I
just love fly fishing. Getting down in
the water and matching wits with a dumb trout
who almost always wins the contest.
When I step out on the water, I quickly say the age-old Fisherman’s
Prayer: “Please don’t let me do something stupid and drown.” Carefulness is more important as I age,
because dumb mistakes seem more common now.
In the Post Office the other day, instead of a twenty I mistakenly
handed the clerk a prayer card from a recent funeral service. She passed it back, saying, “We can’t pray on
government property.”
“Of
all places,” I replied.
Myself,
I need all the help I can get. And so I
often envision with me a guardian angel. I’m convinced she is a fine looking
woman….cute, capable and skilled in heroic water rescues. And more than once I’m sure I’ve heard her
say, “why don’t you cast over there, under that tree branch?”
I
wasn’t always a fly fisherman. I used to
have a job. No, of course we’re not all
unemployed, but many of us are retired.
And certainly most of us who fish on weekday mornings are jobless, for
one reason or another. As for
myself, shortly before retirement I took
up fly fishing to help the transition.
Toward the end of my career, I had a sense there
was something more important to do in life than work, but I was damned if I
knew what it might be. Forty years hard
at the task made me the best worker I ever met.
I did it so well I forgot how to do anything else. So one day I decided to hand in my retirement
papers, buy a fly rod and go stand in the creek for a while. Cool my heels, so to speak …. literally. I’d let my inner child and my guardian angel sort it all out. I hadn’t
played in the water since I was eleven.
I used to fish for hours, moving about from
place to place on the stream. I’d try
one spot for a while, then pick another likely location and move upstream or
down, working my way through different pools, runs and riffles. I’d catch a decent amount of fish if I
applied a modest degree of effort.
So instead of applying myself to the task, I watch a blue heron as he stands on a rock in the middle of the creek, seemingly bored, but ever ready to pounce down on a trout. Or I’ll pause while a brace of 6 or 7 ducks fly by me only 3 feet off the water, veering slightly out of my way. They don’t get excited. I’m just another object to fly around. I love it when they do that; I feel like a part of the stream, a piece of nature. To me, the birds are saying I’m welcome.
Later, as I travel home, I have to admit that driving all this way to not catch any fish and to sit on a rock eating a sandwich might not sound appealing to many people. But I’ve seen the most beautiful sights in the world and spent an hour or two in heaven.
copyright
2012, David Griffin
The Windswept Press
Murrells
Inlet, South Carolina
