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.
