My husband took a highly unusual day off from his work as a freedom fighter (he’s a Public Defender) today so that we could go fishing and he could take his mind off his 50 open cases. It was an exceptional Wednesday for me, as well, to spend a weekday together fishing, instead of facing my most rigorous home chores of the week. After nearly five hours’ fishing, my husband helped me with my Wednesday chores.
We fished along the Grande Ronde, moving upstream and downstream, casting our lines in and around its rapids. Uncharacteristically we didn’t catch a single fish, but lost two flies and three lures between us trying. This time it wasn’t big fish absconding with our gear, but rock snags.
Our lost gear didn’t matter, and neither did not catching fish; we have plenty put up in canning jars. Our time fishing was wonderful, despite coming home with an empty fish cooler. We spent most of a day with a beautiful river all to ourselves, with spectacular canyon scenery around us, and an absence of noise. We both made several hundred casts into the rapids, and not one of them was fruitless, even if we donated a few lures to the rocks.
My thought, as I cast as far as I could, over and over, seemed trite, but nonetheless true. Casting into the rapids is what life is supposed to be. You reach as far as you possibly can, with hope and aspiration. You may gain, lose, or stay even, but you keep casting. Rapids are a kinetic force; you must be kinetic if you desire their bounty. I like to fish, and I especially like to catch fish. But even if I don’t catch a single fish, I like interacting with the river, always with hope in my heart of sharing its bounty. And having hope is its own reward.
We ate our lunch here today.
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