Aesthetic activities have always been the most meaningful part of my life. I would include fly fishing and tying in that mix. It’s not coincidence that some of our greatest artists and writers have included fly fishing as one of their passions — Homer, Hemingway, Chatham, and McGuane, to name just a few.
Almost from the time I could walk, at my uncle’s resort at Clear Lake, I learned the excitement of angling. Sometime later, visiting a friend (his father was the principal of our Marin high school and a fly fisher who would play hooky when the pressures of work got too bad), I saw my first Paper Mill Creek steelhead. It covered most of his pickup’s tailgate. That was the seed that was planted and later nurtured by other older men, men I wished I had thanked some sixty years ago.
Angling on Paper Mill Creek has been closed for some years now, but for several years in the 1950s, it held the record for the largest silver salmon caught for the year. Nevertheless, the Russian River is my river of choice, and I’m still learning things about it.
I paint in oils and watercolor and am a signature member of the National Water Color Society. I supplement that with a little contracting, playing string bass, songwriting, mischief, and building small boats, including three drift boats. One of my last customers was a wonderful, wheelchair-bound attorney who bought a minidrifter and cedar-strip canoe just so he could hang them from the ceiling in his law office. My website is Hilhawkenart.com.
— Hilary Hawken
