My Place on the River

“I’m going back up for my waders,” I said to my husband. Although we’d only walked down to look and see, he had his fly fishing gear with him and had already begun casting his line out, past the pods of sedge and grass, to a river that was the perfect combination of flat pools, feathers of current, and frothy waves. A breeze tempered the hot July sun, which glinted through the gold-brown-olive depths like sunlight through old bottle glass. I perched on a skinny shoreline gallowed by trees heavy with foliage and summer tranquility. A shady congruence of oaks, maples, and beech hedged by water-loving kin crowded both sides of the river, and the weedy arm of a dogwood nudged my shoulder. I needed to be in the river. At best, my roll cast can be described as adequate. I wanted room to cast a fly without it snagging in a branch or bush. I took one more look at the isolated stretch of fly fishing paradise and then clambered back up the muddy incline to the old stone bridge and our nearby car. 

I returned in my waders and wading boots, a 6 weight fly rod in hand, a wide-brimmed hat over my ponytail. My husband, content in his T-shirt and cargo shorts, maneuvered through the water toward me. He smiled at my waders. “I came to fish, not swim,” I defended, carefully walking into the river. The deeper water was cold, but the surface was bathwater warm. I felt the totter and shift of river stones beneath my boots as I leaned into the solid push of the current. Recent rains meant the water was high and lively, unlike the lazy drawl of last summer’s near-drought. Nevertheless, I felt confident in my waders and felt-bottomed wading boots — until my husband mentioned that two of his friends had fallen in this stretch, one of them breaking his fishing rod. He reached back, I thought, to take my rod so I wouldn’t break mine (his) if I fell. Instead, he took my hand, and we moved into the centre flow slowly, across the current. 

The riverbed had the uneven terrain of slippery limestone and water worn boulders, but I eventually found a strong foothold facing downstream. I unhooked my fly from above the cork rod handle and began to strip out fly line until there was a satisfactory mass floating on the water’s surface — loops of fluorescent yellow waiting to be transformed into a sleek, slow-motion whip once airborne. My husband took the end of my fly line from the water and bit through the thin clear leader. He looped the transparent line through his fingers, tying on a white, brown, and black bundle of feather, wool, thread, and deer hair — a type of fly known as a “streamer.” I watched him toss my line and fly back onto the water. The current grabbed the fly hungrily, before it was pulled into an eddy. I hesitated. I hadn’t been fly fishing in years, and I was out of practice and suddenly nervous.

Breathe. Rod comes up and back toward shoulder, picking up line from the water. Fly and line sift through the air. Short pause at 1 o’clock. Line unfurls behind me. Cast forward. Fly drops onto the water. Strip in the line. Cast again.

“Relax,” my husband said, taking a side look at my expression.

“I think I’ve forgotten,” I confessed.

“How to cast? You’ll do fine. Muscle memory.”

“No. How to relax.” I took a breath.

The river was both beautiful and intimidating as it buffeted rocks above and below stream. I listened to its bubbly chatter, the swish of my husband casting flies, and the quick sips of line being brought back to hand. The breeze rustled through the shoreline flora, and I watched a heron step down gently from the cerulean sky to the shallows of a marshy bend. My gosh, it was so idyllic. And, there was no one on this stretch of river but us.

The iridescent blue of a damselfly landing on my fly rod returned my focus to my place on the river. I lifted my rod up and back. The fly line shed the river’s skin and speckled my face with water droplets as it snaked through the afternoon heat. A slight pause, and I cast forward. My line stretched out behind me before it raced ahead to a dark fold in the juvenile rapids. Back and forward once more, and then, I let the fly drop. 

“I tied a Hales Minnow on your line,” my husband smirked, watching me cast while changing the fly on his own line. “You should attract a nice smallie with that.” A “smallie” referred to a smallmouth bass. As it turned out, the river was full of them.

The conversation of cicadas, birds, marsh grass, and stream now included the whispers of our fly lines lashing back and forth through the air. I moved a few metres upstream from my husband. Casting from his position atop a submerged glacier rock, he made fly fishing look effortless. Above him, the arc of his fly line was delicate and brilliant like the rainbow shell of a bubble stretching out from a wire hoop held high in a child’s hand. I thought of Norman Maclean’s achingly beautiful memoir A River Runs through It. I thought of Norman’s brother, Paul, “shadow casting” on the Blackfoot River in Montana. And, I thought of how Norman described Paul as having two main purposes in life: to fish and to prevent work from interfering with fishing.* After more than 20 years of marriage, not much has changed regarding my husband’s relationship to his beloved hobby. There is, however, a whole version of myself that I have set aside amidst marriage, motherhood, work, and home life.

From the beginning, it was obvious we were unsuited as a couple. Our first date (a walk and tea afterwards) was of the blind variety, arranged by a well-meaning, mutual friend. At the time, I worked as an editor for a small publishing company. My husband-to-be was a sales associate at a hunting and fishing store, a photographer for fishing magazines, and a fly fishing guide. He asked if I liked fishing, and I said that I didn’t know — I’d never been fishing. I asked what books he liked to read. He said that he was more of a picture book kind of guy. The next day, I received an email from him. He’d written, “It was nice to meat you.” Clearly, we were not a good match.

As it happened, our mutual love for the outdoors and the natural world covered over a multitude of matchmaker sins. There had been, however, a significant language barrier to resolve. When my date attached a small feathery bit on a hook to the end of my fishing line and called it a “dry” fly, I considered the soggy shoreline at our feet and thought, “Not for long.” When he looked at the fluorescent green line I had “cast” (thrown, really) onto the river and told me to “mend the line,” I looked to see if my fly line was torn. When he suddenly yelled at me, “Set the hook!” I had no idea what I was supposed to “set” or where and dropped my rod in alarm. This, moments before learning that “Let it run!” does not mean hold your fly rod high, line gripped tightly, like you’re on an olympian’s podium. It means, let your fly line unwind from your reel as the fish you’ve just hooked swims away from you. How that made any sense, I did not know. 

During those early days together, I also learned that I love fly fishing. Fly fishing makes me feel like I’m six years old again and exploring a backyard that’s flooded from spring rains. I love walking the river and the shoreline. I love the peacefulness of the river (without the noise of a motor) and the wildlife that seems unconcerned by my presence. I’m thrilled at being able to cast metres of line and, when I get it right, to see a fish rise to take my offering. My husband likes all types of fishing. For me, fly fishing rivers and streams is it.

As I watched the sun settle low in the midsummer sky and brought to hand my final fish of the day, I was comforted by how much I still love fly fishing. My husband carefully unhooked the fly and released the fish. Twenty-two summers earlier, on a trip to this river, he’d brought a ring nestled in his fly box.  

“I’ve missed this,” I said. He nodded, and we headed back to shore.

I’ve missed the river. I’ve missed us. I’ve missed me.

There’s a part of ourselves that most of us lay aside after childhood but that the fly fisher retains. A sense of wonder maybe? Norman Maclean said that a river has so many things to say that it is hard to know what it says to each of us. I sometimes ponder this and how his father, a fly fisherman and a Presbyterian minister, said that the Word was in the beginning, and, if you listen carefully, you will hear that the words are underneath the water — the water runs over the words.* 

We gathered up our gear, and I gathered up the day in hopes that it would keep — that when life once more became noisy and unclear, I would know and understand what was said to me on this perfect stretch of river.

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* A River Runs through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean (© 1976 by The University of Chicago), Twenty-fifth Anniversary paperback edition published by The University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL) in 2001.