My First Teacher Was The River
My feet dangle in the water, and the current is slow here, the water deep, so deep I know I couldn’t stand if I dropped in.
My hands are smaller than I remember, my tiny fists gripping a Tweety Bird fishing rod, nearly as tall as me. The line sits in front of me, the hook and worm down at the bottom of the river. I haven’t yet been taught the difference between a dry and wet fly or the way a longer rod can change the way you cast the line onto the water.
When it happens, it is sudden and I have never felt anything like it before. The line grows taut, and I watch my small rod bend toward the water, my arm tense and knuckles white. My body feels as if it will be ripped off the log I sit on. I feel my dad’s hands on me, one arm holding me onto the log, the other grasping my pole. I hear his voice in my ear telling me to reel it in, it’s a big one.
The fish doesn’t lay still in the net, my hands holding its wet body and trying to let my fingers wrap around its scales to keep it from moving as dad reaches into the trout’s mouth and pulls the hook from the place it has pierced the gill. The fish gets tied to the log so we won’t lose it as we cast again into the water.
We are sitting together on the log, casting and then waiting for the tell-tale signs of a fish at the surface. When suddenly I am falling, my toes, then torso, then head, under the water. I think to myself how sad it is that my dress will be wet, the one my mom sewed for me from fabric with kittens on it. The water is cold and dark, the shadow of the log we were sitting on blocking the sun from entering the water. I feel my dad’s hand on the fabric of my dress, on my arm, then on my waste, as I come back up toward the surface. There is fear in his face when I can open my eyes again.
I have been to the river more times than I can count since those first lessons on the water. I have learned where the biggest fish live, how to cast without catching the line on a treebranch, and how to sit and wait patiently for a bite.
And since then, I have found that the river is a better education than most anything else. It taught me what it means to hold a live fish in your bare hands and how to fear the undercurrent of the water — the one that rests in deep water, mysterious and endless like time, ready to hold you and keep you should you slip into it.
It taught me that most of life is like the river — one moment the excitement of a fish tugging on the line and wriggling between your fingers and the next pulling you under the current into the dark.
And while I have learned to respect the river and never underestimate it, I have also learned to be unafraid of the current. Instead, I must stay patient, learn how the river moves, and wait for the fish to come.
