto his feet and into his sandals. The climbing sun made the blue paint of his pickup bed too hot, and when the shadows were gone, the dirty fisherman’s rest was finished.
Gabe leaned back on the hot paint again and grabbed the duffel that he used for a pillow. The faded bag was stuffed with clothes: some stained, some clean, and most half-worn-out. He pulled a thin, long-sleeved shirt from the bag and changed, tossing his wet t-shirt toward a damp pile of gear by the truck tires. The long sleeves were his sunscreen; the beard protected his face; the frayed hat covered his head, and the amber sunglasses filled the gap in between.
Gabe was a trout bum. Not the shiny magazine-ad version of a trout bum either, but the true embodiment of John Geirach’s term: authentic, dirty, and dedicated to a lifestyle without even thinking much about it. He fished on his own terms. He was a part-time fishing guide for the family business and a part-time waiter. We never talked much about work, though. I just know that Gabe’s life was fishing, and everything else was a cursory, minor distraction.