In the Current

Recycled from Dyckknows.com.

In my early twenties I drove alone along the road to Elmira often. I was a fly fisherman then, and even beyond that I was a kid so entirely lost in the greatness of life that I couldn’t see straight. Without warning I would be caught with a sense of incomprehensible joy so overwhelming it would stop me in my tracks. Routinely, maybe while walking through a harvested corn field or cresting over a hill I would be presented by a sight that seemed so perfect, maybe a field of geese feeding on what the tractor had dropped, or maybe a deer or a fox along the treeline, the treeline itself a thing of beauty as the maples slowly exploded into their fall colors, the pines green as green for contrast. Maybe a rusted barbed-wire fence slicing through the decaying grass, or simply a freshly combined field, a pile of debris pushed to the back near the forest that would be left to smoulder over the winter. I recognized these things as items of flawlessness, and the hurt and detachment they made me feel in my stomach was visceral, subtle and calming, and not at all wishing ill but hurtful nonetheless, and the sad, sad understanding that these perfect things were so far outside, and on them I had no idea how to lay claim. I started skipping school a lot then, indeed I was out of my university classes way more than I was in them, so much that I willingly skipped final exams and took a couple of F’s in my second year. The only thing that mattered was spending time near these dear things, trying to figure out how, maybe through sheer time spent, I would somehow be able to internalize this calm perfection that I experienced out of doors.

In the Grand River then, just before Elmira, I remember standing in the current seeing Chris side casting upstream, the steady tick tock, tick tock, the line curling through the air and extending. He was a silhouette with the old bridge over the river just beyond. His cast ended and he laid the rod low, the line then rolling gently out onto the surface of the river, the tippet following and the fly dropping in an eddy on the edge of the riffling water, a little brown trout coming up and taking the fly and slicing the line through the surface of the river.

I remember my own casting, my rod slightly on an angle to my body, the line slipping through my fingers as it was drawn out, constantly in search of perfection. Just the right timing, just the right tension, power and grace to have the line roll gently onto the river surface, the tippet slowly uncurling, the fly laying so gently onto the water any fish looking up from underneath could do nothing but believe it a gift from God, betrayed only with the piercing of the hook in their jaw and the sense of a loss of freedom.

In these moments I sometimes came close to touching that thing that I can’t accurately describe. Maybe it was contentment, maybe it was the serenity of the Mennonite country of Southern Ontario. I think it was existing without any external obligation, no school or work to tend to, no pressures coming from family or friends. Just immersing ourselves into this moment of belonging, and trying to wring every drop out of it so that we could take it home with us for later use.