Taking the Time...

  It's August 11, 2018. Another summer careens to it's end. No other season seems to speed by the way summer does. Winter drags on for what feels like an eternity. Spring, with it's endless rains and quirky temperature shifts, seems to last several weeks too long. Spring is tolerated only because we've grown so weary of winter that we'll endure yet another rain storm, because it means summer is just that much closer. Fall is confusing. It begins as nothing more than a date on the calendar. It's still warm and the insects still buzz about, and the days are still somewhat longer.

     Then, sometime around the third week of October, fall shows her self. One morning you wake up and you can see your breath again and the trees begin to turn colors. In the south, fall can be a very pleasant time of year. When I lived in Tennessee, fall was easily the best of the three seasons. The blistering summer heat was finally gone, and the chill of winter never really showed itself until Christmas. The fall months were full of warm sunny days and cool, but not cold, nights. Here in Virginia, it's similar, although the pleasant fall weather gives way to the cold of winter a few weeks earlier, and winter stays much longer.

     Back in the Delaware Valley, where I grew up, fall was a brief respite, a quick break between the sweltering dogs days of summer, and the seemingly eternal grey, cold of winter. By Halloween you needed a coat. Not your "big coat" reserved for the depth of winter, but a coat nonetheless. By November you woke to frost on the ground and had to scrape your windows -albeit lightly-- a few times each week.

By Christmas, it was cold. Mostly. There was always the inevitable warming trend around Christmas. Back home we dream of a White Christmas, every year the weather patterns tease us and give the impression that "this will be the year" ...and then it rains. It rains on Christmas Eve. Period.

     But today it's the middle of August. Technically five weeks of summer remain, but everyone knows that summer ends on that horrible Tuesday morning in September, the day after Labor Day, when all fun comes crashing to an end. It's August 11th, and I've fished once this year, so far. 

Once. 

     I live in a place where the choice between which of the four beautiful, pristine, productive rivers I want to fish is as hard to make as which new Corvette I'd want someone to give me. The answer is "yes." I dreamed of living in a place like this when I was a little boy. A place where no matter what direction I pointed my truck, I'd find a place to fish that was the stuff of dreams. And yet...I have fished once this year.  Part of that is because it has been a miserable, rainy, horrible-conditions summer. It has rained, and rained, and rained. And then it rained again. The James River, where I fish the most, has been out of it's banks all summer. In June, it looked like it does in March: high, and turbid and fast. Fish were holding anywhere but where you could fish for them. It probably affected the spawn and I'm worried what next spring will look like. 

     The plan now is to try my hand at fall / winter Smallies on the James. (And the Tye) I've wanted to for the four years I've been here, but never got around to it. This year, I will have to if I want to salvage anything of the fishing season of 2018. I plan on it...but I already doubt that I'll find the time.

     Finding the time is getting harder these days. I am a single dad, trying to put my daughter through college and help her put her life back together again after some very rough years. Her mom and I divorced when she was only 18 months old, and her mom married a man who terrorized them both. Divorce laws, and life's twists and turns prevented me from getting her out of there altogether. All I could do was remain active in her world, and let that jackass know that if he crossed the line, the hounds wouldn't even find his scent. Finally it got so bad that she moved with me here to Virginia. She was sixteen and allowed to make that decision for herself by that point. 

     Being a dad is my favorite thing. When she was little, we'd fish together at a little five acre pond near my house. She had a little "Barbie" spin casting set and she'd be thrilled with a bluegill now and then. Mostly she was just thrilled to be fishing with her daddy. Nowadays she has a boyfriend, and we're more roommates than father and daughter. But it's okay. She's with me and she's safe. But the arrangement doesn't allow for much free time. College is expensive, even for a guy who works for the school and gets her tuition for free. I have a side business. So fishing suffers.

     This fall I hope that will change. I've taken steps to minimize the demands on my weekends and I spent the summer getting my trusted, well-worn 1996 GMC Yukon roadworthy again. I will make the time somehow, because time, like real estate, isn't being made anymore. I wish I wasn't fishing or hunting alone, but that can't be helped. I've been here four years and a man in his mid fifties doesn't develop friendships like a boy of eleven does. When I hunt and fish I'm deathly quiet anyway, using the time and place to turn my thoughts inside and sort out the ball of yarn that fifty-five years has left me. This can be confusing for those who don't know me well. This silence of mine. So perhaps it's best to go it alone out there. But I do miss the conversations that would break the silence sometimes. The things we talked about when we were boys fishing "Nonesuch Creek" when I was just a child. Or the coming-of-age discussions my best friend Mark and I would have, between casts into the lilly pads on Lake Como, or Lum's pond. Or the wealth of knowledge I gained from Hank Teryzcak and Carl Ramsey when we would hunt deer on an old farm on the outskirts of Kent county in Delaware.         Hank and Carl were friends of my stepfather, who hunted this land with us each fall. My stepfather and I seldom spoke, but Hank and Carl befriended me and taught me how to track, and where to build my stand, and how to dress my first buck when I finally harvested him. There was only silence in the field, but back at the campsite there were jokes and laughter and stories and the transition into manhood. 

