One Bug is Quiet

We stood back and watched as she roll cast the slow, shaded run that tucked tightly under the thick rhododendrons. Cast, drift, cast again; avoiding the encroaching branches with a quiet ease. “And she’s just getting started,” he whispered with a subtle hint of pride. “She’s figuring it out.”

I hadn’t seen Brandon since our week chasing redfish on the Laguna Madre, a year-and-a-half past, but had followed his exploits through One Bug is Fake, his online journal of fly fishing, survival, and whatever. I kept up with his angst through job changes, moves, and the generally painful business of sorting out what was important in his life. Kept up, that is, until the blog fell silent earlier this year. I worried a little.

So when I caught word that he’d be in my neck of the woods for a family Thanksgiving gathering, I wandered westward and reconnected with him on a chilly Appalachian trout stream. There, I came to understand his disappearance.

“Have you been writing?” I asked, thinking I knew the answer. “Not really,” he replied, watching her swing the fly once again. “I’ve been happy.”

Those who write understand. Words, all too often, come from deep, dark places and passages born of hurt carry a weight and an edge that can resonate. It’s been suggested that contentment is the death of good writing. I’m not completely convinced, but do know that it’s easier to express when things are broken. Through the cracks seep emotion and heart and, inexplicably, craft. It’s a gruesome tradeoff.

“But I’ve been thinking on a piece for a while now,” Brandon added, as his companion concentrated on her next drift. “About what’s changed.”

I nodded, and smiled, and thought to myself that there was no need to hurry. No need at all. I’d be glad to not hear from One Bug for a while.

Peep

They’ve been quiet of late. No noise coming from the tree frogs and chirpers that live in and around the pond just above the house. Winter’s had its way with them and they haven't peeped a peep for quite some time.

… not unlike a certain blogger I know.

The dreary season’s beaten us down - amphibian and fisherman/blogger alike - and it’s been hard to find inspiration. Jack Frost has worn his welcome thin as Lululemons.

But spring is peeking around the corner, finally. And with the budding cherries and blooming forsythia, I assure you, the racket will begin once again. Just be careful what you wish for.

For example, I’ll be getting back to this keyboard a bit in the coming days with a couple of book reviews (what else have I had to do lately, but read?) and maybe a Photo Bin. Then it’s buckle-down time at the ol'e Renzetti in prep for a much-needed spring jumpstart - a week tip-toeing the Tropic of Cancer, wandering the southern Baja, chasing roosters, dorado, and the elusive Mexican tequila pixies with my good friend (and bad influence), Chris Hunt.

Lord knows what noise will come out of that.

So here’s fair warning. Things are going to be picking back up around this place. Ready or not.

Peep

Note: I found the tree frog pictured at the top of this post in Mary's potting soil bin the other day. I felt bad interrupting his slumber but it was a nice afternoon - one of the few we've seen this year - and, once released, he happily climbed around the woodpile. That is, what's left of the woodpile after this much-too-long winter...

The View From Coal Creek

The cane tells you what it wants to be… It’s length, space between nodes and bug damage, speak a natural inclination. Just like people, I think. Its soul not evident in perfection, but in its imperfection. Its character, shaped by scars.

Few hear the cane. Fewer understand it. Only a handful can translate, can pass along what’s said so that the rest of us can begin to understand. Erin Block is one of those handful and her debut book, The View From Coal Creek: Reflections on Fly Rods, Canyons, and Bamboo, is a Rosetta Stone carved in bamboo. More importantly, it’s a tribute to and celebration of the beauty in our natural imperfection, in “hand made,” and in all that is odd and unique in each of us. For me, and I suspect for many, that’s a great comfort.

Coal Creek is the story of the building of an eight-and-a-half foot 5wt Garrison 202-E taper, a classic bamboo trout fly rod, by hand. But really, it isn’t…

… it’s not about making a rod, it’s about seeing your life through the process. It’s about the journey… It’s about tradition and friendship and alchemy, and about not completely understanding why six strips of bamboo glued together mean so much to you… And at long last, it’s about the rough, ugly, and uncut, refined into something beautiful, through a hell of a lot of hard work. And that – that is life...

The View From Coal Creek spans the winter and early spring of 2012 as Erin travels the roads between her cabin in the mountains of Colorado and the shop and home of her rod-building mentor, Frank. The book is full of the comings and goings of friends, the passage of season in her remote canyon, and day-to-day alpine life as the snows obliterate, then surrender, her perch in the hills; all relayed with loving backdrops of local lore and family history, told with warmth and insight…

Dark eyed Juncos are out early this morning, getting their fair share of breakfast before the Jays wake. Landing on snowbanks, they make angels like children, imprinting their faith in flight.

