Excerpts from John Gierach's "A Fly Rod of Your Own"

Anglers travel a long way to find a seemingly inexhaustible supply of big, wild, gullible fish, but unless you’re trying to feed a village for the winter, there’s no reason to catch a boatload.  After five fish in a row you can say you’ve figured it out; at ten you’ve made your point; and somewhere short of twenty a sense of unease develops that could easily blossom into embarrassment.  The trick is to enjoy the spectacle and then quit while it’s still fun.

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Fishermen claim to love the sea-run fish for their size, but what we really love is the unimaginable size of their lives.

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Back home on my desk was a detailed list of things that would all take too much time and cost too much money but had to be done anyway, and I was happy to be on a distant river ignoring my life.

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A fish hit hard on the inside of the main current and was into the backing before I fully grasped the idea that I’d hooked a steelhead.  By then it was halfway down the run, where I could see the guide reeling in and backing out of the river to avoid fouling my line.  This felt like a heavy fish (they all feel heavy at first), but with any luck, time would tell.  I settled into the precarious sense of well-being that you don’t have to describe to another steelheader and can’t describe to anyone else.

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The way we use it now, “wilderness” is a word that has more to do with emotion than with a specific definition.  Saying “wilderness” is like saying “great singer,” which could mean anyone from Luciano Pavarotti to Johnny Cash.  But one thing it can mean is a region that’s still so vast, wet, roadless, and remote that you need a floatplane to get around in it.

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I’m still one of those anglers Thomas McGuane once described as “searching less for recreation than for a kind of stillness.”

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Fishermen on the water are always aware of how others are doing, even though we make a show of seeming not to notice. 

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The intelligence of trout is overrated, but once they’ve been caught and released often enough, it must start to dawn on them that their once-carefree lives are now plagued by booby traps.  Even when you end up hooking a confidently feeding trout, you can’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t entirely fooled by your fly.  You’ll see the fish slow down, rise cautiously, hesitate, and then nail the fly as if he were trying to snatch something out of a fire without getting burned.

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Every body of water has its idiosyncrasies.  Learning them takes time and attentiveness, but finally leads to the rare and useful sense of knowing where you are and what you’re doing.

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Trout often live in beautiful places, and if you feel like stopping to look, you should.  It’s not like you’re wasting time.  Soon enough you’ll be back to scanning the surface of the lake the way a general surveys a battlefield.

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There are few prolonged flawless performances in fishing, but a handful of trout caught in the same careful way are enough.  They make up for a whole day’s worth of blown casts and flushed fish, and maybe even for a lifetime spent chasing trout.  After all, that’s why we fish: for those days when it goes right and you think, this is all I could have hoped for.

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Since fly-fishing is a solitary sport, it’s hard not to think of other fishermen – collectively, if not individually – as the enemy.  The best advice you can give either a fisherman or a writer is: don’t do what everyone else does.  Avoid clichés.

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Locals have a certain disdain for out-of-town fishermen.  They understand that we do a lot to support the local economy by renting rooms and buying groceries and trout flies, but they’d really rather we just stayed home and mailed in the money.

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We caught fish for a while and were then left with the prospect of a few slow hours, which is pretty much the standard profile for any day of fishing.  None of us is any more philosophical about this than the next guy, but we have gotten past the pipe dream of nonstop action.

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Sometimes before going to work, a cabinetmaker will quizzically heft and stroke an oak plank as though he’s never seen a piece of wood before.  Likewise, a certain kind of fisherman can watch a run for the longest time before tying on a fly and making a cast.  This is a universal ritual of craftsmanship: take a deep breath; don’t rush; erase preconceptions.  Or maybe they’re both reminding themselves that mastery of anything is sometimes a matter of seeing the silver lining in what a less creative thinker would consider a disadvantage.

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The days when you could think of the natural world as immutable may well be coming to an end, and regular fishing trips are now like blue jeans: just when they start to get nice and comfortable, the knees blow out.  The only alternative to living with regret is to go looking for new water.

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My guide got the net under him.  He was a big double-handful with an orange belly and white-bordered fins wearing the universal dumbstruck expression of a caught fish.

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Trout have their passing moods, but salmon seem prone to something more akin to manic depression: violent one minute, catatonic the next.

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Trying to catch a salmon is like playing with a cat: the rules change without notice, and your problem is often nothing more than a failure of imagination.

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He was amazed that he’d had a close brush with such a fish.  He was naturally heartbroken about not landing it, but also saw it as an adventure in possibility, so he’d been fishing with that vision in mind ever since, not really believing he’d hook that same fish or another like it again, but not entirely resigned that he wouldn’t, either.

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Fly-fishing isn’t as hard as some make it out to be, but it does demand your full attention, so if you’re worried that your investments are going south or that your wife is cheating on you, chances are you won’t fish well.  It sounds like heresy, but there really are days when you should have stayed home to take care of business instead of going fishing. 

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I almost always fish better with friends or when I’m alone and unobserved than when there are strangers around – especially strangers who stop to watch or, worse yet, train a camera on me.

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Fishing is still an oddly passive-aggressive business that depends on the prey being the aggressor.

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I find it a constant struggle to live with the kind of simplicity that eliminates struggle.  All I can do is keep reminding myself that Lee Wulff once said, “the last thing you should change is your fly,” which is good advice that’s easier to follow when you don’t have five hundred flies to choose from.

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(On canvas fly fishing vests “with twelve pockets on the outside and eight more on the inside, each with more pockets than the previous one in case I needed them, which I somehow always did.”)

Nature abhors an empty pocket.  So does the tackle industry.

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Sooner or later, everyone who writes about fishing gets around to talking about why they do it.  In the real world, those who fish already get it, and those who don’t couldn’t care less.  It’s not exactly a secret society or anything; but really, if you want to talk about the trip of a lifetime to some remote river, don’t waste your breath on someone who doesn’t fish.

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A lifetime of fishing runs through your mind when you look at new water.

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King salmon are appallingly strong.  It sounds overwrought to say that you can feel the ocean in a hooked salmon, but there’s no other way to put it.  The fish has your complete attention, and you believe you’ll remember every second of the fight with unnatural clarity, right down to the pewter-colored sky and the cool drizzle on the backs of your hands.  But memory survives as a series of snapshots, some of which get misplaced, so although I still clearly remember the fish in the net, I’m now no longer sure how it got there.

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(On the excitement of cradling a king salmon “the size of a ’52 Buick’s chrome bumper” countered in the bewildering moment by an opposing disappointment - or electronic misfortune - of discovering that each of three trip cameras are plagued with dead batteries.)

The four of us stood there with current whispering around our waders, reminding ourselves that the salmon is not the photo of the salmon, which will never quite stand up to the living memory anyway.  The salmon is the salmon itself, here and gone so fleetingly that half an hour later you’ll wonder if it was even real.

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Two mornings and two provinces later I’d board the first of two small planes with pontoons instead of wheels, and the rod tube would begin to seem less like an awkwardly shaped object I had to lug around and more like the key to the universe.

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(On the love of travelling by car through America’s Mountain West.  “Even though the distances can be daunting, the destination sometimes days away...” the author reminds himself “that tourists make this trip for its own sake.”)

Driving anywhere in the West is like traveling by hot-air balloon: it takes forever to get anywhere, but you can’t beat the view.

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(On targeting any sea-run fish, and coming to appreciate the grind of repetitive casting “as a kind of moral imperative” or a “reward of persistence,” albeit a fisherman “never entirely comes to terms with the dead spells in steelheading.”)

When swinging flies is unproductive, the accepted solution is to keep swinging flies, fishing out every cast as if this were the one, because it could be.

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It’s hard to describe the physics and tactics of landing a fish beyond that when a fish does something, you do nothing, and when the fish does nothing, you do something.  It’s fair to say that if you play it too hard, you’ll lose it, and you’ll also lose it if you don’t play it hard enough.  There are those who say they fish to relax, but how can you relax when there’s so much at stake?

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(On netting a “six-pound male brook trout built like a cinder block with a humped back, wearing his best orange spawning colors” on the George River in Quebec.)

This was a prosperous fish in his prime, and if he had a thought in his head, it was only to pass on his blue-ribbon genes.  After I released him, the French-Canadian guide shook my hand as if I’d just won a Pulitzer Prize, which is more or less how I felt.

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I went down to look at the river and stood there wondering how I could so dearly love something that’s really just an example of water obeying the laws of physics.

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Like everyone else I know, I had plenty of things to do besides go fishing; I just couldn’t think of any of them at the moment.

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I’m standing just upstream of the lodge owner, watching him throw a spoon four times farther than I can cast my fly and feeling a little nervous.  His cast is high and across the wind so that the trailing monofilament describes a graceful, parabolic curve.  As one of only four fishermen in who knows how many thousands of square miles, I’d feel really stupid if we got tangled up.

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It is almost impossible to explain to someone who doesn’t fish, but every angler understands that if you don’t retrieve a fly as if it matters, then it no longer matters.

