Nature's drift

How a Montana Creek Changed My Perspective

Last month marked the final US-mainland publication of a printed airline magazine. The end of this era got me thinking about the day in 1999 when I got a phone call from a magazine editor. I forget how she’d heard of me, but she said nice things about my writing. That was rare. I was thrilled.

“Horizon Air” wanted breezy, upbeat, humorous slice-of-life 700-word essays. It was a format I really enjoyed. I pitched one about water.

Yesterday I dug it up. I thought I might use it to ponder 25 years of changes in airline passengers’ reading habits. Or how the rules of the airline-magazine genre warped writers’ contributions and thus readers’ philosophies. Or whether and how commercially accessible nature essays have evolved. Or how trying to write about fishing sped my journey away from the activity. But when I read the essay, I realized: it’s a natural story. A person, a river, a moment in time.

If by chance you took a regional flight out of Seattle in October of 1999, let me apologize for giving you a rerun. But for the rest of us, here’s a story that might otherwise have been lost. Like my editor back then, I hope that it will make you smile, feel warm inside, and be temporarily distracted from the fact that we are all trapped in a tiny tube hurtling madly through space toward an uncertain and possibly terrifying end.

I’m not sure I’ve ever caught a fish at my favorite fishing hole. The person who showed me the spot swore me to secrecy to protect its solitude. It’s our secret, hers and mine. She loves it for the fish it offers, I love it for everything else.

When I fish, I get bored easily. I love to eat fish. I love to catch fish. But tying on dozens of flies, checking out dozens of holes and perfecting my casting technique so as to prove that I can outsmart a fish? I’d rather just throw in the most convenient fly, lure or worm. If the trout in this central Montana stream aren’t interested in whatever it happens to be, I stop fishing.

But I don’t leave the stream. I sit on a rock or walk up the bank, enjoying the water, the rocks, the trees, the blue sky. Like many people, I find myself drawn to our region’s rivers, marshes and lakes, and the canyons, vegetation and wildlife resulting from their work. I feel pulled to the water. To watch it gush, pour, drip, whoosh, meander, ooze, babble, gurgle and burble. To listen. To smell. To reach down and touch it: cold, wet, clean, soft. To splash. To throw a stick for the dog, then smile as she swims to where the stick landed, then laugh at her confusion in not finding it there, then hide when she comes out of the water and shakes.

When I lived in the city 10 years ago, the nearest stream was about 2 miles from my house, a fact that I knew only because my route to the gym bottlenecked at the bridge. I pursued work, beer, a woman, a pickup basketball game, a favorite television show… not water.

Now that I live in a small town near a creek, and sometimes walk beside that creek on my way to the gym, a riffle seems as captivating as a lay-up. Its beauty and simplicity bring an inadvertent smile to my face. My house is near the creek but not on the creek, and from my home office I can see the cottonwoods lining the banks, and I know the water is there, and that gives me a deep, immutable satisfaction.

When I lived in the city, I thought life was complex. Projects to complete, changes in technology to consider, politics to follow. The confusing web of personal relationships, the sense of continual rush, the pressures to meet others’ demands.

When I stand next to the stream, life seems a lot simpler. What does water want to do? It wants to go downhill. It is remarkably single-minded in pursuing this unremarkable goal. As a human consisting of 98 percent water, you’d think I, too, could go with the flow. Relax. Embrace the moment. Skip past the things that don’t really matter. But too often I become distressed by projects, technology, or politics; relationships, schedules, demands. I forget the deeper truths of life. I am not as single-minded as a molecule of water, rushing wholeheartedly to its goal. True, this allows me a wonderful complexity. It gives me the ability to love a Parliament/Funkadelic album. A perfectly executed pick-and-roll. Or another person. And of course this is part of the wonder of the human condition. But there are times when I feel overwhelmed by this complexity—when I envy the water. When I covet its earnest pursuit of a simple aim, and its elegant fulfillment of that objective as it glides by, gracing the land with visual and aural poetry, and nurturing flora and fauna on its way.

Those are the times when I need to go fishing.

Not to disperse my flybox’s arsenal of Royal Olive Grizzly Elk-Hair Wulff Semi-Hackle Caddis in the surrounding bushes, as if the river existed to host an unusual jungle-gym. Not to spew rhetoric on behalf of fish- or river-advocacy organizations, as if the river existed to host political debates. Not to show off thousands of dollars’ worth of gadgets, as if the river existed to host my ego.

Just to be near the water. To treasure it.

Discussion:

• 25 years doesn’t seem like a long time. But I was shocked to discover, alongside the essay, a cover sheet: I had faxed it! How 20th century!