Two Passions. One River. One Extraordinary Morning.
It’s 5:00 AM.
The Narrow River is still deciding what kind of morning it wants to be.
Darkness hasn’t completely surrendered.
A light sprinkle drifts through the air.
Clouds hang low over the river.
And then I see him.
Before he sees me.
He is a glorious specimen.
Even from a distance, I can tell he is fully equipped.
He brandishes all the armaments necessary to do battle.
His gait speaks of experience.
Confidence.
Purpose.
He is clearly here to hunt.
And whatever he is after, I get the distinct impression he has done this before.
Then he sees me.
His cadence changes.
He slows.
I stay still.
He keeps coming.
Slower now.
I can tell he is trying to assess my disposition.
Friend?
Foe?
Competition?
Perhaps just another strange creature standing in the river at five o’clock in the morning.
Then, as though risking some primal form of contact etiquette, he stops.
He looks directly at me.
There is a pause.
“Get anything?”
I smile.
And only then do I raise the camera I have been carrying close to my body.
“Maybe you!”
He laughs.
And there goes my glorious wild specimen.
A fly fisherman.
He slowly enters the water.
And I swear, the man looks as though somebody dropped him straight out of the pages of Field & Stream.
Waders.
Vest.
Fly rod.
All that equipment I had mistaken—or perhaps intentionally promoted—to “armaments.”
And now I understand the hunt.
There is fishing.
And then there is fly fishing.
The difference is not subtle.
A conventional fisherman casts something into the water.
A skilled fly fisherman seems to negotiate with it.
And this man clearly knows the language.
The rod comes back.
The line follows.
Forward.
Back.
Forward again.
Then the magic.
The line hangs in the morning air.
Suspended.
Curving.
Unfurling.
Dancing.
For fractions of a second, gravity seems willing to make an exception.
And I am captivated.
Because I recognize what I am watching.
Not simply fishing.
Mastery.
That wonderful place reached only after doing something over and over and over again until the mechanics begin to disappear.
Fly fishing demands patience, discipline, timing, touch, rhythm and specialized equipment.
But above everything else—
SKILL.
Did I mention skill?
Because this guy has it.
And as the morning progresses, something interesting happens.
It is a rather slow day at my office.
The wildlife apparently neglected to check my schedule.
So my earlier wisecrack—
“Maybe you!”
—turns out to be a prediction.
I keep turning toward him.
And every time I do, the scene has changed.
Not the man.
The light.
My cameras remain close to me.
I watch.
Wait.
Raise one.
Compose.
Shoot.
Lower it again.
He returns to his cast.
Neither of us interferes with the other’s pursuit.
And above us, September is putting on a show.
That sky.
My God.
Clouds have a way of articulating light that would make a theatrical lighting designer envious.
They catch it.
Diffuse it.
Concentrate it.
Hide it.
And then tear open for a moment and let color spill across everything.
Violet.
Magenta.
Rose.
Coral.
Then blue.
The river accepts every color offered and sends it shimmering back.
Look at the photographs and you could easily believe they were made on different mornings.
They weren’t.
Same morning.
Same river.
Same fisherman.
Same photographer.
Three hours.
An ever-changing world.
Place: Narrow River, beside Sedge Island.
Subject: One very determined fly fisherman working the bend before Sprague Bridge.
Time: 5:00 AM to 8:00 AM.
Weather: Clouds, early-morning sprinkles, and Mother Nature apparently showing off.
And through all of it—
he fishes.
At some point I begin wondering whether he even notices what the heavens are doing behind him.
It doesn’t appear so.
He is locked in.
Watching the water.
Reading the current.
Feeling the rod.
Controlling the line.
Waiting for that tiny disturbance on the surface that might mean something below has said:
Yes.
And then it occurs to me.
I’m doing exactly the same thing.
He watches the water.
I watch the light.
He reads currents.
I read clouds.
He controls a fly line.
I control shutter speed, aperture and composition.
He waits for a fish to appear.
I wait for a photograph to appear.
He knows that forcing the moment rarely works.
So do I.
And both of us have spent years learning skills that, when performed well, make difficult things appear wonderfully simple.
You can buy the fly rod.
You can buy the camera.
You can buy marvelous equipment for either pursuit.
But you cannot buy when.
You cannot purchase instinct.
You cannot order patience.
And there isn’t a piece of equipment made that can replace all those failures nobody sees—the missed fish, the missed photograph, the bad cast, the wrong exposure—that slowly teach your hands and eyes what your mind once had to think about.
That is one of the great joys of mastering something you love.
Not perfection.
There probably isn’t any such thing.
But that marvelous moment when practice becomes instinct.
When instinct becomes confidence.
And confidence becomes grace.
I watched it happening in front of me.
And perhaps, without knowing it, he was occasionally watching it happen in me.
Two men standing in the same river.
Two completely different pursuits.
Except maybe they weren’t so different after all.
Because both of us were hunting something elusive.
A moment.
And perhaps that is what adventure really is.
We tend to imagine adventure somewhere else.
Mountains.
Oceans.
Foreign countries.
Places requiring airplanes and passports.
But adventure can be waiting a few miles from home.
It can begin in darkness at 5:00 AM.
It can involve nothing more complicated than getting out of bed when the rest of the world is still sleeping and wondering:
What might happen today?
Sometimes you walk into a river carrying a fly rod.
Sometimes you walk into it carrying a camera.
And sometimes two strangers pursuing completely different passions find themselves sharing the same extraordinary place.
No introductions necessary.
No long conversation.
No intrusion.
Just a question.
A wisecrack.
A laugh.
A few words exchanged as the morning unfolds.
And smiles.
Plenty of river for both of us.
Plenty of sky.
Plenty of possibility.
He made his line dance.
I tried to catch the dance.
He searched beneath the surface.
I searched through the light.
And for three peaceful hours, the Narrow River gave both of us exactly what we had come looking for.
Not necessarily a fish.
Not necessarily even a photograph.
Something better.
The privilege of becoming completely absorbed in something you love.
Of being good at it.
Of still wanting to become better.
Of standing in a beautiful place and realizing there are adventures left to have, skills left to master, strangers left to meet, and mornings you haven’t seen yet.
One-track minds?
Maybe.
But that morning our tracks ran side by side.
His through the water.
Mine through the light.
And somehow they led us to exactly the same place.
Wonder.
Two souls.
One river.
A few kind words.
A shared morning.
And smiles.
What’s better than that?
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