Years earlier, when my father decided I was old enough to go fishing with him, we walked down the road past the Favorite Tree, where we had our rope swing, past the big sycamore, where my uncle Phil had carved his son Tom’s name in the most beautiful letters deep into the massive tree’s trunk, past the bull oak, where there was always a Hereford or two dozing in the deep shade, on to Papa’s gate, past the spring from which we drew our drinking water, stopping finally at a small wooded flat near the double creeks.
The equipment was wholly primitive: a three-part steel telescoping pole, well used and dented, and a tiny, ratchety skeleton reel with a short length of waxed line. It didn’t matter. It was enough to drop the bait into the holes. The basic skill was to avoid frightening the fish.
My father made me sit away from the creek while he looked for bait. A yellow jacket cruised by, and he stunned it with his hat, then impaled it on the hook. I cowered, remembering the nest we had inadvertently disturbed earlier in the summer while gathering firewood. I was stung more than 100 times.
My father leaned very slowly forward, cautiously lowering his bait. Within seconds he was lifting a wiggling 7-inch trout into the air. He turned and grabbed it, smacked it on the head with a stick, and put it in his creel. He caught two or three more, then motioned for me to come over to where he knelt, behind the shrub he’d used for concealment. “I’ll hold you,” he said, “and you can look down and see them.” He slowly leaned me out over the hole. Six or seven fish darted about, some rushing under the watercress, others nervously facing the current in the deepest part of the pool.
He must have held me there for a long time, because it’s one of the clearest images I have from my early childhood. The sun had managed to get through a hole in the trees above, and the little pool, hardly as large as an old fashioned mattress, had a laughing quality, as if lit from within. The water flowing into it murmured softly, like a particularly delicate Chopin etude.
I watched the deep red tendrils of dead watercress wave in the current below; on the surface, the new growth was bright green and bursting with life. The bottom was half gravel, half sand, heavily flecked with sparkling fool’s gold. And the trout were dark and alert, drifting back, waving in the flow, then shooting forward. My father, whom I loved so much, held me there as if time had stopped.
What did the little boy see? Was it a window through which he sensed the shape of his whole life? Or a cosmic mystery, dimly perceived but glimpsed for one split second in a fragile, vanishing element? What was it about this insignificant place that forged such a longing that no matter how wide a circle the boy turned, the man traveled, he would forever seek to return to it?
The equipment was wholly primitive: a three-part steel telescoping pole, well used and dented, and a tiny, ratchety skeleton reel with a short length of waxed line. It didn’t matter. It was enough to drop the bait into the holes. The basic skill was to avoid frightening the fish.
My father made me sit away from the creek while he looked for bait. A yellow jacket cruised by, and he stunned it with his hat, then impaled it on the hook. I cowered, remembering the nest we had inadvertently disturbed earlier in the summer while gathering firewood. I was stung more than 100 times.
My father leaned very slowly forward, cautiously lowering his bait. Within seconds he was lifting a wiggling 7-inch trout into the air. He turned and grabbed it, smacked it on the head with a stick, and put it in his creel. He caught two or three more, then motioned for me to come over to where he knelt, behind the shrub he’d used for concealment. “I’ll hold you,” he said, “and you can look down and see them.” He slowly leaned me out over the hole. Six or seven fish darted about, some rushing under the watercress, others nervously facing the current in the deepest part of the pool.
He must have held me there for a long time, because it’s one of the clearest images I have from my early childhood. The sun had managed to get through a hole in the trees above, and the little pool, hardly as large as an old fashioned mattress, had a laughing quality, as if lit from within. The water flowing into it murmured softly, like a particularly delicate Chopin etude.
I watched the deep red tendrils of dead watercress wave in the current below; on the surface, the new growth was bright green and bursting with life. The bottom was half gravel, half sand, heavily flecked with sparkling fool’s gold. And the trout were dark and alert, drifting back, waving in the flow, then shooting forward. My father, whom I loved so much, held me there as if time had stopped.
What did the little boy see? Was it a window through which he sensed the shape of his whole life? Or a cosmic mystery, dimly perceived but glimpsed for one split second in a fragile, vanishing element? What was it about this insignificant place that forged such a longing that no matter how wide a circle the boy turned, the man traveled, he would forever seek to return to it?
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