Seasonable Angler: Paying Out More Than is Due

When did fly fishing stop being about relaxation, I wonder as I make my way through the willows at river’s edge. When did it become a war with rules of engagement? Rules that threaten the very notion of freedom–that thing which beckons us to cast a line on the water mostly because it is such a compelling alternative to the drudgery of work and bills and ordinary life?

Did it happen as fast as the first snow transforms the honey glow of quaking aspens to wintery landscapes? Or did it happen more gradually, like summer evenings slipping to warm dusk so subtly that you are suddenly alarmed you can no longer see your fly on the water?

I can hear the riffle marking the bend with the big undercut. I hear birds twittering, and I wonder if those thunderheads over the mountains are going to produce rain out here on the prairie.

A cow moves off as I approach. I smell sage. I love it here. I love this place—not only this place, but also this kind of place. The essence is the same the world over, regardless of current velocity, temperature, and freestone or limestone.

I know this because I’ve even felt it standing beside the concrete channel known as the Los Angeles River. The feeling, I think, has to do with the connection we feel to this essential entity–to water. It’s what keeps us coming back again and again.

But at some point, my trips to the river’s edge (fly rod in hand or not) ceased to be a simple escape. Development. Overfishing. Incompatible use. Invasive species. Air pollution. Global climate change. Water diversions and dams. Disease. Scarcity of groundwater resources. Habitat degradation. These are the words and phrases careening about my head as I sit in the brittle-dry grass of late August and tie on a Humpy.

Tom McGuane tells us “We must make holy war on the enemies of aquatic life.”

I agree, but how does being a foot soldier in such a hallowed confrontation square with the longest silence?

Ernest Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” was supposed to be an escape from a war endured, not a new front in a war that was just beginning.

The fact of the matter is that fighting for aquatic life may not square with many people’s notions of relaxation, freedom, and escape. For some, this may be an unsavory conclusion, detracting from the beauty and simplicity of our longing for long casts over quiet water or frantic drifts through tumultuous currents. For others, however, it is something different, albeit hard to explain.

In philosophical terms (and we have a fine tradition of elevating our sport to philosophical musings), my inability to allow my fishing time to be just a carefree escape epitomizes what might be termed a supererogatory response. It is something that many fly fishers I know either innately possess or gradually develop. I know almost no one who has stuck with the sport for a lifetime and not at least felt it.

A supererogatory action is any action that goes above and beyond what we are morally obligated to do. By its very nature, a supererogatory action requires initiative on a personal level, unfettered by social or legal duties.

And therein lies the magic. Because I don’t have to do it, my actions in support of the ecosystems I love, and the species they sustain, represent an expression of communal empathy and mutual trust. This is the very bedrock of the conservation movement.

The success of John Muir as the environmental icon we know today is rooted in a simple trick. Through Muir’s evocative prose describing the natural splendor he revered, Muir’s readers–and, in turn, the nation–developed a sense of obligation toward wilderness.

But was it really obligation Muir wanted us to feel? I don’t think so, although I believe he knew that this might be one outcome. I believe his true desire was supererogare, or paying out more than is due. This must be the environmental ethic by which we live and fish.

It is no longer good enough to take only pictures and leave only footprints. Leave no trace was a high standard at one time, but now falls short of the mark.

Instead, as people who love aquatic ecosystems and the species they support, we must pay out more than is due–not because we have to, or are obligated to, but rather because we are motivated to action by the same deep-seated, primal emotion that drew us to the river’s edge in the first place.

With these thoughts in mind, I roll-cast my Humpy into the current at the edge of an eddy and am rewarded by an immediate strike. The fish flashes in the low slant of sunset light–a nice brown.

It looks like the rain will remain at bay. The evening is intoxicating. I know I will return home tonight refreshed, but it’s not because I found an escape in an oxbow of a river beneath a Wyoming sky. Rather I will feel rejuvenated because, instead of escaping, I returned–returned to something essential. Because I nurtured a relationship, reaffirmed a connection.

Making my way back to the truck in the twilight, I know I will continue to fight for this river and others like it. I will continue to be angered by policy decisions made so many miles away that will affect my home water. I know I will write letters, attend meetings, and maybe even give a few dollars to a good cause. I know I will be saddened when I learn of the next oil spill, phantom dinoflagellate (red tide), or fish kill resulting from shoddy catch-and-release techniques.

Admittedly none of this sounds very relaxing, but as I pull onto the dirt road paralleling the river, I realize that feeling passionate enough about something to feel the need to pay back more than is due may actually be the most vitalizing force of all.

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Ret Talbot is a professional writer who divides his time between Laguna Beach and Jackson Hole.

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