In recent weeks, I have found myself reflecting on the Simon and Garfunkel song “Old Friends.” Many of you may recall it:
Old friends, old friends,
Sat on their park bench like bookends.
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes, of the old friends.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Can you imagine us years from today?
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy.
Old friends,
Memory brushes the same years,
Silently sharing the same fears. . . .
It’s hard to believe that I was in my twenties when I first heard this song. Simon and Garfunkel were in their twenties when they first sang it. And it was terribly strange to think of being seventy. As I recall, back then, we were told not to trust anyone over thirty. But now I am seventy, and yes, it is terribly strange. Who is that old guy I see in the mirror every morning? Actually, he feels fortunate to have been granted another morning.
But what really started me thinking about that song from long ago was a recent fishing trip to the Rogue River in Oregon with, yes, some old friends. It has to be thirty-five years ago that I made my first trip to the Rogue with these guys. A number of them have been going longer than that. To quote Simon and Garfunkel, “A time it was, and what a time it was, a time.” We camped together, cooked our meals outside, and slept in tents on the ground . . . rain or shine. Guys would drink wine — or other beverages — and play cards until midnight, then get up, gather equipment, rig up, and be fishing on the river just as the sun peeked over the walls of the river canyon. Yes, what a time!
But it has been a number of years since I have been up and fishing before a Rogue River sunrise. Instead of tents, we now stay in comfortable cabins. Why pull on cold and wet boots and waders and go out early when you can stay in a warm cabin and enjoy a second cup of coffee? And those late-night card games? Just a fond memory.

Yes, the Rogue River boys have grown old together. We used to bounce bait on the bottom, chasing half-pounders, but it was on the Rogue that many of us first began fly fishing. I never heard of a Silver Hilton before the Rogue. Now we often spend time remembering the great guys no longer with us: Collins, who, with a flick of the wrist, could cast a fly halfway across the river and was so eager to teach the rest of us — “I never go to the toilet without a fly-fishing magazine,” he used to tell us; Gary, crazy Gary, who one night got stuck in his small tent and after a long struggle finally took out a fishing knife and cut his way out. We share so many stories of past trips, stories of adventures that still make us laugh. How did we get that boat back to shore after the motor fell off? And the night we tipped the battery over in a truck and stalled in the dark in the middle of nowhere. Wonderful stories. And I realize that now, instead of late-night card games, we sit around the fire and talk of grandchildren and prostates and hip replacements and blood pressure . . . old friends.
There was a certain sadness in the air this year. It is a long trip to Oregon — most of us live in Sonoma County — and for some of the guys, it is getting a bit too strenuous. Physical limitations make that big river too difficult and even dangerous to wade for some who now choose to cast from the shore. At seventy, I am one of the younger members of our group. There was honest discussion as we wondered if this was our final trip. We know there can’t be many left. As we talked, I was reminded of these words from the Donald Justice poem, “Men at Forty”: “Men at forty learn to close softly the doors to rooms they will not be coming back to.” Sitting quietly together, I wondered if we were hearing the sounds of those closing doors. “Memory brushes the same years, quietly sharing the same fears.”
And yet there was still good wine to drink, great fellowship, wonderful laughter, and fish in the river. Any sadness was muted by the awareness of and gratefulness for so much joy and good friendship and fishing shared for so long. We are better for having journeyed together. Because of that river, we are recipients of a precious gift that nothing can take away.