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(On fishing for char at the edge of the Canadian Arctic tundra.)

I’ve eaten lots of fish in lots of places, often as fresh as it comes, but the char from this river are the best I’ve ever had.  Given the cost of getting here and back, these fish constitute the most expensive meals I’ve ever eaten, but that’s somehow beside the point.  The point is that if there’s one fish in the river, there are more, so a mess of them for dinner suddenly looks more promising.

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“There’s a nice fish.”  The comment seems so out of context that it doesn’t register at first.  I haven’t been paying attention, and although I just made yet another cast on autopilot, I don’t know where my fly is, either.  I frantically scan the water in front of me.  It’s perfectly transparent for the first twenty or thirty feet, but beyond that it’s the same opaque gray as the sky and stippled with raindrops.  I make the first strip in some time that’s lively instead of languid, then two shorter ones, and the fly stops as definitively as if I’d hooked a log.  I make a short, hard set, and the fish bores off back toward the main current, angling downstream.  I get two fingers into my reel spool to act as a soft break and begin backing out of the water so I can chase the fish downstream.  My legs are stiff enough from the cold that they don’t seem entirely under my control, but I manage to get out of the river without falling.  I can’t believe I’ve hooked a fish.  I’m also painfully aware that I hooked this one by accident while daydreaming, so in some pure-sports sense I probably don’t reserve it, but I want it anyway.  Of course you naturally want to land every fish you hook, but you want it even more when you’ve come a long way, frozen your ass off, and were convinced up until ten seconds ago that you were in the process of getting skunked.

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After a certain point everyone’s life is informed by loss.  It’s not surprising, but it’s still a surprise.  The permanence of it feels like a life sentence, and there’s always an echo of selfish regret: if there was anything that could have been made right, it’s too late now, and it always will be.  For one thing, Mom now joined the growing number of dead people in my address book whose names I don’t have the heart to cross out and who may eventually come to outnumber the living. 

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It’s hard to describe, but there’s a specific feeling of finality when the fishing is done for the day.

© 2017 (Simon & Schuster)

Ten Years Gone

Maybe, she was the first one finished that day.  Or perhaps, she was the last labor of love handled before a pair of hands paused to unpack a brown-bag lunch.  It could have even been that the work-clock struck “that’s a wrap,” and the family-owned builder’s doors closed upon having crossed all final touches that constitute their holy custom of hand-assembled creation.  After yet another saintly shift of men and women aligned, in the light, to bind blank materials into the bending-benefit experienced of anglers the world over.  An hour, in the evening, that sealed the ending of the ordinary for some, but rather birthed the extraordinary for some unknown some-one.  True, it may have simply been a setting of sun that was preceded by fifty-eight years (at the time) of those very same resin-ating, time-honored traditions of molding excellence and issuing parabolic-passports to other worlds-wet by cork-taping the fulcrums of fish-finding freedom, but it was of some achieving hour imprinted of October during 2006 when the hands of a craftsman carefully set aside the final and freshly-fitted standing-length of a gleaming, graphite-dream.  One aching to begin the arcing life.  A celebration day, that the expert craftsmen, engineers, and designers who all humbly huddle between those honored walls and work under that legendary roof in Park Falls fell inspired to anoint with a unique name for their newest, avid kin.  She was to be introduced as FJ00689.  Measuring at a respectable ten-feet in length and weighing a healthy eleven-point-four ounces, every adorned feature of her tapered figure embodied the handcrafted pride of inspired imagination braved from a workshop in Wisconsin. 

Whatever the case, I’ll never know.  What matters most, is that a star was born that day.  Of a star.  One rebirthed, to spiral wrap and layer as the integral element of her graphite backbone.  Carbon, reshaped as an agile authenticator of Newton’s third law of motion (for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction).  A slender and sleek super-model that demonstrated such with every loaded cast it rocketed from shore like an arrow fired into the sky from a drawn bow.  A veritable slingshot crafted of the very fabric of atoms that were formed through nuclear fusion as the reactionary byproduct of stellar nucleosynthesis once burning deep in the belly of a now extinct star.  Thus, to really fancy over it, one of the best rods on Earth was eventually distilled from those very seconds spanning the universe’s evolutionary infancy marking the beginning of scientific time.  So, it may have been a near-eternity in the making, but I obligingly learned that she was worth the wait. 

By her very nature, it only seemed fitting then, that this surfcaster grew to know his accomplice best under star-light, where she shined most-frequently of a bending-benefit.  Those untold and unforgettable outings seasoned of salt and sand when the battling-bow of her spine and straining genuflection before the giving sea and pulsing tip startled alive by turning-tugs pulling within the tumbling wave and my white-knuckle grip frozen unto her upper-handle of cork were those shaking slices of time won of a bonding virtue.  Those innumerable, intransigent instances of influence she beached forever onto the banks of memory. 

Ten years gone.  The thousands and thousands of casts.  Dare I even imagine how many miles have unspooled through her concentric holds of ceramic.  Those polished passageways which have effectively guided me before waters gin-clear and steely-gray and Jersey-green.  Each faraway heave or short fling, a toss that tickled her to speak of swish-sounds as spiraling braid spewed into those haunts familiar or spilled before latitudes new and mysterious and afar.  One then inhaling silently to take it all back in.  A night-stick, bending always for those slopes sandy and drumming of pounding waves or trickling of wash by the seaside.  Of the ocean.  The Hook.  Harbors.  Sounds.  Flats.  Inlets.  Riverside.  Atop an esteemed grassy-knoll.  Over hills and dunes far away.  Road-trips to the stone-strewn forefronts of submerged boulder fields.  Baptisms adventured of storied, east-coast meccas.  Montauk.  Islands.  Before the houses of the holy.  Nearest the stairways of surfcasting heaven. 

Beside angling strangers.  In the silent company of friends.  With friends no longer with us.  Alongside my father.  In the whisper of midnight conversation disrupted by laughter.  Among calls yelling, “they’re over here!”  Among points out to sea indicating, “they’re way out there.”  Under the informing swarms and swoops of feathered fishing-finding shrieks fluttering in-front in-range.  Posed in a fish-hoisting picture.  Balanced in-hand or rested over shoulder.  Broken down in-car or mounted upright to front-bumper.  Laid upon grass or settled over sand.  Always asked of one last cast.      

Among blitzes and between blow-outs of weather.  In drenching rain and season-ending snow.  Of good times, of bad times.  Snapped of line.  Snagged a many lure.  Gone lifeless to lost battles.  Beached beauties.  Substantiator of, the epic.  Chased bait-balls, pinpointed boils, cheered-on blow-ups, and aimed toward tail-slaps.  Pursued invariably under soaking summer sun and subtle shadow of autumnal moon and constellations of twinkling light and grey-colored, low-pressure bellies pressing of childhood imagination.

Through showers of salt.  The wearing and tearing.  Those drops, grazes, bangs, scratches, scrapes, chips, and crashes.  Tolls cast to time.  Freshwater wash-downs and soapy cleanings.  Safe, tucked-away leanings.  Inert winter hibernations.  Readying spring dustings.  An eventual reunion of two, agreeing sections.  The engagement proposal of a reel.  The rhythm of that first-cast made again.  All of that, and so much more.  A whole lotta love.  For the reverence of a rod held in-hand.  For a purebred.  A mid-western-made medicine.  An arcing elixir of graphite-fed adrenalin.  For dreams that may finally be witnessed in colors littoral and living.  You shook me.  Your song will forever remain the same.  Thank you.

Loitering as We Laugh Into 7-Eleven Coffees

Our morning on the beach was through, but that did not mean it was time to go home.  Not yet, anyway.  We’re not in some kind of rush to get anywhere, are we?  Nope, not on a Saturday.  What began as a late-morning craving for caffeine eventually evolved into a post-angling tradition, no matter our perceived or necessitated degree of brewed-bean dependency.  From what I could tell, we weren’t the only two who did this either.  I always saw a number of big pick-up trucks or SUVs, ya know, the bumper-sticker-laden type with the aluminum tube grill-mounted rod holders or Thule roof racks, parked in the corners of convenience store lots after a tide has expired or the precious window of opportunity has shut hours after sunrise.  This is exactly what Scott and I would do also.  Just as skiers may look forward to a steaming cup of hot chocolate come the end of their day, sipping this simple pleasure inside a mountain resort’s base lodge, as anglers, we’d look forward to rewarding our tired and dampened, salt-stained bodies with a warm and refreshing, extra-large coffee, while catching-up for lost time with one another, shooting the breeze until we realized forty-five minutes has already passed.

I never had so much innocent fun with this friend as I did, while in all places, idling outside the entranceway of some busy convenience store, where the influx of customers seemed non-stop.  How often does one really find themselves hanging around in front of such a store anyway, as a patron passing time?  I wasn’t a skateboard-riding teenager, or a listless smoker getting his nicotine fix from a freshly-opened pack he just bought, or a Spanish-speaking day-worker for hire hoping to get picked-up for any sort of manual labor.  I was a man, dressed for the most part, like a surf fisherman, en route home.  Ah, but the entertaining laughter that was to be shared first in the company of my comedic cohort! 

