I thought some of you may be interested in a Wall Street Journal Magazine article published today, Oct. 6, entitled “The Fly-Fishing Boom is Finally Here” (click the title to read). The piece is authored by Darrell Hartman. The subheading of the article is “A new generation of fly-fishing fans is turning toward the soulful history of the sport with sought-after vintage gear.” In reality, the article addresses more than gear, though many of us do tend to obsess over stuff.
Here is a quote from the article, addressing the growing popularity of fly-fishing, in general:
The sport is on the rise. In fact, it hasn’t been this ascendant in decades, industry experts say—not since the early ’90s, to be precise, when images of a young Brad Pitt casting for Montana trout in A River Runs Through It sent droves of neophytes to their nearest Orvis dealer.
Readers will recognize many venerable names in the article, both of fly fisher figures as well as tackle. Before reading, though, keep in mind that high-end gear, trips to exotic locations, and collectible books are not necessary to the enjoyment of this sport. Indeed, I suggest that our fascination with such things really represents a desire for a time when streams were less crowded, watersheds were less polluted, quiet time (away from electronic devices) was easier to find, and so on. So, enjoy the nostalgia, but remember that it cannot replace our need to protect nature and its denizens, including trout. Also remember that consumerism will do little to help our conservation efforts.
Thanks to Munsey Whebe, a humble maker of fine bamboo fly rods, and a guy who understand what’s important, for pointing out the article.
Readers may be interested in a six hour documentary on angler and writer Ernest Hemingway, which will air on PBS in April of 2021. The documentary is produced by well-known team Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. While Hemingway and Burns have their detractors, albeit for very different reasons, I look forward to watching this. Over the course of six hours, I’m sure there will be some treatment of his fishing life, and it’s influence upon his writing. For a preview, click here.
I have shared the poetry of Gary Metras before. His latest collection of poems is titled River Voice. Gary happens to own and run Adastra Press. Sadly, this book will be the press’ last publication. All of the books Gary releases-those he authored himself and others–are printed by letterpress and bound by hand. So, Gary is not only an artist with words, he is also an artist of ink, paper, and thread.
Like most people, I read a fair amount of digital texts. These range from articles I read for work, retrieved from my university’s library website, to books that my wife and I read for pleasure with each other, on a Kindle, in the evening. Yet, for me, there is no substitute for physical books. If there is a text that I know I may turn to again-and-again, or even which I would simply like to be reminded of, I typically by a hardback copy and put it on my shelf. Sometimes, I even buy a physical copy of a book I initially ready in digital form.
In a world were relationships to our fellow humans, to the animals, to the plants, and to the water are mediated through the glass of a car window, the glare of a computer screen, a phone to the ear, and so on, I value materiality. Without it, I think, we can forget how fragile the world around us is and how fragile we often are when faced directly with it.
So, a physical book–particularly a letter-press book like Gary’s that is manifestation of his hands and heart–is special. I suspect Gary feels much as I do. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have founded Adastra Press back in 1979. There is evidence of his appreciation for the material in his poems, as well. Consider the following, from River Voice.
A Strand of Partridge Feather
The pleasure of small tasks, tying some trout flies, reading some pages of a friend’s new book of poems. I pick up a pencil to mark a line beautifully formed and stuck to the knife-sharpened point, a single strand of partridge feather clinging to the graphite. Some forces need be unseen, the way words can by-pass the mind and adhere the heart. Five flies, five poems. Just enough.
When I read this poem, I can feel myself sitting at a desk, like the author. I can smell the incense cedar of the freshly sharpened pencil, I can feel the crispness of new books pages. Of course, I can see the scene that is the setting of the poem as well. But Gary reminds us the materiality is often more than what we can see.
This is one of the reasons I love books. I can see words just as well on a screen as I can on a leaf of paper. But, reading the former, I lack the touch, and smells, and sounds that remind me the words are written by a person like me. Thus, it is easier for me to enter into a relationship with the author when I read their words on a page. Admittedly, this relationship may be an imaginary one. After all, written words are a form of abstraction themselves.
Even in fly fishing, though so many authors have described it in nearly mystical terms (I’ll spare you the scholarly lecture on mysticism), there is a degree of abstraction–a distance–that prevents us from truly knowing the non-human world around us. I cannot know everything that the water carries from the places it previously traveled, I cannot know what the trout truly feels, and I cannot even be certain what the angler around the bend is thinking about. But I can feel their impact upon me. And I can see their vulnerabilities and their strengths. And that allows for a type of relationship I cannot achieve, when sitting sitting on my ass at home watching fishing videos on YouTube (honestly, this is not something I do).
