Blessed be the Tight Lines

As I learn more about fishing, I continue to learn more about myself. I am not always perfectly patient,
tangles and snarls bring out some of my worst behavior and language, and I am not immune to envy. Enough about me - at least these embarrassing aspects. 

As a kid in Massachusetts I spent a good amount of time tagging along with my older brother on spin fishing, aka regular fishing, including some outings with our Dad. We hopped in canoes for some trips, but most of our fishing trips found us on the shore using a combination of live bait and lures to dupe largemouth bass into meeting us up close. There is something primal it seems in the quest to connect with a creature so different, a delegate from what feels like a different universe, frankly a place where we air-breathing bipeds can't survive for too long. It's particularly thrilling to have contact with the elders of the fish class, Osteichthyes, wily and hefty lunkers that evidently do not frequently allow themselves to be caught. 

On rare occasions during my childhood, Grandpa Chase would grudgingly allow me and my younger cousin to tag along for a late afternoon of fly fishing. My best or at least clearest memory from these few adventures is of the time when I spared my cousin the experience of taking one step too many toward the deeper part of the river. Being taller and closer to shore, I was able to literally grab his shirt collar and yank him back to a spot with footing. By the time we stopped sputtering and laughing and made sure we still had our fishing rods, Grandpa had packed it in, evidently unamused by our antics and ready to get all of us, particularly himself, out of there pronto. Some thirty years later I was gifted waders and a fly setup, and I started Round Two. That phase was also short-lived, ending as my sabbatical leave came to a close. Those waders sat in our garage and grew brittle enough to crack from lack of use, rediscovered when the itch returned last summer.

I still default to spin fishing, likely simply due to inertia. Increasingly, though, I am drawn to this business of waving a 8.5 foot stick loaded with relatively fat floating line, all with the intent of dropping an absurdly tiny fake bug in a manner and spot that entice a trout's bite. In other words, I like fly fishing more and more, particularly as I reflect on the phrase "Tight lines." 

My worldview is one of interconnectedness, and I try to embrace different ways of saying so. When a fellow fly fisher, exiting a river as I was making my awkward entrance, floated this phrase to me, I was (I refuse to say "hooked") intrigued. It's straightforward enough up front, the clear intent being affirmation of camaraderie, a code of affinity between practitioners of the same sport. This meaning is not unimportant, a nod to a shared desire to experience the thrill I described earlier, but also a wider net (ugh) thrown to transcend what may keep us apart elsewhere. On and in the river, things like gender, skin color, and where one works are less important. I have parked along rivers next to cars with bumper stickers representing both similar and dissimilar political leaning, and I have tried to avoid guessing who drives what, choosing rather to watch and learn.  

Part of the appeal of this sport is the chance I get to visit rivers, my favorite water body. Here's yet another understanding for me of oneness, found through this practice of standing in water that comes from and goes to far off spots ranging from sky to sea and every wet location in between. A stunning network of webby threads links me with barely visible bugs as well as bald eagles soaring close enough to take away my breath. And then there are our vertebrate siblings, these shockingly gorgeous piscine critters who honor and humble me by letting me think for even a moment that I was lucky enough to draw them out and up - always to be released. Whether brown, brook, or rainbow - and occasionally a smallmouth bass - these elusive beauties reassure me that we are one. They remind me that clear and healthy water around the globe is worth a fight.

I used to marvel at most local rivers from the distance of the nearby road at a pace that precluded deeper appreciation. Now I'm intentional about slowing down enough to know and be known, to wade in. I have met some fine beings over these months, some of them human. I am reminded as I prepare now for a fishing trip to the Catskills, of the song we often used to sing at the close of church meetings: Blest be the Ties that Bind. We see and hear too many messages these days from too many people touting isolation, exclusion, and disengagement. I hope that over these next few days in the river I am affirmed in my belief that everything is deeply connected, not just to the end that I catch a few nice fish. More than anything, I hope we all might find our own ways to be reminded, renewed, and blessed by the tight lines of loving and beloved oneness.