…not to mention a healthy dose of self inspection and deprecation.

The snow has fallen evenly in no wind, as if a dump truck cloud has parked over the opening of pines above the cabin and evenly distributed its contents. A blanket on a bed with no lumps. No forgotten books, socks, or stocking caps. Smoothly pressed, tucked and trimmed as a bed always should be and mine never is.

And, to my delight, Erin also gives us scribblers some candid looks at the trials of a writer’s world…

Jay pecks behind me on his computer, like a chicken at grit and gravel, fed for digestion, editing photos and writing. It’s a comforting sound, that of writing. But I know better than to think it’s a comforting thing to actually do. Rather, it’s only comforting once it’s out – once you’ve thrown it up and are sipping ginger ale.

… and almost always with her delightfully quirky perspective on things.

I’d had nightmares about the glue not setting right and everything going to hell in a handbag. Which, I’ve always thought is an appropriate place for handbags to go, however odd the saying.

Erin writes like she builds a fly rod. She lets her materials, her stories, her bamboo, choose their weight, their length, and then carefully and precisely shapes them into perfectly fitting pieces. She wraps the guides, giving the book direction, in fine, tight analogies and strong insight, and varnishes the lovely thing with coating dips of humor and heart. Her cork, her prose, is comfortable in our hand and in our mind. It all casts, it all reads, like butter.

And then I switch out for my rod and write my name very slowly and thoughtfully on the flat and below that I pen the length and weight and taper. My hand begins to shake a little bit. Then the month and year – I’m nervous – whereupon I have the secret hope that several hundred years from now someone will find this rod in an attic, or woodshed, or closet with a secret door, and will wonder who Erin Block was.

If she keeps writing like this, they'll surely know.

Blue Lines

Grasshoppers whirl at my feet like playing cards snapped into a stiff wind, a sound that is enough like a rattlesnake to skip my heart a couple of beats.

There’s this high lake in Montana, perched invitingly above the Centennial Valley, and at the bottom of this lake lies a swim fin. It belongs to Tom Reed. I know this because I put it there.

When I ultimately got the float tube back to shore, doing one-legged kick-circles all the way in, I breathlessly fessed up, apologized profusely for dropping the fin, and promised to replace it. Tom just laughed. With a warm grin he waved off my offer said it was just a damn good excuse to get a better pair. I like his perspective.

And I like his book.

The soul of the fisherman is filled with places like Cochetopa. Rivulets to streams, streams to rivers, time rolls on. But the heart of the angler remembers. It remembers places where sunlight slants to laughing water, it remembers perfect fish and precise casts and it remembers place. Years slip over life's smooth stone, and still the soul does not forget.

And Tom's soul remembers with an easy style and grace. Blue Lines is a simple gem. No earth-shattering revelations. No deep contemplation on why things are what they are. No new-age, belly-button examinations of the mystical powers of fly fishing. The book, like its author - or at least my impression of the man after our all-too-short two-day adventure - is focused on the celebration of the now. The short essays in Blue Lines are the honest, beautifully expressed observations of the sights and sounds and smells that surround someone immersed and in tune with the outdoors. They’re the lean-back-and-close-your-eyes recollections of someone who has spent a lifetime in a dogged (and dog-accompanied) pursuit of his hunting and fishing passions.

Sometimes, at a cost.

The carnival was in town when she moved out…

She left me a note, not an explanation. “Thanks! We had some fun. I left you the boat. Enjoy!”

I went off to work that morning and came home and she was gone. The only thing the note lacked was smiley faces and hearts. Lots of exclamation. No explanation. Maybe, I told my buddy, she ran off with the carnival. I was only half kidding.

“Dude. She left you a boat.”

Perspective.

Perspective, indeed, but done simply, allowing the reader to draw the conclusions. Or not. From the simple recount of day-to-day living during a summer spent on a grass farm in the plains and celebration of the hardy folks who live these lives (The Endless Thirst of Grass), to the earthly quiet of a late summer ride on the day the towers fell (Beneath an Untracked Sky), this book lays the day bare and lets the readers wander where they will within it.

But it’s hard not to follow along directly in Tom’s boot prints.

I have the afternoon and the river is just outside of town. It flows clean and cold. It is early yet and the water is too cool for a good bug hatch, but I go anyway, for I have the afternoon and when an afternoon is stretched out before you with nothing to do but fish, you should fish. You need to fish, if only for the fishing.

What more needs to be said?

My Summer Reading

I’ve been bad. Very bad. I’ve not been reading.

There’s been lots of reasons for this, but none of them are good enough to excuse the deplorable lapse. For, if I truly aspire to someday become a passable writer, I simply must read more. Those that think otherwise are fooling themselves.

