Seasonable Angler: Stream of Consciousness

Just downstream and above the tree line, the same atmosphere that filled my lungs was resplendent in the rainbow colors of yet another passing day. “Why can’t birth and death be as lovely as a sunrise or a sunset? Why must our moments of transition come with so much angst and anguish?” I wondered.

I had arrived at the river late in the day. You fish when you can, and I knew that the hatch would not come off until the warmth of the day gave way to the coolness of late evening. Autumn and spring are my favorite seasons. One encompasses the magic of new life and the other embodies the melancholy of its inevitable passing—but both are clothed in color. Waking and slumber both have their charms.

At first the sky bled from deep blue to a softer purple and then blended into the same color as the inside of a blood orange freshly sliced and dripping with bitter-sweetness. Soon only a golden-yellow sliver of sunlight that edged the forest remained, save for a single bright beam of life-giving light energy that seemed reluctant to let go. So I stood there among the softly rustling trees, fluttering birds, chirping crickets, and molten glass waters now sparkling around my legs. With the dying of the daylight and the arrival of the faint evening starlight the cedar waxwings ceased their swirling flights over the river, and that’s when the magic happened.

I always approach a river gently, respectfully, almost shyly . . . as if she is someone I want to know intimately, and the only way I can do this is in her own time—not mine. We miss so much in this human life that is all too often endured and all too rarely lived as we hustle and bustle to the illusionary rhythm of commitment and commerce. “It’s the ecology, stupid.”

And before we know it we find that our lifetime on this beautiful planet is done, and we wonder where the time went and why did we waste it playing society’s game where winner takes nothing. I’m not playing that game anymore. I’m not trying to get anywhere or gain anything. All I want is to live—truly live. Every breath and heartbeat is my measure of success. Every moment of gratitude is my self-sustaining source of joy.

Even with my late arrival there was enough lingering light for me to see the river passing as I stood, stark and still along its banks. And that’s when the first fragile Sulphur mayflies began to rise off the water, spiraling into the treetops and sailing into my waking dreams. I could see them now, drifting by like tiny golden sailboats, helpless and hapless as the first buttery brown trout rose to greet them.

Now and then a comparatively inelegant March Brown slid past me among the flotilla of little yellow sailboats but the trout seemed to know what they wanted and exuberant splashy rises broke the river’s surface all around me. So I cast my line and watched my imitation as it drifted with the naturals, both hopeful of a different outcome.

I was casting a soft and lovely bamboo 5-weight, and it felt organic in my hand as if it was not only connecting me to the river and the sky but also to Nature herself. We can so easily forget that everything we know is of the earth and sky. We humans make nothing—we simply rearrange it temporarily, for better or worse. We can forget that we ourselves are as fragile as a mayfly and just as ephemeral. We and every living being, human and nonhuman, are nothing more than stardust and seawater . . . temporarily arranged to be thoughtful or thoughtless—depending  on our abilities and choices.

As I watched the river I noticed a steady riser in a foamy seam of current, just thirty feet away from me—upstream and across. So I planned my cast and landed it softly, mending the line like so many adjustments I’ve made before in the currents of my lifetime. And each time I do, I hope it’s the right mend . . . and then I wait as life’s tumbling currents and swirling eddies take me to whatever comes next. But this time the fish rose, and I rose too with my arm extended up toward the sparkling sky as she leapt into the air and then dove across the currents as fearful at our meeting as I was of our parting. In the end I held her briefly, both of us momentarily breathless. I kept her wet inside the net and quickly slid the barbless hook from her lip before sliding her back into the river where she swam home—where I could not follow. How sad for me.

Just then I heard a woman’s voice inside my drifting mind. She said, “You’re doing fine. Just keep breathing deeply and whatever you’re doing . . . keep doing it.” So I did. I cast again.

Crickets began to sing their songs of hope and desire with greater enthusiasm as the last vestige of sunlight slipped beyond the horizon. I could hear the slapping tails of beavers just upstream and the smacking lips of rising trout.  The hatch was beginning to slow as the light grew ever more dim, but the trout continued to rise so I continued to cast and mend, drift and watch, as my imitation of feathers and fur floated beside the living mayflies. I thought of how a hand-tied fly is a mere artful suggestion of something living, while the living mayfly is the art itself.  One exists in the hopeful desire of connecting with something foreign and alive, while the other lives with the purpose of creating new life not unlike itself. In the end, we all live a mayfly’s life.

Just then as I struggled to follow my fly’s drifting journey along a foam line and around a massive stone, I saw a trout rise and take it with a gentle sip, as if in doing so with such understatement among his splashy companions he might get away with it unnoticed. But he was noticed and as I raised my rod tip I knew this would be my last chance before I’d have to reel in and walk back to my truck through the soft, wet grasses of the meadow. And just when I realized the urgency of the moment, I lost him, and my line went slack, and I heard her soft voice once again coming from somewhere deep inside me saying, “Just keep doing whatever it is your doing, you’re almost done.”

There’s something about this particular evening on the river I haven’t told you yet, so I might as well do it now that I have reeled in my line, snipped off my fly, and find myself once again standing alone but not lonely as the river rushes around me. When I first walked up to the water I was full of worry. It has been said that one of the greatest skills in life is the ability to adapt to uncertainty. I have been practicing that skill all my life. Whenever my mind fills my body with angst and my body fills my mind with anguish, I know how to let go of them both. I go to the river. I cast my line. I live in the moment and in doing so, clear my mind of ghosts and goblins. And it never fails. Nature always heals me. I’d like to return that favor.

When I was a boy, life was less than ideal. Besides being the child of a physically and psychologically abusive mother, I was born with various medical issues that resulted in a childhood surgery and frightening nights in emergency rooms, hospital rooms, and the waiting rooms of various doctors. And no matter if I was fleeing the abuses of a parent or the poking and prodding of a white coat-wearing stranger who never felt like “the good guy,” I have found that the only good medicine for anything that ails me is to walk in the woods, and climb up a tree, and wade in a stream while talking to the songbirds and dragonflies of my dreams. Even then, I always knew I could find peace, joy, and a sense of belonging by walking in Nature and standing in a river with a fishing rod in hand. Nothing much has changed. Nature is always my safe place. Nature calms my soul and holds me close like the mother I never knew.

So I sat on the tailgate of my truck sipping a cold beer and watching the fireflies illuminating the darkness of the streamside meadow. The crickets sang and the river did too, and I felt peaceful, calm, even joyful as my anguish transformed into acceptance. It was a perfect evening as I watched my life and the world around me change, as they always do. Change and uncertainty are the way of things. The mayfly and the brown trout never know what comes next—and neither do I. But I learn a lot from a rising fish and a flittering insect about living in the moment and letting life unfold as it will.

And that’s when I heard her voice again saying, “We’re all done, and you did fine.” I opened my eyes as soon as the table slid out from under the CT scanner and the radiology technician pulled the dye-filled IV from my arm. “I watched as your heart rate dropped from 68 beats per minute to 58 beats per minute—like magic. How did you do that?” she asked.

I smiled and said, “It was easy, I went fly fishing . . . in my imagination.” If you think about it, and you should, life is what we imagine it to be—nothing more, and nothing less. No matter what comes our way, all we can do is remain grateful for every breath and heartbeat and keep casting forward.

Steve Ramirez is a Texas master naturalist, poet, and Marine Corps veteran. He is the author of Casting Forward, Casting Onward, Casting Seaward, and most recently Casting Homeward (Lyons Press, 2024).

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