I learned long before that it never mattered where Scott happened to be, or the company he was holding, as he was just one of those types who could make you laugh wherever and whenever, every time, hands-down.  He was the type that easily won attention, a bona fide comedian who made his off-the-cuff antics look as easy as lounging in a beach chair with your feet in the sand on a warm sunny day.  This gentle giant would get a kick out of innocently busting-chops, delicately walking a self-prescribed tight-rope, dissecting the innocence of unassuming strangers, but always for good-natured fun, never in a nasty or demeaning manner.  Being crass wasn’t his style, and people easily understood that, I know.  I’d watch them laugh with him.  He was the type who could have sold ice to Eskimos, for crying out loud!  He was that personable. 

One October morning after catching a few Stripers on a local beach, we again found ourselves outside of a busy 7-Eleven located on the barrier island of my hometown with coffees in-hand.  I’d swing between leaning my back against the storefront’s coarse brick wall to stepping around from here to there, and Scott would do the same, roving about on the sidewalk, keeping the conversation going as his head peered around like a tank’s turret surveying the nearby asphalt and concrete landscape for incoming targets.  It was always enjoyable to spend time this way with him, unaware in essence, that time was idly weaving its binding thread around us, stitching us together to further reinforce and add yet another patch of memories to the quilt that was our ever-growing friendship.

Once, we haphazardly got onto the subject of online fishing forums and how vicious the outcry became from internet armchair generals sitting behind keyboards whenever ANY contributing member’s post was making a sacrilege statement or rousing reference to a circumstance known colloquially as “spot-burning” (revealing the exact location of a fishing hot-spot not generally known to others through direct naming thereof or identifying with generalities so easily decipherable such that it becomes exposed, and going so far as to burn at the stake ANY forum member who posts a photo of his kid holding a nice fish with geographically-identifiable structure in the photograph).  Fishermen, after all, are notorious for keeping secrets.  The last thing they tend to do is let four-thousand strangers on the internet know where the bite is so that everyone and his brother is unofficially invited to inundate a beach or jetty like hundreds of ants on a pile of sugar, whipping treble hooks within inches of one another in hopes of hitting fish. No, no, no, it doesn’t work that way.  The unwritten law amongst the angling community is to find your own fish and then keep it to yourself.  Anything else is considered blasphemy in our world, and for damn-good reasons, but I couldn’t help but laugh like hell that morning at Scott’s suggestion, made through the giggling breaths of his unique laugh, that it would be absolutely hilarious to read the inevitable typewritten torrent of vehemence posted in response on a certain Striper-fishing On-Line forum, if he flagrantly disclosed in the most-active “Fishing in NJ for the Month Of” thread where the blitzing action had occurred, say, an hour earlier, but without directly naming the associated beach town, which he knew would only piss-off any readers as a result.  His idea jokingly sprung from out of nowhere, as a random, musing piscatorial-minded proposal, a bedeviling idea crafted solely to ruffle a large number of the old-salts feathers, and would undoubtedly elicit explicit, vociferous uproar and furor, quite possibly leading to the complete excommunication of his online namesake.  Well, not really, but his suggestion, a masquerading stunt of sorts, fancied in order to get a good rise out of these hundreds upon hundreds of unknown and unseen, die-hard forum contributors, was to instead rename the local shore towns in a forum post with a nearly identical homonym, spot-burning in every sense of the word, and thereby clueing those in on the whereabouts of any daily hot-spots.  Genius, I thought! “Imagine what would happen if I posted in the main forum that the action is ON in “Flea Light” (Sea Bright), “Ronmouth Reach” (Monmouth Beach), or “Wrong Ranch” (Long Branch),” he asked with a great, rolling laugh.  “Man, ya shoulda been there!!  I’m sure the bite will be insane later tho!  Go get ‘em!”  I was dying after hearing this!  How clever!  Yes, that would really get them going Scott, I told him.  And of course, we both knew it would start WWIII online.  That was the whole point of the joke.  Of course, he had no intention of provoking, so it would stay between us, our half-filled coffee cups, and the straight-faced guy who happened to walk into the store glancing over at us, certainly wondering what the hell could those two idiots possibly be laughing at so much?  

Yet another time, we would find ourselves again leaving with sore abs after a lively hour of stomach-twisting chuckling was had.  I remember the endless amusements made over the outlandish behavior of a dreadfully salty local old-salt from a neighboring town named Theo, who I never, ever saw fishing once without his mangy, five-pound Poodle trotting by his side.  We saw him on the beach that morning (after all the action was said and done mind you - i.e. he caught wind of it from someone else) wearing oversized, shin-high rubber galoshes over blue denim jeans, dragging and drudging his flopping footwear through the sand with his dog in-tow, holding what looked to be a boat rod set-up, looking around wide-eyed at the other fishermen like a turkey vulture skipping around on a roadside shoulder, scampering for the spoils of a free meal. “Hey Theeeeeeeeo” Scott would parody in a stressed-syllable-sounding, innocently mimicking manner that instantly made me lose it!  He would carry-on, entertaining in a quirky style only he could pull-off so well, enacting for me an impromptu comedic skit about a companion we envisioned of Theo’s named Russell, who I imagined to resemble a real dunce, a motley-dressed, lackadaisical, simple-minded country bumpkin perhaps, randomly and aimlessly moping about, a neighborly pal making mindless conversation with this Theo, bantering how the two would chatter and gossip about the fishing that occurred, and how both had missed it, again.  I would laugh as though a feather was tickling me in the worst way possible.  It was that good.

So simple, yet so fun.  It comforts me to know that I had the pleasures of sharing these mornings together with a super-outgoing friend who had a special knack of reminding me by way of his every day actions that the purpose of life is to live, to cut-loose whenever you can, to simply enjoy the ride, and make sure you find time to get high on the everyday humor in life that always surrounds us.  So that’s what I continue to do.  I’ve made it as much a priority as catching the tide.

While every fisherman’s ideals are different, the hopes of propping up a nice fish while standing within shifting, sinking sand as rushing seawater hisses up the beach slope, splashing over one’s feet, so that he can show his buddy who is standing beside him, smiling with bundled enthusiasm and proudly posing for a quick snapshot, is in my opinion, what draws each of us anglers out of bed at ungodly hours of the night in a momentary stupor, shore-bound before any hint of dawn appears, eager to wrangle with a fish taken from each of our “secret” spots discovered over time and held dear.  I guess in Scott’s spirited opinion, naturally peppered with whimsical light-heartedness, he must have felt that it’s absolutely silly to keep a fishy location secret, or that there’s no credence in keeping a spot private; it’s simply a location that had fish there yesterday, so why not share the wealth, so-to-speak.  Or maybe to an extent, he just didn’t think someone should take surf fishing that seriously, so as to deny someone with the very same ideals and desires of conviction as them, a fellow surf-rat, the opportunity, or hope moreover, of landing a single fish, a magnificent, but downright simple, spellbinding act which has the universally uplifting power to help someone rediscover a deep-seated joy exhibited to others with the flashing of a smile, to positively change their outlook for the day, allowing one to beam in happiness and enjoy the related sensations of floating on air for a while, or allowing them to build a fond memory with a friend or loved one so that it may survive for years untold, proof for making that grinding, five-day work-week just put behind them, and the uncommon discipline to get out of bed after turning-off the damned ringing of an abnormally-early-sounding Saturday morning alarm clock, worth all the while.

Laughing to no end alongside a friend, while wearing a grin plastered unto your face has the tendency to make an ordinary cup of coffee taste rather delicious.  On mornings such as these, as we loitered with our tired backs pressed against brick-walled storefronts, watching the world come and go, where people just like us pulled-up seeking salvation of sorts from the plastic-packaged to-go offerings sold inside a 24-hr quickie-mart, we were more than content to observe and undoubtedly crack-up together as two saltwater-obsessed buddies jesting over life’s quirkiness delivered to us between sips of coffee siphoned from under plastic Solo lids, knowing that on each occasion we met for a cup o’ Joe, the precious time that disappeared like the slowly savored java from our mugs would always be good to the last drop. 

