August 21, 2007 3rd month of the last sabbatical

Dear Dad:

You taught me, not just “how to fish”, but how to experience our fishing on a deeper level. Since your death on this day (August 21) in 1981, I have missed the opportunity to recount my fishing adventures to you, knowing that you would excuse and understand my flights of fishing fancy, my piscatorial phizosophizing, and also that you would not hesitate to point out the more unfortunate examples of excessive prosifying, such as that last phrase. Oh, and the spelling mistakes, of course. But we have this thing called spellcheck…

Dad, you know that I don’t just “miss you”, I grieve for you, I love you more with each passing year, and I pray that you know this, somehow, by means beyond our knowing.

Here is my story about…

LAVISH ABUNDANCE ON THE AUSABLE RIVER.

Our lives are spent staving off scarcity, or the possibility of it. We don’t want to run out of money, so we earn more; we don’t want to run out of food, so we store it up. The most glaring example of scarcity would be nothing-ness. So we could, and do, regard all the examples of something-ness around us as random exceptions to a general rule of scarcity. A trout, for instance, or the various stages of insect life upon which they feed… mere flecks of anti-scarcity clinging to the surface of a tilted universe, sliding toward oblivion. If nothing-ness is the norm, then we are all engaged in a desperate struggle to beat one another to the next scrap of edible scarcity.

If that were so, then perhaps our fly fishing would be a symbolic expression of this primeval anxiety. But it is not. While daylight prevails we try to tempt the trout with imitations of the occasional stray bug, but rarely do they respond. And why should they? In their collective trout-consciousness they seem to know: their lives are not “exceptions to a general rule of scarcity”; they are a function of lavish abundance.

Sometimes we get to see this for ourselves.

Last Tuesday evening, fishing with River Dog (guardian of the purity of Michigan rivers), on the Ausable. A few trout had been rising to occasional and largely invisible prey, except for the encouraging sight of an occasional white miller mayfly. This inch-long puff-ball of white insect is known to hatch in mid to late-August along this part of the River, and we had come hoping to witness and, by stealth and artifice, to join it. But who can predict the ways of insects?

Around 8 p.m. the breeze died and the overcast that had prevailed all day cleared somewhat, revealing patches of blue sky and a setting sun. River Dog and I had separated, so, except for two kingfishers, I had this stretch of river all to myself. I caught a trout, and after releasing it, realized that the feathers on my white miller imitation had unraveled, making it useless and unworthy as a trout lure. Standing hip-deep on the edge of the swift current, I set about tying on a new one, and as I did so began to be aware of the sound of trout rising frequently around me, some within a few feet of where I stood. The combination of dim light and barely-visible fishing line can make the tying of a secure knot difficult, and this occasion was typical in that respect. During those few frustrating minutes, I became aware of what was causing the fish to rise. In the darkening air around me a transformation was taking place: along the whole length of river a swarm of white millers was emerging from the water and forming a mist-like layer over the surface, ascending to the tops of the high trees, and then surging upstream in great waves of coordinated movement. New insects continued to rise up, squeezing between the spent white carcasses of their dead relatives floating on the surface. As this transpired, trout were consuming them with successive slurps, sips, and splashes. I hooked one on my first cast with the new fly, and as I was landing and releasing it the last trace of daylight disappeared from the western sky. In the darkness the insect horde continued its pilgrimage, emerging, ascending, surging upstream, dying, falling, and returning downstream again.

Very soon, however, the sound of feeding fish ceased altogether. Apparently the trout were satiated, like overstuffed Romans at an orgy. Bugs continued to flutter at my ears, bat up against my fly line, collide with my glasses, and occasionally get sucked in with my breath. Satiated myself, I soon stopped fishing, and, lighting my way with a pen-light, waded to shore in a shimmering cloud of light reflected from countless white wings. From under the cedars along the shore, the River appeared to be shrouded in a pale fog that swirled sporadically upstream, stirred by an unfelt breeze.

No wonder trout are slow to strike at other times! Why search for food if such a bounteous plentitude is about to offer itself? Why eat when you are still “stuffed to the gills” from last night’s feasting? Their lives are a function of abundance.

What we had been doing was more than a fishing expedition, it was an immersion in the symbiotic relationship between fish and insects and river, and in their collective relationship to us. In this setting we were the intruders, the witnesses, the priests who, alone among the actors in this drama, could behold all the elements of the plot, and all the relationships between the players. We could even masquerade as legitimate members of the cast, disguising ourselves as bugs so as to gain backstage admittance, where we could don our neoprene vestments, and wave our sacred wands over the river, beseeching acceptance.

Our lives proceed from such lavish abundance, and end the same way. Love is not scarce, nor is grace in short supply. The problem for us is not how to beat each other to the fishing hole… it is to find a way to inhabit the abundance with humility and grace, like a native, like a mayfly, like a trout.

Like you, Dad.