depths-as pure as a virgin’s soul. The rocks in the shallow water glistened like gold. The birds’ songs floated down like honey-dew on a cold spring night. And there I stood-at the edge of the river’s bend. I took a deep breath and cast out my line, bit by bit just as the magazine had told me to do. I caught a couple snags in the brush behind me, but in almost no time at all I had it figured out. Up and down went the swish of my pole. My old creaky joints gained new life as that line wizzed through the air. The fresh arid air burned my lungs with joy as I cast over and over again.
The sun crept over the mountains, and I sat still for a moment. The mist over the water dissipated, revealing their silent depths before me. For the first time, I really heard the rush of the river that had somehow escaped me until then. It sounded like the soft patter of thousands of men, or horses on a long march mixed with the high pitched singing of the Sirens. I was entranced. I couldn’t see any fish, but that didn’t seem to matter. I was free, and yet the river held me captive.
I fell in love that day.
III
My love turned into an obsession of sorts. I’d never found something I enjoyed as much as I enjoyed fly fishing. I soon found myself wholly invested in it. I bought great big waders to well-wade out into the river with. I bought up all the magazines I could find that had anything to do with fly fishing. I started traveling all around Montana, not to fish, but to find rare and exotic flies that people had tied all around the state, and my cabin started to have quite a collection.
I even went out and bought some equipment that taught me how to tie, not that I ever got good at it. But I learned to collect feathers and then fold them gently over the hook before picking my colored thread and tying it tightly, as if fusing feather and hook into one dangerous animal.
And then every morning I’d take that short, exhilarating walk to the river bend. Every morning I’d cast that same orange line out into the river. And every morning my soul set itself free on those early caresses from that lonely wind.
But I never caught anything.
That didn’t matter though. I never figured the point was to catch anything. Fishing was the point. Fishing was the thing that set me free, and if I would go further into it I’d say that it wasn’t just the fishing, but it was the nature of it itself. It was something that I’d never done before. It’s quite a unique thing to not just stand on the edge of the civilized world, but to be the edge of the civilized world. To wander through a wilderness and find that there your soul finds solace and freedom. It is there in that wild mystery that you find your home, amidst the fearsome and roaring of that peerless river. In the hard sticky touch of tree bark, or the prickly touch of a pine. Or in the harsh caress of that cold dry wind that carries the fresh smell of life. Of a new morning, the promise of hope, new life, and day. I never feel alone when I fish.
It’s there that I feel part of something greater.
I could go on for days about how much fishing means to me, but I should continue with the story, my old age is coming on and I feel like writing this story is one of the last things I do before I pass. I am old, and my life has passed before my eyes like a dream. Even now it seems that I don’t even believe that such things happened. Who knows if anyone will even read this, but if they do I want them to know that I finally found peace.
Enough of that, the story must go on.
I would go out fishing every day, and usually when it got hotter I would go back inside and tie flies or take a nap, and go back out when it got a little bit cooler later at night. One night I decided I would fish right up till it got dark, which I normally avoided doing because even though I feel at one with nature while I fish, I still realize that there are dangers in nature that I cannot afford to tempt. There were many nights when I would hear scratching against the side of my cabin and look out to see the muscular hump of a grizzly wandering around my property or a moose. Most of the time they were small, but one day I had just come in from fishing when an abnormally large grizzly wandered into the river. I thought it odd as he stood in that strong current, it looked as though he too was trying to acquiesce what I had been doing out there.
But then, he caught a fish.
That being said it was odd for me to stay out that late. But something on the wind held me that night. I stood there so long that I wasn’t even fishing, I had just left my line to roam free downstream. Riveted to that spot. Wondering why I couldn’t move. And then suddenly I saw it.
Drifting slowly. Black. Pushed roughly by the current. Frozen, I waited to see what it was. The river was carrying something towards me. It was too wide to be a piece of driftwood, but it was motionless except for the push of the current. Around my bend in the river the fast current slowed down and leveled out, except for one fast channel that cut a path near the far bank. This usually meant that I could wade almost the entire breadth of the river without a struggle, but I never went into that channel. It was fast, and it was more dangerous than the strongest bear.
I heard once that a river never forgets; that its memory is longer than time itself. Some people would say what happened that day was chance, but I loved my river, and I feel like that day it returned some of my love. Because that day
I caught something.
As the black motionless mass neared me, I peered through the fading twilight and saw that it was human. Just like that I snapped into action and rushed out to the far end of the current. And the river led the blob to me. It popped out of the current just enough for me to grab it and pull it with all my might. The mass was surprisingly light, and I realized it was a girl, probably still in her teens, but still relatively light even for an old geezer like me. I gently extracted her from the waves and pulled her onto shore. Her face was pale, soaked, and cold, but it wasn’t wrinkly yet. She hadn’t been in the water for too long. I tried to remember the few things I had seen regarding CPR over the years, and fortunately, I remembered just enough. I pushed her onto her side and hit her back. I checked her pulse, and found that she was still alive. I rushed to a phone to dial for help, but I knew that since it was Montana it could be a long time before the ambulance would be able to get there. So I did what I’d seen on so many training videos I started to do chest compressions.
And it worked.
IV
I was famous. If only you could have seen the difference in how I was treated after that. It was as though I was a completely different man. Everyone loved me. It turns out the girl had been a very well liked daughter from the dentist in town. She had just graduated, full of promise, and hope from the small town. Her and her friends had been out “swimming” late at night in the river. Really, they were out having a go at skinny dipping. The girl had just ducked her head under water out in front of her friends when something hard carried along quickly in the current struck her head knocking her out. Her friends had been unable to find her as she was carried away downstream. Luckily she had resurfaced a little before I found her.
I somehow managed to get her breathing before the paramedics showed up, but still I was glad to be rid of her. It was a very stressful situation for me. I had rarely felt my heart beat like that. It was strained, and it really did hurt. The paramedics shook my hand and took down my name before leaving, and as they left, I sat down on my front porch and stared up at that big Montana sky.
It was one of those beautiful clear nights, where it seems you can touch the heavens. That night I could almost drink the cream from the cool Milky Way. The stars seemed to sparkle so vibrantly against the night sky. The contrast seemed so clear at the time. The contrast of life. I was soon to discover a hard truth about the contrast of life.
But I was content then.
The next few days were just a bunch of hassle. The police came with reporters. Everyone wanted to interview me. There were some who were a little skeptical of my story because the girl had been naked, but for the most part they accepted it, and thanked me. The pa
rents even paid me a visit with the whole family and we had a nice little picnic near my river. They were the only visitors I had ever had during my time in Montana.
But they weren’t the last.
That night my name aired with the story and the next day all the papers came out with the front page entitled: “Fly Fisherman saves girl.” I found it a little bit too much pomp for me. Especially the part about being a fly fisherman, I mean I was a fly fisherman, but I never really thought I deserved such a lofty title. I just fished for fun, not because I was good at it. On top of that, everyone started calling me a hero, but I never thought of myself as that. I was just in the right place at the right time.
The biggest change, however, occurred the next time I went into town. It seemed as though overnight public opinion had changed of me. I had people opening doors for me, and offering to carry my groceries, others slapping me on the back. None of which I really cared for. But everyone would say hi to me, and I was asked for the first time since I had been there how the fishing was. I just smiled and said-optimistic.
I’ll always regret that answer.
The next few days I was able to spend in the peace and quiet of my cabin, just fishing like usual. And