Casting Under a Shadow of Greatness

I was carefully traversing atop the smoothly-rounded freestones blanketing the shoreline below Montauk Point Light for the second time in my life.  I felt the accompanying, cool winds of October blowing once again, nipping at the exposed skin of my face.  These incessant, invisible streams of transformation seemed determined to sneak inside my collar, a chilling reminder of the seasonal change underway which was stirring the surrounding sea, initiating the impulses of her finned inhabitants to orchestrate their annual southern migration, and in my case, opening esteemed doors of opportunity which surfcasters wait all season-long to pass through, permitting a vast oceanic outlet for the faithful desire in our spirits to seek a soulful remedy prescribed by her saltwater-stricken offerings.  Standing submerged above the knees within this hypnotically-soaking, comforting bath of restoration, I was free to let myself go, allowing the membrane of my waders to serve me true, offering protection against the wet and breezy elements, but allowing the absorption of liberation to seep deep into my spirit as my expanding lungs filled afresh, nurturing the core of my being with raw, salty-smelling air whose purging powers of renewal were inhaled generously to circulate deep throughout my pumping bloodstream, to fuel the very tips of my grasping fingers, to faithfully cleanse my mind of the mundane clutter left deposited by everyday-living, as the curative, surrounding seawater, in its rhythmic timing, rushed forcefully around my torso to veil my lower-body in bubbling, white foam, a welcoming seizure by the sea offering her ceremonious, churning ablution to rinse-away the burdening accumulations of compromise inherited over time, finally becoming relieved of such as I hungrily trekked onward, lofty and luminous in spirit, resolute to circumnavigate the expansive, rock-strewn coast with a dear fellow-fisher during our weekend retreat.

Wandering the littoral landscape with this friend of mine, we found ourselves purposefully adrift, one-hundred-seventy-five-miles away from home, united by our piscatorial passions, bonded by common principles, inseparable afflictions rooted from a childhood exposure to the aquatic seascape, a freedom cultivated in lifestyle choice, and a continued desire to fully immerse ourselves within Nature’s playground, allowing our souls to seep within her challenging, raw elements, to quench yearnings fueled by driving dreams, striped fish, and hopes of untold discovery. Together, we would walk in tandem, with sleek, graphite rods cradled in-hand, lure-packed surf bags crossed over our shoulders and pressed against our lower backs, stamping our way slowly across the stone-studded shoreline during our once-a-year, highly-anticipated, self-declared pilgrimage to “The End.”  This seed, sowed for the first-time one year earlier on the eastern-most shore of Long Island, was passionately declared to become our new-found tradition which we vowed to uphold between ourselves, no matter the consequence of cost, nor the burdening pressure of work commitments, for we knew that the intrinsic value of such an excursion would mature over successively unfolding years and with time, increasingly grow rich with fond memories, enduring all-time, flourishing like a towering, three-hundred-year-old Beech reaching skyward for the sun.  The expanding root system of our chronicles would only trench deeper, perennially seeking unfound ground, growing exhaustively to establish an extensive framework of recollections capable of sustaining the outermost leaves of unbridled friendship extending furthest from this tree’s branches, surviving through all of life’s seasons and trying droughts of time.  This journey of ours would physically add a visible growth ring every year, representing another chapter written for our story, and attempting to tally all of these concentric feats of achievement, perhaps in curiosity of our bygone casts, would simply blur the scrutinizing eyes of one counting. 

Falling upon the ides of the tenth month, day two of our trip, the burning inferno of the sky chose to shine brilliantly in such a way that prolonged exposure to her warming rays resulted in the kind of late-season sunburn you’re never quite expecting will occur.  Later in the afternoon, amid a bleary-eyed lethargic trance, this sneaky solar attribute became apparent to me, as I was battling the urge to nap before dinner, surprised to see the flushed tone of my forehead and cheeks in a mirror, my dry, wind-burned skin bearing the evidence after a full-day of exposure as it was even stinging slightly to the touch.  Sunlight was the least of my worries though; I could have easily prepared myself better, applying a sunblock to scatter its singeing shower of rays.  The uncontrollable force of Nature, the wildcard which was taunting all surfcasters on the beach that day, challenging our efforts with a smirking grimace, was the air blowing all around us, rambunctiously alive with unsettling enthusiasm, deflecting off of my face and whisking throughout uncovered hair protruding from the back of my wool hat.

Overnight, near gale-force winds invaded the region, whipping at a sustained swiftness of thirty-miles-per-hour, and at times gusting to thirty-five.  I could do nothing more than hope that the perturbed atmosphere would settle-down as soon as possible, so we would have a chance at fishing prime tides in the morning.  Unable to soothe my growing apprehension, and being lured by the driving, dull-sounding outbursts of rushing wind howling through trees and shearing around the motel’s walls and rooftop, I felt it necessary to poke around, as if the night was pleading for me to step outside into the blinding darkness.  I needed to confront this disturbance head-on, this unwelcomed imposter, deciding I’d stroll towards the beach’s sand dunes with an open bottle of seasonally-brewed beer swaying from the neck in my loosely-held fingers. 

“Scott, I’ll be back man.  I’m going to check this out,” I announced from the patio doorway of our cozy beachfront rental.  “You got it Joey!” he yelled back to me in an elated boom.  But prior to cracking the door open, our barrier to an altogether different, harsh element, I paused before stepping outside.  Turning my sight across the room, with my outstretched hand clenched upon the doorknob, I intentionally froze myself motionless as a sudden, gratifying feeling had just rushed over me.  In that instant, I experienced a wholesome, overcoming wave of contentment, the type that pays a visit from time-to-time, and when it does, the indisputable joy obtained is nothing short of a genuine exuberance of conviction feeding the very heart of one’s reason, a fulfillment realized from existing, breathing, and living in this moment, at this time, in this place.  Much like the brevity of a dizzying, unanticipated lapse of déjà vu, I knew this episode too would be a fleeting, touch-and-go glance in endurance, so I remained fixed in my thoughts, with planted feet, in order to savor and preserve the moment of reflection, doing my best to cherish this tranquilizing state of mind. 

I could only have stood there for a few seconds I imagine, before continuing onward, but I remained beside that doorway, grinning to myself after venting one of those brief, exaggerated exhalations from the nose, an acknowledgement of sorts, in this case ensuring that I absorb the encouraging sense of happiness siphoned from this tickling pretense to laughter it inspired to evoke, a touching, fortuitous moment captured by my opportune eyes, the type only experienced every now and again, if you’re lucky.  There was my friend, nestled comfortably within his glory, a man at peace with himself, laying supine across the room’s low-budget couch wearing his typical beaming smile, appearing to have completely withdrawn from reality both physically and mentally.  His shoeless-feet, retired for the evening, were kicked-up and crossed at the ankles.  It was as if he was agreeably burrowed in a cozy lair, a hideaway retreat from the busy demands of modern life, a seaside spa for the soul, his weekend sanctuary surrounded by an organized, testosterone-inspired clutter that was our unpacked camping and fishing gear placed methodically throughout the lodge.  That familiar, bluish glowing light from a muted television illuminated his eyeglasses and highlighted the features of his face, as the music of his iPod saturated the living room with yet another solid-sounding playlist, a sonic representation of what mattered most to him.  If I had to guess, he was everywhere he wanted and needed to be. 

Seconds in time like these, where one may feel dazed in a temporary suspended animation, so-to-speak, are instances of life’s rarer, singular moments that make me warm-and-fuzzy on the inside.  Served is a type of nourishing cuisine for the soul where the resulting mindset from such reflection leaves me feeling satiated, content, and complete.  “It” simply is a rushing feeling of happiness reaching deeply to the guiding essence of one’s core, one easily distinguishable from all others in that the joy remains anchored inside, a gift for the mind to relish, to unwrap perpetually, over and over again.  I wish the physical experience could be frozen in time forever, but I know that’s not possible.  That is why for me, realizing the significance of its arresting gravity must be celebrated and placed carefully away in one’s memory.  They are the miniscule moments with lasting, momentous potential which will forever stay imbedded within us; personal souvenirs of a life lived with truthful devotion, smeared in a decadence of richness.  We beg for these moments, which arrive with an unannounced frequency, greedily holding dear the associated memories, for they are the priceless, defining moments which help to shift our focus, making us feel human again, as the euphoric head-rush lifts our cheeks higher, preserving like a color snapshot a reminder of our individual significance in this life, rooting us on so that we may continue to write another sentence to our masterful work-in-progress, our epic proclamation of purpose, the climactic testament of proof cast during these spellbinding seconds being an exclamation of assurance that the daily grind we live is fully-worth our tireless input and effort.      