The colophon of River Voice tells the reader that is was “letterpress printed from hand-set metal type,” in 100 copies signed and numbered by Gary Metras. “Printed sheets were gathered, collated, sewn and bound from July to October 2019 as the poet continued his fly-fishing quest for the perfect trout.” There is also an expended, trade version of the book, titled River Voice II, available through Amazon. I recommend it highly.
These are strange times. More than ever, I cherish the beauty that exists in the world around us, human and otherwise. And in the natural world I find the inspiration to protect that beauty and to be sure others can enjoy it more equitably.
The home water, at my cabin.
Fish on, during a storm.
My beautiful still water steed.
Every evening at the cabin.
A favorite local river.
A little stream I visit often.
Im a native fish fan, but it’s hard to resist the beauty of a brookie.
The local cutthroat are always strong and healthy in their native environments, and eager to return to the water.
I have previously posted about Ernest Hemingway, who–love him or hate him–is impossible to ignore in the world of angling literature. If you didn’t know he wrote about fishing outside of “A Big Two-Hearted River” Parts I & II and The Old Man and the Sea, I recommend reading Hemingway on Fishing (The Lyons Press, 2000). This is a compilation of his angling writings collected and edited by Nick Lyons.
Town & Country published a short piece by journalist Lesley M.M. Blume recently about a quarantine endured by Hemingway’s small family in 1926. Blume adapted the essay, titled “Hemingway was once Quaratined with his Wife.. and Mistress,” from her 2016 bestselling book, Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway’s Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises (Eamon Dolan/Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt). There is no fishing in the piece I’m afraid, but it is an amusing read during this time when we’re all holed up, to one extent or another. I only hope your situtaion is better than Hemingway’s was and that you treat your partner far better.
If you need further entertainment, you might read Blume’s book or listen to an interview with her, just published on March 18. You can find it at the Hemingway Society’s One True Podcast. You might also enjoy the interview with Susan Beegal on Hemingway, blue water fishing, and taxidermy.
I think most of us tend to enjoy some quiet, which is most easily found away from our human peers. Even Dame Juliana Berners, or whoever actually wrote the 15th century classic The Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle, emphasized that solitude or “social distance” is an ideal part of fishing. This is the case, at least, for those of us who fish for meaning as well as game. She writes:
For when you intend to go to your amusements in fishing, you will not want very many persons with you, who might inder youu in your pastime. And then you can serve God deveoutly by earnestly saying your customary prayers. And in so doing, you will eschew and avoid many vices, such as idleness, which is the pricipal cuase of inciting a man to many otehr vices, as it right well known. (Modernization of text by Sherman Kuhn, and published in John McDonold’s The Origins of Angling, 1957).
I hope that each of you are able to enjoy some time outdoors–away from your germ-carrying fellow humans–during these challenging days. If not, perhaps consider rereading The Treatyse or some other classic angling texts. Soon, I will post an updated recommended reading list, in hopes that it may be of help in this pursuit. As always, I welcome suggestions from readers.
Meanwhile, I leave you with this helpful guide to social distancing, from the Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Department.
My grandfather’s copy of The Poetical Works of Robert Burns
Tonight, as my wife and I put my daughter to bed, I read and spoke a bit about Robert Burns. To my ten-year-old child’s credit, she indulged me as I explained the significance of Burns’ use of the Scots language, his condemnation of the pretenses shown by the wealthy in church, and so on. She may have a limited interest in such matters at her age, but she seems to appreciate a poet who apologizes to a mouse, after disturbing its home. And I think she appreciates a poet who can admire how that mouse can get right to building a new home; unlike humans, according to this bard, the mouse will not become so obsessed with this or other wrongs nor so worried about obstacles not yet encountered that it cannot carry on. I hope my daughter will learn from Burns, who wrote “To a Mouse, on Turning her up in her Nest with the Plough” in November of 1785. For she will experience wrongs, and she will encounter obstacles. But I trust she will carry on, like the mouse.
Following are the final stanzas of Burns’ famous poem.
But Mousie, though art no they lane,
In proving foresight may be vane:
The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang oft a-gley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an” pain,
For promis’d joy.
But thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only troucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e’e
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, though I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!
I recently purchased a canoe manufactured by Wenonah. I bought an “ultralight” aramid model (aramid is probably best known by the brand name Kevlar), with the intention of being able to handle it for the rest of my life. This purchase had been planned for a while, since we left an Old Town canoe behind during our last move.
I have spent much my life near water. Around the time I was born, my parents purchased a place on a little lake, bordering Montana’ Scapegoat Wilderness. Growing up, there was always a Grumman or Coleman canoe handy. I think I was still pretty young, when my mom taught me the common canoe paddling strokes, such as the j-stroke and c-stroke. When I grew older, I spent an a a lot of my time on the lake, in the canoe casting flies to rising cutthroat trout.
