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We had been
fishing about three hours, working the still pools of Beaver
creek, casting under the overhangs and into the shadows, pulling
brim and Rio Grande perch and black bass out left and right,
sometimes hooking "doubles," working the creek out
into its mouth on the Llano, where we alternated banks, wading,
casting, wading and casting some more. The hot central Texas
June sun was settling low enough along the length of the river
that I had to cock my head in its direction to be able to see
the flies hit the water after I cast up near the bank. It felt
good, the sun's warmth, even though the cool of the evening was
beginning to slip in almost imperceptibly. As Leonard suggested,
I had two flies on the leader: a "wet" fly, sort of
a muddy nymph-type, and a "floater" popper-type, with
about two feet between them, a combination that, lo and behold,
actually produced several exciting doubles up to that point.
I had not lost a fly until that moment. So I began the meticulous
process of pulling out new leader from the spool, cutting a length,
splicing it to the old, and tying a new fly on its end.
I was standing
in a foot of clear, tepid river water running over a gumball
assortment of stones, all about hen's egg size, adorning the
riverbed so neatly they looked deliberately placed (maybe they
were) with the precision and neatness that my mother prepares
a table setting before one of her dinner parties. The sun, ever
lowering, was casting a thick golden patina over my bare legs
and hands, upon the reeds at the shore, on the boulders festooning
the wide, shallow river, and on the curiously evanescent ripples
of water themselves, which would hold, in their dimples, the
golden nectar-light for an instant only, then trade it to a neighboring
ripple on its crepuscular journey up the color spectrum to purple-grays
and moon-highlighted purples as evening deepened. The sound from
the uncountable stones resisting the river's aqueous continuum
produced a resonant womb-like lullaby as familiar and reassuring
as a solitary quail's plaintive call. The unstrained concentration,
through the nectar, of tying the two filament ends together in
a blood-knot, was punctuated, after an indefinite interval, by
the startling thought that I was here experiencing this ritual,
and had no other awareness or thoughts or distractions or concerns
or worries or fears or anything else, except just BEING THE FLY
FISHING ITSELF! The "I" part of my Self had disappeared
for that indeterminate period of time, and was replaced by the
verb, the process, the state of being, called "Fly Fishing."
I actually ceased being the creature who assesses, complains,
judges, evaluates, etc., and became "fly fishing."
The Zen idea
of "just being" is, in the West, truly most fully realized
through this ritual of fly fishing, because it is one of the
few solitary activities of humans which, unlike most of life,
demands more than the brief moments we normally dedicate
to a desultory task; the nature of fly fishing demands that one
invent it as one goes. The philosophical enigma that one cannot
step in the same river twice or even once notwithstanding, fly
fishing is an entirely kinetic process, with constant repositioning:
walking up or down stream, the unconscious coordination between
the casting arm and the line-feeding hand, and an astute but
not distracting awareness of the camber of the rod tip as it
moves to keep the fly and line aloft without fouling or worse,
whip-cracking the fly off into oblivion.
And then! Watching
and knowing the taut instant a fish irresistibly takes the fly
so as to set the hook with exactitude; that's the moment of impeccability
for the living cell comprised of No-time, river, fish and fisherman, the
moment when nothing possible can be added to make it more complete,
more satisfying, or more whole. It is the consummate experience
that, like multiple orgasms, subsides momentarily to crescendo
again and again until darkness breaks the spell and one must
again return to the ordinary and familiar and predictable. It
is the Zen salve for the soul, the unstructured meditation, the
rare sojourn to the present moment, a salubrious ride on the
Eternal Now for the Everyman, would he but take up rod, flies
and river. Fly fishing is one of the few glimpses a human being
ever stumbles across of that undeniable truth: living fully in
the present moment, with razor awareness, vigilant anticipation,
and concern only for the task at hand. And it is a glimpse that,
once seen, remains indelible. |