Although enveloped in abduction by this intimate, high-spirited accent of inspiration, I still needed to appease my piqued curiosity and unsettling concerns, to witness this weather first-hand, in-the-flesh.  I swung the room’s door open, introducing myself with individual steps of confidence to the darkness outside, descending from the second story balcony on a white-painted, wooden staircase wrapped along the length of the building.  My sneakers shifted from side-to-side in the awaiting bed of soft, dimpled sand at ground-level.  Greeting me was an unhindered, stiff wind blowing directly off the ocean, forcing me to squint my eyes in protection.  Damn, this will not be good for fishing in the morning, I thought to myself as I listened in a disappointing manner to the tall ocean crashing ashore.  The sleeping stillness that is a typical night was just the opposite.  She was tossing and turning uncomfortably, unable to rest peacefully, stricken with an agitating case of insomnia, awakening a world of sounds as she stirred her fevered fingers over the landscape.   For a moment, while standing alone and small on the beach, staring across the blackened horizon in the direction of home, while exhaling warm breaths of devotion into the cool, streaming flood of oncoming air, I knew that these respirations instantly became drowned-out by the overpowering night, diluted and reduced to a meaningless nothingness amongst the salty-smelling slipstream bleeding from around my projecting face into the night, forever trailing into the black void encompassing my resolute stillness.  My hopes may have been deflated, but I would like to believe that my spirit defiantly retaliated, flying freely and naturally upon these winds, riding aloft on outspread wings like a bird which owns the sky, reunited with the assailing air fostering the very breaths of life responsible for nourishing my longings.  I was stubbornly reminded of the fact that when planning a fishing-trip months in advance and relying on the whimsical elements of Nature, in this case the temperamental personality and capricious complexities of autumnal weather, where surfcasters are forced to tread along a razor’s edge, committing themselves to a gamble, all we can ever do is hope outright for fair winds, a suitable surf, and if we’re lucky, the judicious timing required to intercept the movements of migratory fish.  From where the rolling dice had settled on this night, I was again made aware that nothing in this life is ever an entrusted guarantee.  This is a fact we all know and accept, but often neglect to look directly in the face, even when standing on the sands of a beach in October.

Although this undesirable wind storm waned by morning, reducing into the steady, low-teens, its damaging effects had already been wrought on this east-coast mecca’s surf, producing unfishable conditions on the Point’s south-side, as overhead, mushy waves rolled ashore in endless torrents of fury, callously altering the trip’s primary purpose of pursuing the fickle whereabouts of Morone Saxatilis.  Of course, as fishermen, our hopes to engage with stripers were still consciously forefront, but the act of marching together along the freestone-riddled shoreline to coax fish in this lousy weather became secondary, and in my mind, was a fleeting focus of attention.  Yet, I heaved dozens of casts with all my might in order to reach some semblance of fishy-looking water, but all such attempts landed the same repetitious catch-of-the-day: a crosswind-created bow in my line rivaling the size of the St. Louis Gateway Arch, the overpowering of my heaviest lures by the tumbling, coffee-colored sea while in retrieve, their positioning being immediately swept out of desired strike-zones and any sense of “feel” through the mainline, pitifully being dragging back parallel across the beach’s rip-tide strength backwash, greeted by a waiting, despondent frown, then shaken of the clinging disappointment embedded into each of the freely dangling hooks before being rocketed out to sea for one more shot.  We had to try something I thought; after all, this was a fishing trip. 

In time, I chose to peacefully submit, as some days are just not meant for fishing.  Instead, I turned my attention behind me, allowing all of Montauk’s grandeur to soak within me like cascading water to a dry sponge, to quench the escalating thirst which dehydrated my eagerness to stalk fish, withering my wishes like a forgotten, unwatered houseplant.  I would survey in all directions with weaving, wandering eyes, absorbing the cliff-side magnificence of her expansive vista, removing any limiting blinders of perception, withdrawing from the tunnel-vision focus that was staring down the spine of my rod with every directed cast, watching intently the flight of my presentation towards the sea’s white-capped surface.  In a way, I had to recompose, reconciling with the comforting relief of realizing that there were nearly countless avenues to venture on this vacation.  Yes, we come here to fish, but we come here to fish because it is the famous stage, the Grand Ole Opry of her kind, the pristine backdrop to an undeveloped getaway where her storied, unparalleled past, robust in a history living ripe to this day, marking the wading-soul’s testament to and birthplace of revelation, a coveted destination of fishing apostles who hail from afar to christen themselves in her sweeping, divine waters.  The legendary, glowing aura of reputation is what suggests casting a shadow on these stony beaches much more substantial and symbolic than just any other day of leaving footprints behind in the sand somewhere else, those only to be washed away in a splashing surf, your presence forever erased with a receding tide.  The mighty breathes of air inhaled here remain a part of you, invigorating and clenching to your spirit, pervading the soul in a fashion which makes you rest impatiently to be fed again. 

Impassioned feelings as these, stricken to the wayfaring surfcaster’s afflictions of desire, penetrate deeply to the fish-seeking fiber of one’s being like an embedded harpoon of purposeful meaning, boldly striking the inspired of heart, and vibrating true with reason for those possessed with the crazed idolizations for a striped fish, for those who have tasted the salty water of the Atlantic upon their lips as it dripped from their wave-soaked face, having stood wide-eyed in the surf, studying oncoming sets of waves, cautiously back-pedaling in a shifting, sinking sand in order to dodge another merciless drenching.  Dare her as you might, but this ocean, raw in spirit, bows neither to man nor any obstacle in her path.  On the rocky shorelines of this Northeast surfcasting capital, you may only participate in your efforts, donating your passion, for she continuously roars forward in an unstoppable, foaming fury.

These ingrained, tenacious impulses of the surfcaster vie to manifest larger than life, stemming from an undeniable truth: that a healthy-spirited man requires to be challenged in a manner where he may prove his worthiness within a testing environment.  So exists this primal fire burning from deep within, fueling a hunger for such adventure, thereby requiring a chosen outlet to stoke this inferno of passion, emitting fiery embers in an appetite of excitement.  To squelch these desires is to suppress man entirely, and is as dangerous as caging a wild lion, for an inevitable and agonizing death of spirit threatens to follow as the extinguishment of this life-force, once seen dancing fiercely in their eyes, will gouge both beasts of their visceral howls, the two slowly becoming eviscerated of essential substance and emasculated of a once unrivaled prowess.  Surf fishing these shores has always offered reason for the casting man to feel challenged, for the Fresnel lens beaming from inside his far-seeing eye to shine as wide and brightly as the towering beacon standing resolute over his brave shoulders, this brown and white-banded, century-old sentinel guarding the shoreline which he immerges, where he is wrought with determination to launch that ever-meaningful, sailing plastic-prayer over the ocean, to taunt his heart with a promise of hope, to feed the flaming desire which draws him to return united under the ancient sea surrounding her great, casting shadow looming from the high precipice behind.

Laying my rod aside to instead concentrate efforts with my mind, focusing my sight to see more clearly, with a more discerning and judgmental eye, was nothing new to me, but it became the necessary mandate as a fisherman who was offered no other choice on this weather-dominated day.  Today, the fish would win.  Somewhere out in the ocean below these bitter, relentlessly churning waves they were gliding in the tidal conveyor of currents before me.  For them, it was just another day in their underwater kingdom, a day I would have no participation of trespassing.  I switched gears, instead using the simple, beautiful outlets surrounding me in nearly every direction imaginable to fall exposed to my ever-observant desire in adding experience of various dimension to my existence, basking in a satisfaction of enrichment when uncovering new unknowns in new lands.  There is always far more to experience than what haphazardly enters the eye as obvious perception, this cliff-side destination at the edge of the sea being no different.  Anyone could see the profoundness of style steeped within her pure, natural complexion, a fulfillment that is physical to the senses.  This much is easy to determine and admire.  One must simply find themselves lost in her distracting, panoramic visualizations stretching uninhibited for miles and miles in every direction.  Under the surface however, lies another world to recognize and connect with.  To fully-seize the essence of her character, to make the claim that you have seen Montauk, one must be willing pry harder, with a deep conviction for discovery of the inimitable peace-of-mind which is laid bare by such an encounter.  Her allure is much like the mystique of a stunningly attractive woman, instantly teasing the eyes with an intensely desirous, riveting seduction.  She lies in wait with unseen curves to be experienced, for one to move closer to, as there is unspoken encouragement for one to commit to deepest memory her temptations discovered in touch and taste, that which are unlike any other you’ve embraced.  She is affectionately remembered as “the one.”  Many have compared, but none have satisfied to the extent of this union.  This I knew, as I would find means to embody and continue to embark upon yet another one of my oft philosophically-minded quests, trials in further understanding the precious significance of my place in time, provoking to unveil personal insights translated from an existence molded in the artisanal hands of Nature’s serenity.  I was to feed this hunger and savor with my senses her mysterious and uncommon appeal in order to relish in reflections of enjoyment, utilizing the gift of inspired introspection on this second day of respite. 