My father’s extended family also shared a lake-front piece of property in Montana, at Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park. This “inholding” still remains in the family. Sadly, however, as a result of poor choices on my father’s part, my immediate family and I can no longer claim it as out own.
For years, I spent the spring and fall at the Glacier property, staining cabins, painting, and doing other work. These were times when family was not often around and tourists were scarce. For company, I would visit the bar at the Lake McDonald Lodge. Often, I was without a car, and driving after a few drinks was not a great idea anyway. On the other hand, biking or walking at night in the forest–home to so many grizzlies–was also a poor idea. So, I would paddle a canoe to the bar and back
The family had an old Core Craft canoe. It was heavy, but with three keels, it shot across the lake like an arrow. I often took it fishing, casting to trout along the north bank of the lake. I would also take it to the inlet of McDonald Creek There, I would beach it on a sandbar and cast to the huge fish that fed in the depths carved out by the force of the incoming water. Take note, if you are visiting Glacier, that’s a great place to fish (if a bit dangerous; there have been many drownings there).
The bar I would visit is about three quarters of a mile away, as the crow flies, across the lake from our cabins. I would stick to the open water, rather than the shore, since it was safest to avoid the massive flow of McDonald Creek and any animals watering along the shore. In retrospect, the whole venture was foolish; any paddling after a few beers or glasses of Bushmills is. But I still remember those trips fondly.
Of course, Lake McDonald has been traveled by paddlers for many, many generations. It is part of the traditional homeland of the Ktunaxa or Kootenai people (the east side of the park in Niitsitapi or Blackfoot territory), who have long used canoes. In fact, the great western artist Charlie Russell painted a wonderful picture of a Ktunaxa man with his traditional “sturgeon nose” canoe pulled up on the bank of the lake. In the painting, titled “Indian camp on Lake McDonald,” the resting paddler looks toward the north end of the lake, where our family cabins are now located. Russell happened to have a cabin on the lake as well, which still stands across the lake to the west or left of the paddler in the painting.
“Indian Camp at Lake McDonald or “Land of the Kootenai,” by Charles M. Russell, 1901
We still have our property near the Scapegoat Wilderness; my sisters and I were able to hold on to it, despite my fathers’s troubles, and we now share it. At this lake, there is no bar to visit via canoe or otherwise (The closest bar is 13.3 miles away by dirt road. Yes, I checked the distance, when I was younger). When I am there, however, I spend a lot of time fishing from the canoe or just enjoying a trip around a portion of the lake with my wife and daughter (they’re just pretending to look miserable in the following picture). For me, the canoe is just a fundamental part of life there.
Happily, my work often takes me to the water as well. As an academic, I focus upon Native American “research and collaboration.” Here in the Northwest, canoes play a huge role in Native culture. Therefore, our university often offers programming involving them. Indeed, canoeing is a somewhat regular activity for many students. A few times, we have collaborated with Spokane tribal member Shawn Brigman, a PhD and architect.
Shawn has researched and designed a contemporary “Salishan Sturgeon Nose Canoe” (the copyrighted name refers to canoes based on his design). Most of Shawn’s boats are covered in ballistic nylon, but he has also built traditional bark covered versions. He is very knowledgeable about regional Native American canoe culture, and often serves as a teacher for and consultant with other tribes, museums, and so on. Following is a picture of me and colleague Faith Price paddling a canoe graciously made available to students by Shawn (Faith is waving in the foreground; students are in the background).
Photo by Earl Aston
So, I looking forward to getting my new canoe from Wenonah out, as soon as the weather allows. For the near term, however, it looks like snowshoes will be my only form of alternative transportation, aside from walking and driving. By the way, I purchased the canoe from Paddle People in Oregon; owners Jeff and Russ are a couple of fine individuals. I highly recommend them.
First, my apologies for the long absence. I offer my thanks to those of you those of you who queried about a new post during that time. I write today to let you know about another piece of writing you might enjoy.
McCarthy describes spending time with Maclean, whose summer home was near her brother’s, during a pivotal time in her teen years. Maclean, who knew the young woman wrote poetry, offered her advice and convinced her to attend the University of Chicago, from which he had recently retired.
She describes a visit to the 7 Up Ranch Supper Club, near Lincoln, for dinner. The restaurant burned down years ago, but locals will remember it fondly. And many non-locals from small towns will relate to the discussion in the essay about how being an intellectual in rural Montana or in South Carolina, where McCarthy lived as a girl, can sometimes be a lonely or even limiting experience.
McCarthy paints Maclean as a kind but colorful man, and any fan of his work will enjoy the essay. The publication notes that McCarthy is currently working on a book about Maclean. Meanwhile, you can find other examples of McCarthy’s excellent writing in The American Scholar, at Long Reads, and elsewhere.
The Literary Fly Fisher 