The words of strangers have blessed and informed my life. Often, they have reminded me of my impermanence and the flight of time.
Weeks ago, unwelcome news led me to recall several occasions when I was admonished not to take for granted my time in nature, immersed in the unsurpassed joy of wilderness landscapes.
Inquiring of my Rocky Mountain nephew, “When might I come by to visit and fish our favorite remote creek,” he replied, “Never!”
Lest I be stung by the curt reply, Lee explained that a “hundred-year” flood, resulting from a historic downpour, scoured a ten-to-fifteen-foot gully into the steep slope of the mountain where the creek emerges. The trench soon joined the stream, depositing tons of debris into it. Every pool, each deep run, was filled with silt, sand, and vegetation. Only a shallow remnant of a healthy waterway remains.
Selfishly, I wondered, would the stream heal itself, and how soon?
Grieving this loss, I understand landscapes everywhere are imperiled. I take consolation in knowing I fished this creek in perfect harmony with my nephew, never wishing I was elsewhere. I took every opportunity to be there.
It isn’t always like that.
Joe was a longtime colleague of mine. We lived one hundred miles apart. Mostly we spoke by phone. When work discussions ended, we talked family, trout, and hatches. We always said we’d fish together, soon.
The years accrued. We came to embody Harry Chapin’s elegy to regret, the “Cradle Song,” ceaselessly swearing, “We’ll get together, then, we’ll have a real good time, then.”
Long on promise, short on action. I hate being that guy.
A few years back, while solo canoeing and overnight camping on a remote, midsized river in upper Michigan, I paused to fish a deep, tannin-stained pool where trout had risen as I passed through. Stepping out of the canoe, I belatedly noticed this observer was being observed.
“I’m from Cleveland,” the previously unseen, traditionally outfitted fly fisher announced while standing on gray-and-white cobble some twenty feet from me.
“I bet you’re a local,” the young man continued. “You’re a lucky guy. But life is short. Don’t take this stunning wilderness for granted. I drive fourteen hours one way for the pleasure of being here!”
Prickly me might have asked, “How’d you get back here?” (The overland trek is hellish.) And “Why are you offering free, utterly unnecessary advice?”
Instead, I smiled and thanked him, pushing off without casting into a pool he suffered to access. He had just traversed a mile-long, tag-alder-choked swampland wearing chest-high waders. By canoe, I would reach the next pool without effort.
My friend Joe called a few days after my canoe trip. When he declared, “The Hex hatch is on, the trout are feasting,” I thought of The Scold of Cleveland.
“Joe, unless you’re inviting me down, please stop! We’ve done this dance for a decade, and we’ve yet to fish one moment together.”
Taken aback, Joe said, “I can’t invite you. My kitchen is being remodeled; the place is a disaster.”
“BS,” I pushed back, “There are motels and restaurants in your town. Unless I’m not welcome, we are going to fish together before it’s too late.”
That night, we fished past midnight under a brilliant starry sky.
Night fishing offers a perspective denied day fishers: the blessing of feeling small and insignificant beneath the depth, the sheer volume, of the night sky. “The things we worry about during the day, they aren’t so important out here in the dark,” Joe declared that night.
Those who, like the father of a teenager, proclaim with anxiety, “Nothing good happens after midnight” know nothing of the mystery of night-wading a trout stream where teeming, unrestrained life speaks in varied and rich voices.
That night, bats quietly glided within inches of our faces. The soft whisper of fragile wings in motion was not new to either of us. Bats fly close only because legions of droning, irrepressible mosquitoes are also very near, pleased by our presence and the promise we hold.
A whippoorwill commences its ceaseless call. A shadowy nighthawk darts softly over the water. An owl hoots, and a reply comes from afar. It’s a call and response that might outlast the night. Immersed in the world of the nocturnal, we are not alone.
Is that a bear in the brush? It doesn’t matter, experience says — he can cause a commotion, but he’s uninterested in man.
Trout finally rise with the onset of a sparse spinner fall of giant mayflies, marking the end of the life cycle of this remnant of the previous night’s hatch. Joe regrets we were a day late and that he alone got to experience a massive hatch and a true brown trout feeding frenzy.
The slurping sounds of several brown trout ingesting Hexes and an occasional splash emanate from a few feet in front of us. We must retreat to cast to these reckless diners. Only at night when anglers cast no shadows do trout grow so bold.
We landed no trout that night.
Only months after this satisfying outing, Joe was in the news.
His town’s high school football team had made the playoffs. On a Saturday morning, Joe set out by car to his mother’s home. They would enjoy the televised game together. Joe never got there. In a single-vehicle rollover accident, Joe lost his life.
Joe was well loved. The line outside the funeral home circled the block, giving me time to reflect with gratitude on our friendship and consider the life of integrity Joe had led in his hometown.
Wendell Berry rhapsodizes about “the peace of wild places.” Before it was too late, I got to experience that with Joe. I am grateful, and I’m forgiving of our mutual slowness to understand that if we’re not careful, the first may also be the last.
Then and now, I thank a stranger from Cleveland, for advice that, I swear, I did not need.
