I usually fish alone, aside from my brother, there really isn’t anyone else I’d rather see on a stretch of river. There are a few others I enjoy sharing water with; and I enjoy on occasion taking a friend out to introduce them to someplace new, as I graciously appreciate when that is done for me.
Though on most occasions I go it alone, and to places where I’m likely to remain so. It is there in the company of pine and cedar, that I arrive at an existence which teeters out of time, borders on the ethereal.
The hypnosis of the cast. A meditation on hope. A remembering.
Anymore, I fish an elusive spot on my way to work in downtown Seattle, where I ride Engine Co. 2. Then my waders dry along with the wet hoses hanging in the firehouse. On those mornings, as fish rise together with a dawning sun, I cast to memory and love– lost and found. Reaching out to questions that take a lifetime to answer, to equations in the spaces between.
There, in the river, stillness and motion run together; and what was and is and will be becomes indistinguishable. Indifferent. Irrelevant.
I no longer fish on my way home from the firehouse, too eager to see my baby boys again. And it’s OK, though I don’t fish as often, anymore- I decided a while ago not to get caught up with Time. Time doesn’t exist on a river anyway. It’s a construct I’ve joyfully left behind.
I learned that from water.
-jw (photo by B. Simmons, of Watts on the upper Snoq.)
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