     That's what I miss now. I can fish alone in silence and not notice or care. In fact I prefer it. But the pre-dawn rides to the fishing hole or the end of day ride home, or the times sitting on the bank, eating a sandwich, and watching a massive freight train roll by and having no one there to talk with...those moments become glaring. There was something about setting up the evening campfire and one by one, seeing your hunting companions appear out of the lengthening shadows. When the last of us was in the fold, and the coffee pot was full and dinner was simmering, and the stories of the day would begin to be told...it was the best time in the life of that young outdoorsman. The one who hunts and fishes alone now.

    I wish I could have those days again. I wish I had friendship like that here in Virginia where I live. But I know full well that is not possible. Friendships like that are developed over many years. They take time. And time is a scarcity for me now. A precious commodity that the world seems to be in dire shortage of. That and the precious memories...of when there was plenty of time.

The Soul of the River

The first real “fishing hole” I remember was “None-such creek” back home in New Castle, Delaware. Before that, I’d fished a few times with my grandfather in a little finger of the many creeks that ran throughout the marshy areas that adjoined the Philadelphia Airport, down the street from his house. I lived there for the first five years of my life and that was the first fishing I remember.

When we moved to New Castle, my new friends in the neighborhood had their spot at Nonesuch and they let me come along. Nonesuch was nothing to grow sentimental about. Not the landscape anyway. It was just a tributary of the Christiana River, which, itself, dumped into the Delaware. In the 70’s, when I fished there, pollution was an afterthought and the river smelled like diesel and dirt. You knew better than to eat the fish you caught because they tasted like the water they swam in.

None of that mattered, however, because we weren’t there to fish for food –although we tried that once- we were there to fish. For us, at eight years old, fishing was about being out on our own, away from our homes and families, growing up together. We talked about what eight-year-old boys talked about back then. We brought our bologna sandwiches in brown paper bags in our knapsack and we rode our spider bikes two or three miles to our secret fishing spot.

As dirty as that river was, the meadow that surrounded it was clean and sweet and beautiful. In the summer, it smelled of honeysuckle and hay. Butterflies fluttered about and birds flew overhead. It was a wonderful escape from the sameness of suburban housing. I never remember looking around and thinking about the history I was walking on. I was just a little boy, there with his friends, trying to catch a fish.

Now, though, things are different. Where I fish now is steeped in history and I am of an age that I pay attention to those things. I fish the upper James River mostly. Up above Snowden Dam, almost to Balcony Falls.

I found a parking spot last year and I walk the train tracks from there to Balcony and fish my way back, learning about this river as I go. (The plan is to buy a kayak this summer as soon as finances allow) Walking train tracks has always been an allegorical prop in literature. The wandering. The restlessness. The feeling of always moving along. It’s not that for me, necessarily, as much as it is a thread through history. I walk these tracks and wonder about the trains that have come and gone over the years.

 I came upon a unique marble historical marker on my last trip. It reminded me that this river…as all rivers, has been flowing for a long time. And in that flow, is history. This marker dates back over 150 years. The thing it talks about, this man losing his life to save others…it happened right where I was standing.

When I first moved here three years ago, I started thinking about the historicity of the area. I would, occasionally, look around as I cast my lure, and think about all those who have fished these waters before me. Native Americans who fished for food and drew their drinking water from the Powhattan, as they called it. Explorers, winding their way west through this gorge. Soldiers in the civil war –mere boys, really- fishing here for something to eat, after a fierce battle…or on their way to one. Locals. Little boys like I was when I fished None-such creek. Kids on their bikes, throwing cork bobbers into the water and being thrilled with whatever they caught.

Nowadays, when I fish...I look around. I never used to do that. Yes, I’ve always loved the scenery, but now I view it through the prism of history. These giant boulders that have been worn smooth by thousands of years and millions of gallons of water pouring over them. This gorge that was probably cut into these mountains by the Flood. These railroad tracks.

This river.

My best friend and I are talking about a late-fall trip here when he is done on his commercial crab boat for the season. Mark and I haven’t fished together in about 30 years. Life happens. To wade these waters and talk like we used to when we were boys will be life-giving for me. So much time has passed, and so many miles.

