It’s about having something that isn’t tainted, I guess.
It's probably not that.
I don't know what it is.
I’ve really been trying to figure out this compulsion I have to fly fish lately. I mean, I’ve always enjoyed it, but something is pulling my thoughts toward a river and a rod almost every day.
It's a moving away from more than a moving towards.
There’s a lot I can’t really explain, and I knew I’d feel this way when I tried to write about it. I feel this lump of emotion that I keep trying to swallow. It’s not bad really… just melancholy mixed with renewed wonder, I suppose.
But, like anything stuck in your throat… it reminds you that you’re alive.
You live raw... an exposed electrical current.
I’ve surfaced from the earliest defeatism of quarantine. I’ve adjusted. This is the new normal as they say: melancholy and renewed wonder.
A good deal of fear too.
I’m sustaining the wonder by fly fishing. It’s an activity wholly unaffected by Covid-19 concerns. I think that’s its draw for me. At least, I think.
I think the former – the melancholy – is largely from me turning 50. Everywhere I go, I can feel younger versions of myself there. I keep wanting to tell them, “Enjoy it more.”
Where I live in Midland, MI, I’m over two hours away from the rivers I really enjoy fishing: The Pigeon River and The Black River. Still, the Tobacco River and the Cedar River aren’t far from my house… both trout streams, but much smaller than what I’m used to.
The guy who owns the nearby convenience store -- Sids (named after his father) -- lives near these rivers. He had me bring a map to his store (a real map!) and then, with a pencil, he marked several places where I could try to fish.
I love maps. Love pushing my finger along a route. Something about a map and fishing carries so much more promise than simply plugging an address into my phone.
About four o’clock, I drove the forty minutes to the nearest pencil mark on the map. It took me off blacktop and down a dirt road. I knew where the river would be immediately because there was already a truck parked there. An older guy was sitting on the tailgate of his truck. He laughed when I asked about fly fishing this stretch, which turned out to be the Middle Branch of the Tobacco River.
“Nah,” he said through a mouth half filled with teeth. He went back to fumbling his nicotine-stained fingers over his reel. “Line is messed up… can’t get it to wind back in.”
I left him to his reel and walked up to the bridge. I looked downstream and then up. His “nah” was absolutely correct. The river wasn’t fishable, at least not with a fly rod. Some current moved through the middle and babbled into the culvert under the road, but overall the river was still, almost stagnant looking. The bottom was choked with huge logs. Wading it would have come closer to parkour.
I walked back to the man and said, “That’s not a trout stream. That’s a long mud puddle.”
He wasn’t having it. His tongue slid over jagged, busted off teeth as he spoke. “That? That’s a good stream. Got brown trout in there would rip that fly rod right out your hand.” He held his line and waved it at me. “This is 16-pound test. They bust this off on me sometimes. Big boys in there under the logs.” He looked up at me and squinted. “You want room to fly fish, you go to the Tobacco’s South Branch.”
“That’s wide enough?”
He nodded. “Yeah, but no trout in there.” He didn’t smile ironically, but just went back to fumbling with his reel like it was a poor man’s Rubik’s Cube.
I was done with the Tobacco and the Cedar. I just wanted to get on a river and fish. I just wanted the possibility of trout. I didn’t want to chase around at possibilities, just to be disappointed by the site under each bridge I came to.
Really, I just wanted to be fly fishing. I wanted to be in a river up to my thighs. I wanted, more than anything, to be some place where Covid-19 doesn’t play a part whatsoever.
At least I think that’s what I wanted. Maybe I’m having trouble naming what it is itching just beneath my surface. Like instead of restless leg syndrome, I have restless soul syndrome.
I know this wasn't just about the virus. There's something I'm not saying.
Uncharacteristically, I just started driving north… towards what would be the South Branch of Michigan’s Au Sable River, a big stretch of water I've fished many times. For me, where the Tobacco and Cedar are too small, the South Branch is too big.
Still, it's somewhat close to home.
Along the way, I stopped at a gas station. I masked up. I filled up. I bought a diet Coke, a roast beef sandwich, and a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips.
It was really just about the perfect meal.
