What The Trout Taught You are not long in this world before you start figuring out that there are many lessons in life: but it takes a little maturity to realize that not all of them must be learned painfully. I am forty now, and I must admit that I am having a whole lot more fun learning now than I did when I was twenty. In fact, I wouldn't go back there for anything. I work with young girls that age, and listen to the angst in their voices as they discuss the things that are important to them. I realize that I haven't felt that kind of distress in a very long time, especially not in reference to a few pounds gained or a man slipping away. The years have put a different view on things, and changed the perspective on what is important enough to rack up blood pressure points over, and what should be approached, not with fatalistic resignation, but a certain clear-eyed acceptance of the rightness of what is. When you begin to learn that reality is your friend, and the fact that things are the way they are because that's really the best way for them to be, life and it's appended learning becomes more of an interesting puzzle to play with than a booby trap waiting to go off in your unsuspecting face. This is one of the things that I have learned from trout. ******************************** There is probably nothing in the world so unbelievably beautiful, so completely desirable to an angler than a spectacular, feisty trout on the other end of the line. To hold on to that lovely creature, to try to bring him to your hand while knowing that he, at any moment, could snap the hair-like leader with a toss of his sleek head and dart away into the depths of his alien world is a thrill beyond description. Part of the wonder of this is knowing that it is all so chancy: you're dancing with a wild thing, a free thing that you have tethered for a moment, but with a chain that is so fragile and so thin that you can't entirely believe that it will really bind the bursting heart of that creature on the other end. You know, after all, that it is truly the heart of the thing that tugs so furiously in your hands: you know it because you can feel it beating and singing and loving right up your line and down the twanging length of your rod. You fall instantly and completely in love with that dangerous heart, and risk the loss because, although you can only hold onto it for a moment, it is a heart the memory of which will touch yours for the rest of your life, and that is well worth the letting go when the moment of release inevitably comes. When we think of each other, and the loves that we share, are we really reasonable when we believe that any love is any more secure than that? Don't we learn that love, like catching the trout, requires patience and tenacity and respect and care? Don't we always feel the strongest passion for the one least likely to be tamed? Don't we learn, as time goes by, the needful joy of letting go? Don't we always remember, in the midst of our thankfulness for the one who stayed, the one that got away? There is a lesson in that. ******************************** The trout teaches us to blend in, and to do that we have to consider where we are, and to wake up to it. Looking around, we will see things that we never saw before just so we can learn to look like we belong. Is it so bad to know our environment so well, to notice the nooks and crannies of our existence, that we can fit in if we want to? None of us like to think of ourselves as conformist, I suppose, but there are worse things than knowing ourselves and our surroundings well enough to know how to look natural. Is it conformity or camouflage? My friend, a very good fishing guide and fly tying expert, says that when you fish where he guides, the water is so clear and the cover so sparse that you'd best go out there and look like a tree. This is interesting, because he is not exactly what you would call a conformist by any stretch, but he is successful because he can blend in when it counts. He catches fish because he has spent so much time thinking about being a tree that you look at him and see a tree. He is tall and lanky, leaning slightly to one side as if he grew on the bank of a stream, and he moves like the wind is blowing him. The lines of his face are like the lines on the face of an oak. His hair curls around his head as if waiting for some nesting songbird to make it home. Most of his clothing is the color of the wood: greens, browns, shadowy blue- blacks and sunny bits of gold. He has become a tree, and it gives him a comforting quality that makes you just love him right off. He and his trout teach that conformity can be a nice thing—it seems, though, that the secret is to always find yourself having to blend into an environment that is beautiful. Never be anyplace where you would be ashamed to fit in. There is a lesson in that. ******************************** There is so much in life that requires our attention, and there are so many of us asleep. The lessons become painful when that inattention gets the better of us, and when life's harsher side takes us by surprise. The trout teaches us to pay attention, because it's rare that you catch him without thinking, and, if you should happen to, the chance is good that he will break away from you before you bring him to hand. No one can teach lost opportunity like a trout. Even more important than that is the lesson of the other hazards of inattention. The saddest part of not paying heed is that you miss so much sweetness, so many of the things that could make you happy. All of the anglers I know can tell you which way the wind is blowing at any given time. They not only saw the colors of the sunset last night, but also the ones in the sunrise this morning. They know what phase the moon is in. They know what is blooming, what is hatching, what birds are to be found in what spot and what their song is like. Because all of these things affect their ability to pursue their happiness, they have learned to become aware of all the little things that can add beauty and joy to a life. This perceptiveness bleeds over into other aspects of life as well. Most men who fish can remember the exact color of your eyes, the dimple in your cheek, the color of your favorite dress. Any woman will tell you, this ability is a very important thing to be taught, and any man who has that ability can tell you that it always pays off. ******************************** What the trout teaches is not always about trout, or about the pursuit of him. What the trout teaches is how to live, how to calm yourself and hunker down and get comfortable with life. More than anything, the trout has taught me how to feel at ease in the world, just as he does. He is a strange creature, whose world is full of hazards like herons and kingfishers and other, bigger fish and men with rods. But the trout pushes forward, not heedlessly, because inattention would mean his demise, but with the plain perspective that life must be lived fully, even in the midst of those things which would take life away. He spooks, but he also rises—he keeps danger in the corner of his golden eye while looking life straight on. We live in a sad and dangerous world, and not all of it wishes us well. We are absolutely reasonable to feel spooked, but at the same time we must participate with our whole selves, or we are lost. We can view the more unpleasant aspects of life without taking them to heart, and we can learn from them with as little pain as the trout feels when the hook bites just the corner of his lip, no more than that. He glides away no worse for the wear, and a whole lot wiser. So can we. Beth Wilson |