I had split away from Scott for some time now, giving him the precious time spent here on the meandering shoreline to bond with his teenage son, man-to-man, one-on-one, with fishing rods in-hand.  Both had fallen out of my view at this point as they headed west along the winding coast of the north-side to cast in calmer surf.  I knew it was important for the time they now had between themselves to be cherished as it should be; adrift in one another’s company.  The dream of chasing-down fish was an illusion of sorts.  Whether or not they knew outright, it was my opinion, as I watched their outlined bodies trek onward, decreasing in size before fading completely out of sight, that both had just caught for themselves what we fishermen refer to as “personal bests.”  They were walking side-by-side on the idyllic shores of Montauk, in a mystic world away from home, sharing the beloved gift of alliance between father and son, that which can be experienced with no one else, making it altogether priceless.  The indelible moments they would create beside one another could never be valued by any means possible, only their own afflicted hearts and minds would be able to determine the significance of such a dear, incalculable treasure.  As I saw it, another brick would be laid atop the many others already set to their soaring foundation of memories being built together, strengthening another episode to reflect upon in the distant future, to recount the peculiar occurrences of a rich story forged as father and son, to glow in shared smiles rooted from this experience, and chuckle in the fondness of an illustrious past painted with beautiful colors of combination.  Left to my imagination once more, I thought how special it would be, against the odds of weather we faced, if unknown to me, one of their rods was bent over in a magnificent arch, as the breathtaking stripes of a linesider were tugging fiercely in a splashing, swirling battle, their solitary afternoon in concert now erupting with the elation of total surprise, the experience shared together to forever become branded in their astonished memories set atop the freestone shoreline with lapping saltwater waves cheering at their feet.

Secluded with my thoughts, I continued in the direction of the lighthouse.  The sheet of rounded-rocks clacked and clunked against one another, readjusting as they settled or moved entirely under my digging footsteps.  These stones were scattered by the hundreds of thousands about the beach, in some areas more prominently and densely-packed than others amassed closely nearby, covering the shoreline as if it were a quarry of perfectly-smoothened, spherical rubble.  Assembled in collusion, their blanketed presence creates a distinct ambiance adorning the resolute, unmistakable facade to the endmost tip of Long Island, adding earthy character to the surroundings, a visible distinction like that of a man wearing the days-old stubble of an unshaven beard on his face.  Defining the limits as to where this protruding coastline terminates and submits to the sea waits a naturally-sculpted, unmistakable lamination of individuality.  Over centuries of time, subject by the incessant forces of flooding, tidal water, these stones have become physically tumbled, clustered together in segregated aggregations, piled as temporary neighbors in large patches of similar-sized pairings, as seasonal storms rearrange the placements of this New England-esque artistry, forming the exposed, uppermost layer viewable to the scanning eyes, seated amongst the beach’s mixed composition of sand and gravel.   

I wondered for how many years, or decades even, they have lain in the general area, exposed from the eroding cliff-side moraine and now burrowed within their “home” atop the seemingly infinite bed of sand where they rest.  I wondered for how many centuries it must have taken to become smoothened by the painstakingly slow processes of erosion, the result of tumbling through a sandy, churning surf, how enjoyable and novel it is to stroll slowly with my facing scanning downward, observing the various characteristics of the rocks below my creeping feet, vigilant to spot a uniquely colored, shaped, or patterned stone amongst the blinding multitudes, and curiously reaching down to pick one up which catches my eye and give it a look-over in my shuffling hand, these weighty, glacial artifacts of the Earth’s volcanic adolescence having the skin-soothing qualities like that of superfine, six-hundred-grit sandpaper to wood.  I thought about the countless hordes of fisherman who have danced upon this mosaic of rocks since the dawn of surfcasting began, in search of the same indulgences as I was, how many of these souls, in their roaming, may have been found in their massaging thoughts as I was, how many fanning caudal fins of trophy-sized, leg-length stripers were dragged upon their surfaces by proud fishermen, grazing them in a brushing sound, leaving behind a fading trail of water and slime, or how many cherished, bighearted conversations between fellow fishermen they were privy to eavesdrop during untold hours of the night and day, punctuated by tall, nostalgic tales of bygone tails.

Later that afternoon, feeling fatigued in my stray travels, I crossed paths with an impressive spectacle high-and-dry up the slope of the beach, stranded like a beached porpoise was a refined creation wrought from a prolonged, punishing exposure to the corrosive, combined efforts of saltwater and sunlight.  It was a beautiful, blonde-colored, thirty-foot or more section of timber, a massive tree trunk fully sun-bleached, claimed and reconditioned by the sea, enigmatically adrift for an indeterminate duration of time, held captive, governed by the kinetic forces of winds and tides before washing aground on the north-eastern shore of the Point, a layover I imagined, not that it may find roots, for the ocean will one day recall her as flotsam again.  I find enjoyment in stumbling upon interestingly shaped or weathered pieces of driftwood.  Each is a relic from the sea, a piece of art crafted by Nature, and much like an individual, is unique in appearance with a telling history of origination.  This polished, solidified mass of cellulose and lignin was one of the largest, note-worthy masterpieces in my recent memory.  It would have easily required more than ten men to move, so thus, served a perfect resting place as it was an ideal height off the sand to sit comfortably upon, allowing me to pause from my marching of the shore, as I slumped my back and crossed both elbows over my straddled legs to relax, taking in cool breathes as my eyes scanned the offshore waters, making out the faint, distant profile of western Block Island.

I couldn’t help but notice, perched atop this dense, rounded seating of mine, an amusing-looking stack of eight flattened stones piled-together into a pyramid-shaped tower.  The largest stone, over a foot in length, served as the base.  The stones resting upon those supporting them were all successively smaller in dimension, with the whole arrangement crowned by a tactfully-placed rock which was small enough to fit within a cupped hand.  I imagined it to be the construct of creative-thinking visitors to the park, fellow wanderers of this oceanfront refuge.  Someone found a sense of satisfaction in scouring with their eyes the surrounding field of thousands of choices at our feet for appropriately-sized candidates, envisioning which rock would be suitable for support of the next, building this harmonious, far-east-looking design of delicately-positioned rocks, in a way leaving a thumbprint of their determined goal to establish a sense of balance, if not within themselves, then vicariously for others to recognize through reflection of their standing handiwork, this visually simplistic, yet expressive design petitioning for a degree of attention in some way or another.

I would be the first to acknowledge and agree that there is nothing profound over spotting a neatly-piled assembly of stones.  Anyone would see them for what they are; simply a cold stack of weathered rocks, chosen for some odd reason from a sea of nearly identical brethren lying scattered along the beach.  But as with many things in life, we often search with abandon for a self-fulfilling understanding, find ourselves pondering at length for deep-seated meanings, wishing to attribute relevance and satisfaction of sorts from the pinning focus of our intrigues.  I had no reason or desire to pry deeper, to form abstract conceptualizations of what was positioned beside me that day on the shared seat of driftwood.  I had offered nothing more than a brief, exchanging glance with this inanimate companion.  I simply appreciated it for what it was, this primitive introduction and token of human-touch within a naturally-pristine environment, and continued onward with my day.  So I thought.    

It was only by chance, two-years later, as my engaged eyes intently skimmed left-to-right over a blackened sea of ink-struck letters, waves of words and sentences, as I quietly submitted from reality, allowing these flowing phrases to flood my mind with lucid and fanciful scenes conjured by my engrossed and esteemed disposition, fueled by the carefully-selected words of an artist painting visual imagery for his reader, a storyteller holding an audience.  I was taken away by the pages of a good book, when at random, I crossed the five-letter word “cairn.”  I did not know its meaning outright, but on a remotely small scale, it was as if an epiphany had befallen my state of mind, something had just clicked.  On that day, I learned what a stacked structure of rocks, identical to the type I saw, was actually known as.  I found the thought encouraging that my silent seaside friend had a name, a proper designation, a word which could be sifted from any dictionary worth its salt, a concept worthy of being recognized.  I found out that freshwater fishermen had been building them atop the dry backs of larger rocks within streams and rivers for decades.  They were used as waypoints, serving to instruct anglers who happen upon them that the stretch of water it was constructed near had just been fished.  The angler was to then knock it over, hike upstream to fresh, unfished water above the angler who courteously set it, and then build a cairn there so other fishermen were made aware of his wading and disturbing of the riverbed.  Tilted-back comfortably in my chair, I was immediately transported back in time to the October afternoon I spent sitting alone in the blustery wind on the faraway shore of a surfcaster’s paradise.

In that gratifying moment of elucidation, a large, curling overhead wave of thoughts encouraged me to drift away on a raft of associated memories, my mind afloat on an unstoppable, new-moon-strength flooding tide, rushing up a familiar-looking coast of recollections.  Held merciless in these transporting currents of time, I was not to fear, for I knew the prudence of the water’s wisdom would eventually wash me ashore so I may relive my saga on terra firma, the reminisced experiences marinated in the intuition of a seasoned perspective, granting me the ability to fish with the irresistible lure of hindsight cast into the depths of my past.  With a measuring tape laid to the flopping liveliness of this keeper-sized memory, I was able to realize the magnitude of simplicity and excess of beauty measured from this encounter. 

