Word

"Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

Months after I had graduated college I felt like a failure. I had dreams big and small, and I had hardly realized any of them. It stunk. To top off my feelings of failure, my long-time girlfriend and I had broken up and during one of those "Why?" discussions during our breakup she laid out all the reasons why our relationship was unsustainable. I'll save you the details-- most of it had to do with me not having enough ambition, little follow through, and too small of dreams, like being a stay-at-home dad or some other quaint and simple hopes. It was brutal but ended up being one of the best things to ever happen to me.

It started me on a path towards making big and small dreams and working really, really, really hard towards them. And so in the winter of 04' I set out to accomplish a dream that I had had for most of my college life-- to catch a trout. My college roommate and I watched "A River Runs Through It" countless times. We could quote the entire movie and we always talked about how cool it would be to fly fish.



(A warning from the author: If all you want to do is catch a fish. I wouldn't recommend fly fishing.)

Norman MacLean wrote:

"If you have never picked up a fly rod before, you will soon find it factually and theologically true that man by nature is a damn mess. The four and a half ounce thing in silk wrapping that trembles with the underskin motions of the flesh become a stick without brains, refusing anything simple that is wanted of it. All that a rod has to do is lift the life, the leader, and the fly off the water, give them a good toss over the head, and then shoot them forward so they will land in the water without a splash in the following order: fly, transparent leader, and then the life-- otherwise the fish will see the fly is a fake and be gone..."

And as it is with any dream worthy of serious undertaking, one will find that even something as simple as lifting a rod and heaving some feathers and a hook onto water isn't so simple. So I began my own training, read, read and read more books on fly fishing than I have even read for my Master's thesis. It's funny that going to college, finishing a degree, traveling the world etc, were never dreams in a proper sense. They were just wishes or whims. Fly fishing and catching a trout was a real dream. And so I began the labor of realizing a dream. Oddly, at no time in my life had I ever really done that and I have to say folks, it's an amazing feeling even if they are just small dreams.

I still remember the day that I went to the Southern Minnesota in anticipation of completing a dream. The wintertime was spent reading, thinking and visualization the actual act of casting. I would hold a pencil and imagine what casting would be like, pretend to rip line from the pencil/rod in my off-hand and pretend to catch a fish in my bedroom. If some disembodied fisher of old was in the room-- I'm sure he or she would have had a good laugh at my pencil casting.

And when the winter ceded into spring, I was finally able to go to a park and practice throwing the line. I still think its funny to think about a Sri Lankan, fly fishing. It seems antithetical for someone born on a tropical island, to wade, waist deep in icy cold water, dabbling in a sport born in Scotland. But some Sunday in May my Step-father and I would make the 2.5 hour drive to talk about our lives and our shared family, and that's another story in and of itself. But with each mile I grew more excited and my first steps in the river had my heart beating like crazy.

The first half of the day really summarized my life at the time... The line, like my life was a mess. I would see fish, they would see me, smirk and then disappear. I'd managed to hook my hand, and spend more time untangling line out of trees and bushes more than having an actual fly on the water... at one point I thought I'd just give it up, pick some berries in the shade and watercress in the stream. But honestly, that conversation haunted me, and so I couldn't give up lest I become who my ex-gf said I was. I suppose that is the nature of chasing a dream, you can't be deterred when you get a snag, or a knot or a break-- you improvise and persevere.

And then something happened while I was tying another fly...the wind switched directions, the sun hid beneath the clouds, the barometer dipped, and I saw a splash in the water.

If you've never been to a trout stream and don't know a whole lot about fish-- you'd probably think someone threw a rock near you or some branch dropped while you were looking away. And then it happened again and this time a little brown trout flew through the air and another one, and another one.

And if you've never been on a trout stream during a May Fly hatch, well, you've never experienced one of the world's great miracles. Just make sure to wear a hat, I didn't and had May Fly conditioner for about a week. May Flys themselves are interesting creatures. They live 99% of their lives under water as ugly little bugs, that is, until it's time to mate. That's when they rise from their under-rock homes and make the fast transformation into one of nature's more beautiful insects. They are all wing, tail and gossamer. And I'm not sure I should feel bad for them, or envy them. At this point in their lives May Flys stop eating anything and their life once out of the water will last 30 minutes to 24 hours maximum-- their whole existence from that point forward is to procreate and die.



You have to hope it's good-- one of my favorite writers, wrote that he imagined after they had their moment of fun and lay sprawled out on the water, they probably have a funny grin on their face. I like to think that too. And if you're in the midst of this orgy, well, as a fly fisher, it is one of the most rare and beautiful scenes in nature.

Trout as creatures are incredibly timid and the ultimate goal for a fly fisher, on any day is to get a trout to rise on a dry fly. It's fly fishing at its purist-- and most difficult.

At this point, I decided to tie on a size 16 caddis dry fly pattern. It matched the wheatish color of the may flies coming off well and it worked. It was an odd day in so many ways and I doubt I'll see another hatch like this in all my life. The sun came back out from under the clouds, my guess is so he could see me make a fool of myself while casting to the trout. But in spite of coming out from the clouds, the hatch continued and the trout kept rising. It was carnage on the water.

And in that moment, the universe and time compressed into a heart beat, full of song, splashing water, trout, fly and fisherman. And I caught one, two, three, four fish, and I let one, two, three, four go. And I missed a few and I caught more. And many years after I caught my first fish, and now, reflecting on it weeks before the spring, with a few more grey hairs, wrinkles and scars, I know what it means to have a dream and make it real. There aren't words to articulate the realizing of a dream other than the feelings that come afterward. It's Beautiful, with a capital "B"-- I can say that.

Fly fishing was a good way of training for my other dreams. Before I started, the act of casting between 10 & 2 and the thought of catching a fish seemed completely out of reach. I felt like I would be scrutinized by other fly fishers for my poor casting, my cheap gear, let alone just being a strange young kid on the water. Instead, it was a great bonding experience. I met a lot of men, and some women on the water. And they gave me great tips, and a lot of free flies. And now that I know how to tie my own flies, I give them freely to anyone who wants them. They're my little piece of artistry-- little impressionistic pieces of a bug I saw on the river-- and I'll take little fibers from a friends carpet, a feather I find on the side of the road, and some copper wiring and create some mythical bug, and trout appreciate that.

Three years from thirty, I have bigger dreams now. I dream of having a wife, kids and a house. Maybe even BEING that stay-at-home Dad, but on my terms and the terms that me and my wife decide on. I have other dreams too, and I work on checking them off, day by day, hour by hour, some are small, memorize a poem or two, run a mile or two, some are large, write a book about something true for no other reason than because it is a dream, and then I'll let my friends read it and see a little glimpse of who I am. Until then, I'll let that "why?" conversation haunt me and with every success and failed dream I'll revisit that time in my life and whisper to that young man, that life, like fly fishing is full of knots, broken line and missed fish, but with some extra line, a hook, feathers and some determination, a trout is really just a hatch and rise away.