A few weeks back, I was visited by two city friends from Brooklyn. In the interest of cultural exchange, I figured I’d make venison steaks and fresh-caught wild trout for dinner – a sort of hillbilly surf and turf that would provide them with options in case they were picky eaters. I finished work at 5 p.m., and dinner was at 6, so by 5:30 I was bursting through the brush at a honey hole in my favorite trout stream with a spinning rod and a Mepps – the prettiest fish market you’d ever hope to see. The afternoon sun through the trees cast kaleidoscopic patterns on the water; the ripples sang as they touched rock and limb and bank.
Anyway, I walked into the stream and cast. The lure hit the head of the hole and trolled back towards me. A trout rose from the depths, bumped the rotating silver spoon, then settled back from where it had come. Fifteen minutes later it was clear I’d be late for dinner. By 5:50, it was clear my dinner companions had better be alright with red meat.
This is, without a doubt, the worst fishing story you’ve ever read. I know. But the underlying theme does seem worth exploring. Fact is, as we get older and life gets more frantic, many of the outdoor activities we love can feel strained. Even if you’re not heavy-handedly setting yourself up for failure by imposing a dinner deadline on your fishing, shifting mental gears from work to play, transitioning from the inorganic to the organic, can be difficult. Sometimes our minds are at the office instead of in the woods. Sometimes, even those of us who love spending time outdoors, tap our feet and glance at our watches while on the water – unconscious resentment that the fish are behind schedule.
When such thoughts strike, one tends to get nostalgic for simpler days when fishing was as much a piece of mind as an activity – those days when Andy Griffith would close up shop and hit the creek, content that the world would be just fine without him for an afternoon. Alas, “gone fishing” signs and mantras like “slow and easy” seem to have been replaced by “work hard, play hard.” Some people are good at this. I’m quite sure, though, that none of them are good fishermen.
I did take three days off last week and went down to the Cape for a quick vacation. At one point I was walking down by the waterfront where some charter boats were docked, watching Caribbean hired hands fillet fresh-caught blues and toss the viscera up to the swarming gulls. The thirty-somethings waiting to have their catch processed were already discussing the day’s next stimulation. Waiting to board the charter boat was a pink-hued family; the son wore the look of an urbanite out of his element, his father, a strained look that said: “I spent $500 for this; appreciate it, kid.”
About 20 feet away, just down the pier, a group of Brazilian boys, probably 10 years old, were fishing for bottom feeders. They had these little sand sharks lined up on the dock and were horsing around and lounging belly down on the wood planking, oblivious to the world, acting out these idyllic childhood scenes.
We all stood there and looked at them. Sunburned me. The sunburned other tourists. The on-the-clock deck hands. All of us staring at those kids who were laughing and roughhousing and acting like jigging for crabs and junk fish was the greatest fun in the world.
It was lost on no one that they were almost certainly right.
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