What I failed to recognize during my sedentary period of solitude on the beach, was that the composition of the delicately-standing and gracefully-stabilized stone cairn that I sat beside begged me to acknowledge and bear in mind that this life we live is quite similar in nature, in that it too is fragile to disrupting touch, that it could just as well be described as a steady balancing act held under constant pressures placed upon us, testing our resolve to remain upright.  How simple and straightforward this concept alluded, I thought.  What is more important than for each of us accept our own precepts for defining our everyday balancing points, the fulcrums that act as inflection marks in maintaining inner-harmonies, that we may find crucial counterbalance deriving from the collective wholeness that makes us one, for a guiding strength to carry all the pressing weight atop our shoulders, so that we may continue to stand tall and straight, resilient amongst all of life’s daily challenges, and ultimately, if we’re ever so lucky, thus serve as a role model that others may admire, encouraging those to walk steadfast with courage, to bravely leave footprints imprinted along a path less-followed, where the limitless varieties and nuances of life’s bountiful offerings will surely entice a penetrating smile from their rewarded hearts.  This inanimate reminder that life, in its dynamic, beautiful potential requires tender hands of care, a nurturing touch, so that it may mature to become something better and larger, shines brilliantly like high-noon summer sunlight reflecting from a polished mirror in all the moments we find unique or inspirational, and it is fact that such glory is always extant in the foreground of life, awaiting for us to discover with watchful, receptive eyes, to introduce itself, if not for the first time, then as a binding reunion of faith.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, that was the last visit to Montauk I would ever have the pleasure of making with Scott.  Awash in thought during my stretch of rest on the deserted driftwood, I was physically pausing under the lighthouse to break from the hopelessly repetitive actions of attempting to hook an elusive striped species of fish under unfavorable circumstances prompted by weather.  Now, I am spiritually pausing to reflect upon the hopeful and enduring memories gained since day-one, the initial crossing of our paths, that serendipitous encounter where unexpectedly lying unseen around the next corner of discovery, living a storied existence altogether unknown to me, was a charismatic man exuding an entirely energetic, one-of-a-kind, show-stopping personality offering an outstretched gift in the form of a bear-paw-sized handshake, a magnetic introduction forged with ingredients of parallel interests capable of mocking the wearing hands of time, a starting pistol firing into the air proclaiming the inauguration of a friendship set to begin a step-by-step marathon over distances yet uncharted, one of which led me to the pounding shores of Montauk where I sat alone, face-to-face with the sea, basking within a reeled-in tranquility beached for me to feast on an autumn afternoon.  This reflection, where I reminisced in our many rooted connections, awarded me with the awareness of a cow striper-sized moment of complacency which would have easily bottomed-out any Boga-Grip due to its hefty history, these memories a personal exhibition of grimacing pride held out in suspension by straining arm muscles for all to see from one of those fish-scale contrivances donned at the waist, secured with a coiled, telephone-cord-like lanyard by many a wetsuit-clad super-surfcaster of today.  Hey, look at the size of THIS friendship! I could say.

These thoughts led me to further appreciate that the best any of us may ever accede to aspire is to live each precious second after successive second in the present, embracing the precepts of an unalterable pact which we rightfully adhere so as to continually define ourselves, recognizing this element to be the prized gift we covet and strive to translate into a fulfilling life, those unequivocal sensations latched onto and embedded into the deepest, inner-most fibers of our spirit which are repeatedly taken for granted with each fresh breath of air we inhale and then exchange for an inexhaustible demand pleading for permanence following each exhalation.  Much like fishing an overnight session alongside a close friend on a desolate stretch of sand whose very attendance acts as a comforting accompaniment throughout the unnerving raven-colored veil of night, this introspective and idealistic attitude is more easily appreciated when in the presence of someone who naturally beams with a vigor for life like that of a radiating beacon capable of piercing through the darkest of dark nights, their personality being an unmistakable, coruscating column of energy blanketing one with the light of camaraderie which emits dauntless rays of confidence for miles upon miles.  This very attribute was a special distinction, a refined trait, which Scott was blessed to send forth and share with the world.  Being the highly capable, over-the-top, people-person that he was, I could see that he undoubtedly impregnated his soul with the interactions birthed as a result of spreading the richness of such a unique gift with others, his far-reaching and illuminating light of life, even if only during a brief, passing exchange with a stranger, bundled and presented as a nod and sealed-lip smile, the naturally spontaneous interaction adding one more rare drop of kindness to a deprived world. 

In an analogous fashion, being the fishermen that we were, I witnessed the scope of this compassionate attitude of his extending to the very quarry we chased, as he crouched down low to offer carefully cradled hands of support to the white underbelly of a fish being set for release in the shallow, foamy water of the surf rushing over his feet, this gratifying act being the quintessential paragon of benevolence between dissimilar kinds, as the slippery, fanning caudal fin glided freely through his relaxed, wet hands, swaying slowly and finally thrusting forward in one strong sweep as the fish disappeared from sight back into the reclaiming water, returning again to the only home it ever knew.  It was in that brief, but altogether satisfying moment where Scott too released himself into the salutary, salty sea, his spirit being set-free by an overwhelming sense of accomplishment as a fisherman, an outdoorsman, a man who understood what it meant to become “one” with the delicate nature of the Natural world around us.  

Scott may be physically removed from us, and the occasional echoing of his voice sounding in our heads now only being a sonorous ghost of reality, but cast afar over multitudes of widely unrelated locales, embodied in the daily goings-on of others whose lives he influenced and incidentally unified as the common denominator, are each of our unique memories cast in permanence, breathing with a life which cannot be stripped from our conscious, living testaments stamped upon our spirits which serve to encourage that we walk this ongoing odyssey of ours bellowing an intangible proclamation, an unshakable tribute garnered by virtue of the fortification of a ripened respect honored from acquiring his friendship, and forever hold dear an interwoven love found threaded within our hearts.  A cruel reality, merciless in a scorned audacity, prematurely robbed this man from a beloved wife and son, spirited family, a loyal legion of friends, and the countless other souls his own life made contact with, but from this black season of loss, those fortunate are the ones who have gained from his kindhearted contributions to simple, everyday existence on this earth, those who were warmed by the joy he exuded and humble words of support he suggested, reciprocating these actions in their own daily lives as a result of his deserving influence, wearing such personal appreciations with a pride made outwardly clear, exhibited with a natural comfort like one in a favorite, worn-in cotton shirt, eager to show-off their personal taste.

Like a mighty fish suddenly hooked on the end of one’s line, after countless hours of patiently stalking and vigilantly searching, the distinct friendship from an exemplary man suddenly erupts into existence, dropped from the clear blue sky one day, but unfortunately, this miraculous pairing of fate, this legendary catch of a lifetime, jolting our spirit with a surging rush of adrenaline and renewed freshness, an acute sensation of wholeness manifesting in a feverish fanaticism for this cause at-hand, escapes our grasping touch in a heart-wrenching loss without any rational understanding or warning, much like the sudden snapping-off of this angler’s mainline, his only connection to an unrivaled or misunderstood freedom of contentment found nowhere else in the framework of his life.  The stabbing loss unearths an abysmal void impossible to refill.  You know that was the chance of a lifetime and you will never engage with the likes of that type of remarkable connection again.  You had your chance, you were prepared, you did your best to fight the good fight, but you are also made aware that when choosing to cast forth in participation, standing face-to-face between the autonomous, almighty judgments of the natural world around us, you learn that life is far from yours to fully control.  This gift you may be presented, whether it be a mighty fish or a magnificent friendship, is just that, a gift, and it must always be thought of and treated respectfully in that manner.  Weighing heavily in the misfortune of a defeated set-back, this seminal moment we all long for during our continued trials and accumulated lessons learned in life, where we seek to great ends to discover the desirous sources inspiring our wandering, persistent thoughts, one realizes that the taste of this dream was their own for a glorious, but altogether brief, glimpse of time.  It leads one to recognize that little can be greater appreciated than having an unconditional understanding of friendship between another person. 

Marching along the freestone-peppered shoreline, eager to fish, but more than content to chat, share laughs, and lackadaisically wear the weekend through, was absolutely the greatest catch of all.  On these excursions, it always made me happy to know that he was happy, to partake as an accepting, generous friend and watch him bask in the flood of sunlight, absorbing the serene features of land and sea into his receptive eyes, passionately feeding his soul during a relatively simple, but vitally significant weekend vacation within earshot of home.  We didn’t have to jet-set.  There was no reason for a lavish endeavor.  That was the whole point.  I never asked him, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn if in his own heart, it was he who claimed to reeled-in the greatest catch, taking pride and teeming with satisfaction in knowing that my rousing experiences on the faraway shores of this great escape were fundamental to ensuring his own sense of personal fulfillment.  I KNEW you would get a kick out of this place Joey!  Times like these reminded of my youthful years when I paused to comprehend the significance of a framed picture that my mother had hanging from a wall in her house.  It read something to the effect of “the best kind of friend is the kind you can sit on a porch with, never say a word, then walk away feeling like it was the best conversation that you ever had.”  In this case, finding contentment while listening to the soft-spoken whispers offered by this land’s voice, her charming serenade like that of a siren, fully-grasping our soul’s attention and acknowledged as such in a silence, but made transparent through the tight-lipped, meditative, dreamy-looking smiles worn on our faces.