Around 6:30, I arrived at a pullout off of the dirt road that had wound me through the Mason Tract. I’ve written about the Mason Tract before. Here’s the quick and dirty story of George Mason… auto exec turned conservationist:
Following his death it was disclosed that Mason, a former president of Ducks Unlimited, had left a gift to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources consisting of 1,500 acres (6.1 km2) land with 14 miles (23 km) of shoreline along the Au Sable River. The gift was contingent that the area be used as a permanent game preserve, that no part shall ever be sold by the state, and that no camping be allowed in the area for 25 years. The Michigan DNR has continued to uphold the no camping restriction within the Mason tract.[12] In accordance with Mason's wishes, the tract remains free of all development with the exception of a simple log chapel that was constructed on the property by the Mason family in 1960.[13]
A story like that almost gives one hope for capitalism. George Mason sees that capitalism treated him well, recognizes that it is a fickle goddess, and so balances out some of the world’s inequalities by letting others benefit in perpetuity from his good fortune.
The world could use some more George Masons.
There's a sign at the Mason Tract:
I’m not certain if it’s a new policy, but I noticed that the DNR hasn’t been keeping up with the two-track trails that lead to the river. Maybe they are trying to make fishermen work a little harder. Maybe they are striving for the untainted that Mason wanted for his bequeathed tract.
Whatever it is—deliberate or budget-related—the two-track roads are impassable with all of the downed trees over them.
With so many trees down, I had to walk what amounted to two football fields to get to the river.
Nothing exciting follows. I had strikes, but no fish. I walked down the river, careful not to turn my ankle on its rock-covered bottom. I felt the churn of a current that’s been there for thousands of years working around my legs. A great blue heron stayed some thirty feet ahead of me as I worked my way downstream. It would land among branches and then look back at me. When I got to where it determined I was too close, it lifted its seemingly prehistoric wings and flew farther downstream. It did this several times until eventually flying away altogether.
The fish were active, but more angry than hungry. They rose to my fly to snap at it, but never with enough commitment for me to set the hook.
As the night wore on, I decided I didn’t want to walk back to the car in full dark. It had been difficult enough to navigate my way around the fallen trees without trying to do it following the halo of my headlamp.
Plus, coyote yowl is unsettling.
Driving home, I didn’t want to leave the “untainted”… I wanted to continue to explore the renewed sense of wonder I have. In the past, I never would have taken pictures of flowers along the river bank. This trip, I did.
It’s either I’m trying to hold onto something that feels like it’s fading away, or I’m simply recognizing the subtle beauty of my surroundings.
I don’t know which drives the impulse (and is likely a mix of both)
It was the same impulse that made me recall the book, Blue Highways, as I drove. On a map, smaller state highways are often in blue. The premise of the book was that we miss too much racing down the country’s interstates, and we would all be better served by spending more time on blue highways… using lesser-known roads to arrive to our destination.
To quote Doobie, the cab driver from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: “Nothing to see on the interstate, but interstate.”
And so, even with my phone insisting for miles that I make a u-turn back toward I-75, I instead followed the blue highways of F-97 and M-18 west and south.
What a richness seeing all of the little houses lit along the road under the bruise-blue, full-moon sky. The roads felt lived in and had character, the way someone describes an old house as having character.
This too—with the radio off—was all part of the trip into the untainted. I could do this. I could simply enjoy driving at night along an unfamiliar way. It was visceral in contrast to the interstate, which is soulless. All that fast-paced living. All the efficiency. It's some of why we are where we are, I think.
I guess I was just trying to feel okay.
At one point, I stopped and took a picture of the moon. It didn’t turn out that well (looked more like the sun after my phone’s camera tried to compensate for exposure), but it was the act. I’m not a stopper. I’m not a “I need to get a picture of that” kind of person. I’ve always been more efficient than whimsical, and yet here I was taking a route home that would take 40 minutes longer than the freeway.
Here I was taking a picture of the moon.
The picture. These words. None of it can capture what I felt stopping in the middle of nowhere on a highway I didn’t know and opening my door to step out into the darkness.
I wanted to be in the darkness and unafraid.
I don’t know that what I felt could ever be replicated... not by me.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to write about it. I knew the words wouldn’t live up to the feelings of last night. I knew the words would fail. But, I had to try.
It’s almost going on two years since I’ve spoken to my son. I guess that’s a haunting of sorts underneath everything I’m feeling, too.
It's all so hard. It's all so tragically beautiful.
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