It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare, or Tolstoy, or Faulkner. It just needs to be something that speaks to you, something that draws you into someone else’s point of view for a while, something that teaches you, or not, but subliminally imprints language and it’s proper, or thoughtfully improper, use upon your brain. Learn, if you will, by osmosis.

But mostly, something that makes you think.

So, with summer’s arrival, it’s time to start whittling away at the small stack of books that have accumulated in my “read next” pile. My summer book stack, from top to bottom, looks like this:

Brook Trout and the Writing Life – Craig Nova
Craig’s from just up the street, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the title alone hints at my attraction to the book. Fly fishing, writing, living - and how he’s dealt, over the years, with the uneasy reconciliation of the three. Right up my alley.

Twelve by Twelve – William Powers
An examination of the logistics and the lifestyle of kicking the traditional American dream square in the ass and living in a twelve-foot-by-twelve foot cabin in rural North Carolina. I’ve visited this place, for it, and others like it, exists here in my home county. A fascinating book filled with the quirky characters that I know as neighbors and the headspace that I am more and more attracted to each day.

Distrust That Particular Flavor – William Gibson
Gibson may be the only “sure thing” purchase I’ll make when it comes to authors. Neuromancer rocked my world and it blows my mind that it was written nearly thirty years ago. Distrust is a series of non-fiction articles, “reportage from the technological and cultural frontiers of the evolving world.” I can’t wait to find out what’s ahead of us. Gibson always seems to know.

No Shortage of Good Days – Jack Gierach
Okay, a no-brainer, except that I’ve had it for several weeks and haven’t worn the cover off of it already. Sex, Death and Fly Fishing was my introduction to the trout bum’s trout bum and I have yet to get my fill. And speaking of bums...

Shin Deep – Chris Hunt
I first read this book a year ago, just before spending a few days fishing with Chris in Montana, to know what I was getting into. I have since spent another week in his company, chasing redfish around the Texas gulf coast, and have kept up with him through these intertubes. I'm betting that a second reading will reveal nuances that a stranger would have missed, then, and that a good friend will chuckle at now.

Accidental Birds of the Carolinas – Marjorie Hudson
Another close-to-home selection. Marjorie teaches writing at the community college just eight miles up the road and relates her immersion in North Carolina living – a thirty-year process. More of my neighbors will undoubtedly pop up in the pages, in one form or another. I do know that a satire of the local “planned community” is included and I wickedly await the reading.

A Home on the Field – Paul Cuadros
A final local selection, this book features my other outdoor passion, soccer, in the true story of a Hispanic community struggling to find footing in our Chatham County seat. Fútbol was their respite, their escape, their expression, and ultimately their bridge to acceptance and respect in this rural southern community.

Points Unknown – Edited by David Roberts
A gift from my good friend and neighbor, Sam, this is a compilation of “The greatest Adventure Writing of the Twentieth Century." From the summit of Everest to the depths of the oceans, this compilation, put together by the editors of Outside, should be fascinating and inspiring.

Colonel Roosevelt – Edmund Morris
The third in the award-winning trilogy examining the life of one of our country’s most fascinating characters, Theodore Roosevelt. The original work, the Pulitzer Prize winning Theodore Rex was fascinating, depicting Teddy’s early years and his genesis as an outdoorsman, politician, and champion of the conservation of our natural heritage. It hooked me, carried me through The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, and I’ve anxiously awaited the finale.

So that’s what I’ll be reading this summer.

How about you?

Stream Weaver: Living Art with Rod and Reed

I'm an author.

Do you have any idea how odd, and exhilarating, that statement feels? After eighteen months of ripping and tearing with editors, publishers, and my own personal demons, it’s finally a reality and I can spill the beans. I’m an author.

But that statement does not come without a price. To make the admission, I must now make another. I’m also a basket weaver.

While that might raise a few eyebrows, you should not be surprised. Fly fishing and basket weaving fit like reel in reel seat. Bamboo rod and natural weaving materials come from the same soil – the same earthy center – and their employment elicits the same emotional satisfactions.


They are a perfect compliment to a simple and creative existence – both the active and passive expressions of our connection to our natural surroundings and loftier ideals. Each is rhythmic. Each is subtle. Each is all-encompassing if we allow ourselves to be enveloped within the rudimentary, repetitive motions. The practices are elementary, but each carries within it profound implications that can reach deep into our souls and our lives, if we let them.

That's what Stream Weaver: Living Art with Rod and Reed is all about. The book is a series of essays and images that celebrate the intersection of stream and studio and natural living, some of which you might recognize from previous posts here on Mike’s Gone Fishin’, most of which are new views of life lived deep in the Carolina woods.

