A River
Runs Through It, written by Norman
Maclean in 1976, is a 104-page semi-autobiographical account of the author’s relationship
with his younger brother Paul and their upbringing in an early 20th-century
Montana family in which "there was no clear line between religion and fly-fishing." The story served as his first publication
ever, which he penned at the age of 70. As a “noted
authority” on freshwater angling, his self-described “children’s story too long
to tell children” was set upon the banks and freestone rocks of a river
falling westward from the peak of the U.S. Continental Divide. The
passages of this novel are noted for his detailed use of fly-fishing descriptions
and technique, seen both as a practicing avocation and a poetically-inspired art-form
whisking in its graceful movements overhead.
For its principal nature of bonding two brothers with Nature and
engaging the reader with a number of profound metaphysical questions only asked
of the self while wading within a world of water and sounds and canyons.
The following excerpts are those I paused to reflect upon
or reread in curiosity and admiration after finding myself hooked by a larger-than-life
simplicity written in prose or poetic aspect of an angling appeal painted in colorful
imagery. By a man’s chosen words, fished
of his native waters and whispered from those surrounding mountains he knew so
well. Ultimately, by those confluences
flowing where the two separate existences that are life and fishing are
sometimes seen swirling and circling back upon themselves, trapped, suspended,
or withheld, if only momentarily, within inspiring eddies of time. I hope
there are others also who don’t mind rivers.
………………………………………………………
Below him was the multitudinous river, and,
where the rock had parted it around him, big-grained vapor rose. The mini-molecules of water left in the wake
of his line made momentary loops of gossamer, disappearing so rapidly in the
rising big-grained vapor that they had to be retained in memory to be
visualized as loops. The spray emanating
from him was finer-grained still and enclosed him in a halo of himself. The halo of himself was always there and
always disappearing, as if he were candlelight flickering about three inches
from himself. The images of himself and
his line kept disappearing into the rising vapors of the river, which
continually circled to the tops of the cliffs where, after becoming a wreath in
the wind, they became rays of the sun.
………………
Shockingly, immensity would return as the
Big Blackfoot and the air above it became iridescent with the arched sides of a
great Rainbow.
………………
Something within fishermen tries to make
fishing into a world perfect and apart… many of us probably would be better
fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world
to become perfect.
………………
Fishing is a world created apart from all
others, and inside it are special worlds of their own – one is fishing for big
fish in small water where there is not enough world and water to accommodate a
fish and a fisherman, and the willows on the side of the creek are all against
the fisherman.
………………
You can’t catch fish if you don’t dare go
where they are.
………………
The cast is so soft and slow that it can be
followed like an ash settling from a fireplace chimney. One of life’s quiet excitements is to stand
somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of
something beautiful, even if it is only a floating ash.
………………
The body and spirit suffer no more sudden
visitation than that of losing a big fish, since, after all, there must be some
slight transition between life and death.
But, with a big fish, one moment the world is nuclear and the next it
has disappeared. That’s all. It has gone.
The fish has gone and you are extinct, except for four and a half ounces
of stick to which is tied some line and a semitransparent thread of catgut to
which is tied a little curved piece of Swedish steel to which is tied a part of
a feather from a chicken’s neck.
………………
That’s one trouble with hanging around a
master – you pick up some of his stuff, like how to cast into a bush, but you
use it just when the master is doing the opposite.
………………
What a wonderful world
it was once. At least a river of it
was. What a wonderful world it was once
when all the beer was not made in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, or St. Louis.
………………
Out of the lifeless and hopeless depths,
life appeared. He came so slowly it
seemed as if he and history were being made on the way.
………………
I sat there and forgot and forgot, until
what remained was the river that went by and I who watched. On the river the heat mirages danced with
each other and then they danced through each other and then they joined hands
and danced around each other. Eventually
the watcher joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.
………………
…part of the way to come to know a thing is
through its death.
………………
On a hot afternoon the mind can also create
fish and arrange them according to the way it has just made the river. The mind can make all these arrangements, but
of course the fish do not always observe them.