I have a mid-summer trip planned for Harpers Ferry and the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers. Right next to the Antietam battlefield fishing, no doubt, the same waters where civil war soldiers fished and swam and worried about whether they’d make it through the next day. Nothing like that will be on my mind...I'll just be there to fish. But I will be thinking about them, maybe feeling their memories in the river.

The river rolls on...but as I get older, I find that, as it does, it deposits some of its’ memories in my soul.

The River

It’s Tuesday morning and I am getting ready to leave for work. But all I can think of is the spot on the James River that I discovered a few weeks ago. A spot so promising that I can’t believe nobody else fishes it. It took me a while to find this place. Actually, it happened by accident. I was looking at Google Earth, trying to find the dam they were discussing in a newspaper article. I found the dam, and then, out of curiosity, I moved a little farther upstream and saw the spot I usually fish. I continued to scroll upstream and discovered this magnificent spot where the rock formations were perfect and there was an equal amount of deep water and shallow riffles. The satellite images are amazingly clear and I could see beneath the water in a way that I never could with the naked eye. I could see the rock shelf and the variation in depth. I saw the channel that cut it’s way through the bedrock over thousands of years. (I recommend using this Google earth technique when fishing new areas) The next week I went out and walked about three miles to the spot I had researched. It didn’t look like anyone had fished it recently. No trash along the rocky shoreline. No tangled remnants of line stuck in the trees.

It took some work to get there and I imagine that anyone less than a serious fisherman wouldn’t bother.

I’m sitting here at my table this morning thinking far more about that fishing hole than I am about my job. When I was a kid, riding my bike to “Nonesuch Creek” with my best friends, fishing was about fishing. Just catching a fish, any fish, and hanging with the guys was all the motivation I needed. Fishing was just what little boys did.

But I’m almost 54. I am a divorcee, a single dad trying to navigate this life of mine, and learning on the job what it is that dad’s do with 19-year-old daughters, and trying to hurry up and figure out the rest of my life. I don’t fish simply for the fun of it anymore. I fish now, because I need to. Desperately.

I need some sort of connection to a much simpler time. I need the memories that fishing stirs. I need the internal solitude and the chance to unravel the tangled ball of yarn that my soul has become. I need to think, and to pray, and to reminisce, and to see if I can still dream. I dream of writing. Of communicating the questions I ask and the answers I've found. I doubt my abilities to do this but I desire it nonetheless. I think of this a lot when I'm on the river.

Fishing, now, has become my soul retreat. My quiet place where I can recharge. Whether I catch anything or not is of little consequence. Of course, I want to catch fish. But sometimes actually catching a fish is distracting to the things going on inside.

My second cousin is a professional fisherman. We’ve never met, and it was a surprise to me, to learn that he is a relative. He’s pretty well known and extremely popular on the Bass circuit. (Mike Iocanelli, a second cousin on my grandmother’s side. Her maiden name was Iocanelli) Ike fishes for a living and so his approach is, by necessity, far more aggressive and business-like.

When I was a boy, that would have been a dream job. But I watch his video channel and I see how much hard work he puts in to be as good as he is and I don’t think that would be for me. Obviously, Ike loves what he does, but I wonder if he ever gets the chance to simply fish for the fun of it. Maybe someday we’ll meet and I’ll ask him.

My heart is in the spin cycle right now. Turbulent and tumultuous. I realize I am running out of time to make career choices and I feel very far from home. Maybe that’s why I feel like I need to be on the river today and not on the campus at Liberty University. I need to lose my thoughts in the mechanical repetition of casting and retrieving. Of reading the water and looking for structure. To the steady noise of the water as it rushes by and the thrill of a strike. A thrill that eventually loses it’s gravity as I dig deeper into the bird nest inside my heart and try to draw a roadmap for the next 20 years of my life.

Years ago, Rich Mullins, one of my favorite musicians, wrote a song called “The River.”

The chorus says this:

"And I know the river is deep 

And I found out the currents are tricky.

And I know the river is wide.

Oh and the currents are strong.

And I may lose every dream

That I dreamt I could carry with me.

But I know that will reach the other side.

Please don’t let me have to wait too long.”

The river is a metaphor. Maybe for me, the James River is a metaphor as well. Maybe out there, I’m not the formerly homeless guy, or the 54 year old man in a twenty-something world, or the single dad who feels like he’s feeling his way along the back wall of a cave in the dark, when it comes to relating to a 19 year old young woman as a daughter.

Maybe I can be all of that, plus that eight-year-old boy, riding on a spider bike with his best friends, just looking to have fun.

I need to go find out.

The river calls.