  Scott behaved as an accomplished tour guide of sorts, spiritedly narrating any  degree of knowledge he could draw to further substantiate the streaming sights, ensuring that all dots were connected, naturally exuding a contagious exuberance of enthusiasm which I watched beaming from his widened-eyes and chuckling, plastered grin each time he turned his head towards mine, as he was familiar with the in-roads, the nooks and crannies of the land, ensuring the limited time we were dealt was utilized most effectively, that a solid sense of achievement would be felt before hitting the pillow each night, knowing that we turned-over the most remote corners to exploration.  It wasn’t uncommon to cruise along Route 27 from the elevated comfort of his F-150 pick-up truck, with our grill-mounted surf rods swaying in the oncoming rush of air as we drove to survey the landscape, or stroll the storefront sidewalks downtown, resisting temptations to purchase tourist-trap T-shirts, seeking-out “MTK” bumper-stickers as our rite-of-passage keepsakes, veritable vehicular passport book stamps proclaiming to fishermen that “yeah, we’ve been there,” browsing the selection of lures at Paulie’s Tackle or Star Island Yacht Club, tickling fishermen for gossip, or standing in refreshing awe atop the elevated seaside bluffs and eroding hoodoo spires perched beside the ocean at Camp Hero, or visiting the Art Barge in Amagansett, or pulling-up to Espo’s, a roadside surf-shop shanty in hopes of purchasing a cool-looking shirt unavailable anywhere else back home, or combing inside the town’s various art consignment shops, one of which his wife’s photography was commissioned, or stepping into a music store packed to the gills with hanging guitars, cradling these expensive acoustics to make them sing brightly.  All of these “little” moments were the individual grains of sand, timepieces of experience valued dear by ourselves, which when all piled together formed the wide beach of memories that was ours for making footprints in.

To fish, to understand how during one pivotal moment, while leaning backwards in a crashing surf around my feet, clenching with both hands onto a heavily arching graphite rod, twisting my head sideways to look for that beaming eruption of joy emanating from a friend’s face, an ignited reflection of his blazing spirit suddenly awakened in witnessing my joy, is his overwhelming smile transcending all demanding distractions of daily-life, where this ensuing confluence on the sand, a predestined consequence of calculated reasons I did not consciously make myself aware of, endless exertions only having existed to lead us both to this exact moment in time for this piscatorial gift of reward, an instant exhilaration surging throughout my body, for my soul to float buoyantly on a surrounding sea of bliss, to breathe-in deeply the encompassing magnitude of standing peacefully in this very spot, inhaling the sinking and resultantly accepting understanding that this will never occur anywhere else anytime ever again along this expansive shoreline.  In actuality, I had just conceived a special moment in time, ordained for the precious peculiarities of comprehension by the right-minded, a subjective sample of reality recognized only by those in-tune with life’s greater meanings discovered in an atavistic manner at the hands of Nature.  As fate had it, the entirety of our friendship had culminated for both of us to live this striking, memorable experience with a flopping fish on a faraway land at only an arms-length apart.  Success was ours.  This date is now permanently ingrained upon my mind, stored and affectionately labeled as “that day” before the orange and bloodshot-colored sky exploding in flaming hues over the beach, a morning I will never soon forget, inviting to dare an episode of total-recall, this clear-cut instance of inspirational illustration memorialized as a mental freeze-frame image paused selectively from a fast-forwarded time-lapse-like video recording for me to relive over and over again in my musing mind. 

I suppose that similar to the oceanic tides, with every hopeful, flooding beginning comes every unavoidable, ebbing end.  As a surfcaster, each knows to mentally prepare himself, for at some point in time he must begrudgingly fire his last cast.  There are days when he may be more than willing to do so, ready to retreat from foul weather to the comfort of warmth and dryness indoors or on rarer occasions agreeably forfeiting after partaking in the insane frenzy of an epic session in the surf, shedding confidence in his retiring wake, yet stunned in disbelief that his fortune was as rewarding.  There is no denying that it just feels good when all of the amassed jigsaw puzzle pieces align snugly, fitting together perfectly.  Either way, there exists constantly a greater encouragement, for so long as the sun will rise the following day, there is always a hopeful promise for prosperity next time.  And for one to grow wise enough to know that it is not always fish we are after, that to simply catch Nature in her endless forms, expressions, and colors, to share these larger-than-life moments in the company of a dear fellow-fisher, is far greater than any curving of the rod one may ever experience.  In this sense, I can readily admit that fortune befell me while walking the shores of Montauk alongside Scott, that while scanning the breathtaking vistas, studying the land and seascape, allowing the grandeur of this theater to saturate my awareness, that I had limited-out on my catch before slinging my very-first cast from her beaches.  I was with Scott, the greatest find a friend could have ever hoped to land in his lifetime.  On these shores, in this setting, we simply understood in our hearts the unspoken truths weaved into her nature, the tightly-woven stitches that were her threads keeping the seams of our spirits bound as one, justifying the implications of being away together on a weekend withdrawal to fish her waters.  He knew that I just got it.  From his perspective, like that of a giddy person excitedly offering a wrapped present to a friend, impatiently oozing in anticipation for it to be opened for the surprise it will surely generate, I’m sure this must have been fulfilling for him to recognize, as I unfurled the layered folds of this storied land, my conducts liberated with gifts of contentment.

How could I have ever prepared to make my last cast beside Scott?  Even if life could have given me that warning, I wouldn’t be ready.  Imagine being told this is the last sunrise over the ocean you will ever witness.  Tomorrow there will be no such thing to befall your awaiting eyes.  The sky will not even appear overcast, it will remain dark as night.  You will never feel its penetrating rays of light warming your face again.  There is no way to prepare for a scenario like that!  No one can possibly be prepared for this crushing unthinkable.  But with that, I awoke one morning completely unaware that an insidious encroachment was lurking dangerously close to my side.  I was the fisherman wading a false-dawn shoreline, camouflaged from sight within the surrounding darkness, eager for the awakening of a hopeful, new day and its many unknown, but promised entrustment of possibilities, my fully-loaded rod whipping a lure out over the sea, however this second-nature casualness becoming instantly interrupted as there was an unmistakable, fatal failure attracting all of my attention with a brief, unwanted tug of resistance and an accompanying, dreadful snapping-sound of separation as it fouled around the rod tip, this resulting cast robbing me of a favorite partner as I painfully and hopelessly watched it disappear out of sight, this prized possession becoming permanently disconnected from my commitment faster than I could blink.  And just like that, it’s gone.  What I took for granted, what I came to know so well with the many acquired seasons, and respected as a proven go-to resource time-after-time, wasn’t mine to reach-out to any longer.  A sudden, sinking feeling left me with feelings of distress and emptiness, a set-back I was not expecting or ready for, a castaway I wish I was better prepared to accept the consequences of, for I would have exercised more care and vigilance with the simple nature of this delicate relationship.  I would have doubled-checked my knots for freshness and strength, and made sure I left no frays on my leader, exposing myself to known weaknesses in connectivity where there should only be the clarity of solid durability.  In effect, I stood alone, severed in a sunken quiescence, waiting for the light of a brilliant sunrise that would never rise to greet me.

Where a shadow was once cast, a comfort-zone which shaded me with the warm cover of friendship, an insulating umbrella of rarity which was easily, and more so regrettably at times, taken for granted, is now forever removed from us in this life, exposing me to an unfamiliar feeling of absence I was once shielded from.  For me, to remain hopeful for the promises of the next rising of the tide, and all bounties that it may flood the shores of life with, for the promises bestowed with each new day, I remain steadfast with faith, recalling the unassuming, but uplifting words of Sir Isaac Newton, who prudently gave credit to the many existing achievements set before his time which in turn, nurtured his own principles to springboard atop of, thus allowing himself to soar to heights never imaginable, stating famously “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”  Two-years later, as my bittersweet trip to The End with Scott is relived to no end in my mind, I realize that if I too have seen further, it was by standing in unison, shoulder-to-shoulder as a humbled friend, an apprentice to experience, sheltered beside an admirable man who cast a giant shadow of greatness.

 

  When I asked Scott if he knew whether or not there was any associated meaning to these stacked rocks, he told me “I dunno. It’s something you see up here in the New England area.”  Little did I know how much I would build upon this previous discovery.

Scott proudly holds a schoolie-Striper caught during a dawn blitz on the last day of our first saunter together in Montauk.  The morning’s catch of Bass proved to be the sweet icing smothering an indulgent treat of a trip.

The blitzing allure of Montauk Point, the Surfcasting Capital of the World, depicted with Photoshop.  I can never thank Scott enough for introducing me to this destination.  I will never consider it the same without him, either.  My reassuring hope is that he smiles down upon me, proud that he offered the gentle push of encouragement to explore new lands, to live boldly in adventurous excitement, to find the sights unseen we will hold dear to our hearts.

Two Scotts, father and son, aglow with midnight smiles on Montauk’s north-side.