………………
I did not know that stories of life are
often more like rivers than books. But I
knew a story had begun, perhaps long ago near the sound of water.
………………
The fisherman even has a phrase to describe
to describe what he does when he studies the patterns of a river. He says he is “reading the water,” and
perhaps to tell his stories he has to do much the same thing. Then one of his biggest problems is to guess
where and at what time of day life lies ready to be taken as a joke. And to guess whether it is going to be a
little or a big joke. For all of us,
though, it is much easier to read the waters of tragedy.
………………
A fisherman, though, takes a
hangover as a matter of course – after a couple of hours of fishing, it goes
away, all except the dehydration, but then he is standing all day in water.
………………
They had
spent a year under water on legs, had crawled out on a rock, had become flies
and copulated with the ninth and tenth segments of their abdomens, and then had
died as the first light wind blew them into the water where the fish circled
excitedly. They were a fish’s dream come
true – stupid, succulent, and exhausted from copulation. Still, it would be hard to know what gigantic
portion of human life is spent in the same ratio of years under water on legs
to one premature, exhausted moment on wings.
………………
From where I was I suppose I
couldn’t see what happened, but my heart was at the end of the line and
telegraphed back its impressions as it went by.
My general impression was that marine life had turned into a rodeo. My particular information was that a large
Rainbow had gone sun-fishing, turning over twice in the air, hitting my line
each time and tearing loose from the fly which went sailing out into
space. My distinct information was that
it never looked around to see. My only
close-at-hand information was that when the line was reeled in, there was
nothing on the end of it but some cork and some hairs from a horse’s tail.
………………
When I was young, a teacher
had forbidden me to say “more perfect” because she said if a thing is perfect
it can’t be more so. But by now I had
seen enough of life to have regained my confidence in it.
………………
“All there
is to thinking,” he said, “is seeing something noticeable which makes you see
something you weren't noticing which makes you see something that isn't even
visible.”
………………
...it is not fly fishing if
you are not looking for answers to questions.
………………
The voices of the
subterranean river in the shadows were different from the sunlit river
ahead. In the shadows against the cliff
the river was deep and engaged in profundities, circling back on itself now and
then to say things over to be sure it had understood itself. But the river ahead came out into the sunny
world like a chatterbox, doing its best to be friendly. It bowed to one shore and then to the other
so nothing would feel neglected.
………………
Then the universe stepped on
its third rail. The wand jumped
convulsively as it made contact with the magic current of the world. The wand tried to jump out of the man’s right
hand. His left hand seemed to be
frantically waving good-bye to a fish, but actually was trying to throw enough
line into the rod to reduce the voltage and ease the shock of what
Everything seemed
electrically charged but electrically unconnected. Electrical sparks appeared here and there on
the river. A fish jumped so far
downstream that it seemed outside the man’s electrical field, but, when the fish
had jumped, the man had leaned back on the rod and it was then that the fish
had toppled back into the water not guided in its reentry by itself. The connections between the convulsions and
the sparks became clearer by repetition.
When the man leaned back on the wand and the fish reentered the water
not altogether under its own power, the wand recharged with convulsions, the
man’s hand waved frantically at another departure, and much farther below a
fish jumped again. Because of the
connections, it became the same fish.
………………
…the man had quickly raised
his rod high and skidded him to shore before the fish thought about getting
under water again. He skidded him across
the rocks clear back to a sandbar before the shocked fish gasped and discovered
he could not live in oxygen. In belated
despair, he rose in the sand and consumed the rest of momentary life dancing
the dance of Death on his tail. The man
put the wand down, got on his hands and knees in the sand, and, like an animal,
circled another animal and waited.
………………
Then he told me, “In the part
I was reading it says the Word was in the beginning, and that’s right. I used to think water was first, but if you
listen carefully you will hear that the words are underneath the water.”
“That’s because you are a
preacher first and then a fisherman,” I told him. “If you ask Paul, he will tell you that the
words are formed out of the water.”
“No,” my father said, “you
are not listening carefully. The water
runs over the words.”
………………
Eventually, all things merge
into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great
flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are
timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are
theirs. I am haunted by waters.
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