To my great surprise, the concept has resonated with everyone who has touched the project, from my new good friend Bob Clauser (who has a secret connection to the woven art, one that I won’t reveal here but that you will learn in his surprising Introduction), to Jeffery Long-Berger (who, honestly, could give a shit about fly fishing but is a weaving god and writes a darn good Forward), to the publisher, Natural Presses, who will print the book on 100% natural kudzu and wisteria fibers and who’s owner, Kevin Smallie, is a member of the 20/20 club – coaxing a 22 inch brown on a #20 BWO from the South Holston last November.

So here’s the pitch. We’re going straight to paperback (fly fisherman and basket weavers are both notoriously frugal, except when it comes to their “gear”), but Kevin thinks we can pre-produce a number of first edition hardbacks for special distribution - coffee table books, if you will - and is ramping up a short-run production process for them. These will be available, before the general publication of the paperback, to family and friends. You, dear readers, having put up with me here for more than three years now, are considered friends.

To sweeten the deal, the first ten pre-orders will also receive a very special gift. I started basket weaving shortly after I started fly fishing because I wanted a creel. I couldn’t bring myself to pay the crazy prices I encountered for them and, with a forest full of natural fibers sitting just outside my door, decided to weave one myself – and was hooked on the craft.

So the first ten friends will get one of my handmade creels. Be forewarned, however, that, as a strict catch and release fisherman, I will lash its top permanently closed so that it cannot be used to actually store fish. But it will definitely look “classic” on your hip. Or on your coffee table. Next to the book.

But here’s where reading Mike’s Gone Fishin’ finally pays off. If, when ordering, you type in the secret regular-reader’s code, you‘ll also receive your choice of a wide-brimmed faux Tilley hat, completing your classic look, or a genuine T.F.M. Comrade baseball cap, for those a bit more hip.

To pre-order your hardback edition of Stream Weaver: Living Art with Rod and Reed, a one-of-a-kind handmade creel by the author (I still get goose bumps when I type that word), and the hat of your choosing (all for a mere $29.99 - credit cards and PayPal happily accepted), go to The Outdoorsman's Bookshelf and type “April Fools” into the special offers box.

I’ll be glad that you did.

I Know This Place - The Back Country Journal

I know this place

I know every rock

Every cut bank, every sunken log

Every deep run, hidden pocket, and back eddy

Every tree

I know this place

Strangely, I think, it’s beginning to know me


Read the rest at The Back Country Journal.

EMBT's Twenty Questions

My good friend and Montana fishin’ buddy Chris Hunt over at Eat More Brook Trout has a weekly series of posts that he calls Twenty Questions. He “interviews” folks from around the fly fishing realm – photographers, writers, guides, conservationists and, yes, even bloggers. It's always entertaining and informative.

Guess who’s in the barrel this week. Yep. There goes entertaining and informative right out the window.

In a summer post, part of the thread on my wonderful western excursion, I describe Chris as follows:

Chris is as big as the Montana landscape that we visited - in both size and personality. As Trout Unlimited’s Communications Director for the Sportsmen's Conservation Project, he thought to use this weird new blogging medium as yet another way to get the TU message out and, with the help and partnership of the Outdoor Blogger Network, the trip was born. Chris was the life of the party, keeping us laughing deep into the nights, yet ready to hit the stream at the break of dawn. He’s obviously had lots of experience at both. And I have a new appreciation for his book’s title, Shin Deep. Shin deep on him is damn near waist deep on me.

Thanks, brother, for the TwentyQs invitation and for all that you do on our behalf through the offices of Trout Unlimited and your personal commitment to the sport. I'm lookin' forward to being on the water with you again. Soon.

The Backcountry Journal

If you've yet to discover The Backcountry Journal, I have a tasty holiday treat for you. Ben Smith from the fine blog Arizona Wanderings has created a superb new web outpost featuring original pieces from some of the most interesting and talented folks in the outdoor blogging realm. It's quickly become a must read for me.


And, in a stunning lapse of Ben's editorial judgement, I have been asked to contribute. I'm thrilled to see my short work, The Fine Line, appearing in todays's journal.

"There’s a fine line between adventure and madness. I’ve tiptoed it more times than I’d care to admit, never more so than in the gorge. The gorge, you see, invites you to the edge."

Stop by and read the whole piece as well as all of the fine offerings that precede it. Then, be sure to bookmark The Backcountry Journal for what will surely be your go-to spot for many terrific future outdoor literary and photographic offerings.

Thanks Ben!

Something, Something, Something

Something, something, something.
Something.
Something, something.
Something, something, SOMETHING!
Something?

It ain’t working.

A good friend and gifted writer once told me that when the ideas or the words won’t come, just sit down and "start typing something.” Perhaps I’ve taken her too literally, but I have to do, well, something. It's been another full week without writing anything new.