The fish just weren’t biting right now. He removed his shoes and sat barefoot on the bank, silently angry with himself for even bothering to go to the river today. It had been a long walk, and he had left home early this morning, but now the sun was high overhead and the shade was absent, even from underneath the trees the grew alongside the river. He was not quite ready to start what would feel like the longer walk back home, nor did he really want to continue with the futility of today’s fishing.

He loved going to the river, especially during the weekdays when no one else was there. He no longer went there on weekends – there were always too many people then, and they always brought with them their noisy city habits along with their fancy fishing gear. The fish in the river knew this too, and wisely never approached the river banks on the weekends, and he would always quietly laugh to himself whenever he thought about how the tourists’ fun was going to be spoiled. He was convinced that the fish were laughing as well, and it was very much like one of those private jokes that you could only share with very good friends.

 For most of his life, he had never particularly cared for fishing. He could still clearly recall his birthday the year he turned eleven when he removed the blue paper from the present his father had handed to him, and how the child-like disappointment filled within him when he saw that it was only a fishing rod.

He remembered how his father was speaking to him as he had sat in silence, still too numb to say thank you, and the vague recollection of the words that he spoke – son, you’re getting too old for toys, and it’s time that you started learning about the things that men enjoy – son, a toy would only become a part of your past, but a fishing rod is a thing a man can have for the rest of his life. A part of the man inside him did awaken that day when he finally looked up at his father, and he saw for the first time, that his father would sometimes be like the many men he would later meet that, at times, he would not like very much.

And from that moment on, and until the time that he left home to begin his own life away from his father, his summers would routinely include many visits to the river with his father and the hated fishing rod. He never complained about having to do this, and because he still loved his father, he pretended to enjoy these outings and, in spite of his inner resistance, could not prevent himself from learning the art of fishing.

When the day finally arrived that he was to leave and begin his own life away in the city, his father had asked if he wanted to take the fishing rod with him. No dad, he recalled saying, let’s leave it here for when I come to visit, not a lot of places to go fishing in the city – he did not know whether or not this was even true, but he was grateful for an excuse to never see the fishing rod again.

His visits back home to see his father fell into a rhythm that he was comfortable with, becoming both shorter and less frequent as the years passed since he had left. It was only on the return trips back to his life in the city that it would occur to him that his father would never ask if he wanted to visit the river, and he would be relieved that he did not have tell his father those little lies that he had rehearsed in his mind when he had believed that he did not want to ever fish in the river again.

He was already nearing the time when he was considering his own retirement when word reached him of his father’s death, and it was several days before he could bring himself to return to the now empty home of his boyhood. He had hoped to only spend as much time as was needed to dispose of the home’s contents in order to sell the house, and planned to rely heavily upon the detachment to this place that he had cultivated in the years since he had lived there.

It was on the third day that he was there when he found the fishing rod, gently covered beneath a blanket, and placed in the furthest corner of the room that was used for storing those items that his father was never quite ready to part with in his later years. It was the same True Temper Spinning Rod that he had detested as that gift when he was eleven, though he was struck by how new it still looked, as if it was still the day of that birthday when he had removed the blue paper and suffered such great disappointment. He knew then that his father had been making sure to keep the bamboo rod varnished, the reel working and the old line replaced, and because he had loved his son, he wanted to always have the rod ready to be used, just in case his son ever felt like going down to the river during one of his visits. Now, for only the second time since his father’s passing, he allowed himself to briefly succumb to a wave of grief and guilt, and he mourned again the loss of the time that he chose not to spend with his father.

He did not know why, but that was the moment that he decided that he would not sell his father’s house, and instead, sold his own house in the city and returned to live in this home near the river, and that it was where he wanted to be again, and where he would settle into the rest of his life.

He began making visits again to the river with the fishing rod very soon after moving back into the house, and was grateful to discover that there was never anyone else there who might happen to witness his clumsy attempts to relearn what he had spent many years wanting to forget about fishing.

The habits his father had taught him also returned and stayed with him always as he fished in the river. Always catch and release, son. Don’t take the fish from the river unless you really want to eat fish for dinner, son. Be kind to the fish and respect the fish, son. The fish will know this, son. And, in the many days and weeks that he spent fishing at the river, he would find that he could now see the individual features in each of the fish that he would return to the river, and he would recognize them as familiar friends each time that he caught one of them.

Then, on the first day that he thought he would actually like to eat a fish for dinner, he had caught one of those many fish that he had become fond of, and was immediately repelled by the thought of eating it, and instead gently released it back into the river – sorry friend, my mistake and hope to see you again soon. Quite some time had passed before the desire and appetite for a fish dinner returned to him, and on that day, he was surprised to find that he had caught a fish he had never met before, a stranger both to himself and the river, and it was if the river was saying to him yes, please take this one – really, it is our gift to you and we want you to have it. And strangely, the same thing would happen again, from that time forward, on those few occasions that he would have fish for dinner.

Now, on that day that the fish weren’t biting and as he sat on the river bank, his mind wandering in and out of the past, he knew some of the sadness that his father must have felt during those years he spent alone, with only the river and the fish as companions, instead of with the son he had long ago taught to fish.

He was beginning to feel overwhelmed now, and tried to focus on anything other than his thoughts. Staring at the river, he saw how truly perfect it was today. The clear water was low and calm, no longer the angry river of early spring with its high waters or dangerous currents. He knew this was a safe place, and that the river would never hurt him.

He stood now, and began rolling up the legs of his pants as far as they could go, but could only make them reach to just below his knees. He stepped gently off the bank and carefully waded out into the river, not caring that the bottom parts of his pants were getting wet.

There was just the slightest sensation of a gentle pressure against his body where the river’s current met his legs. The water was not terribly cold this time of the year, and so he continued just a tiny bit further away from the bank, until the river reached to below his hips. He looked down and noticed that he could no longer see the river bottom – it was gone, hidden within a cloud of brown silt from the riverbed that he had stirred up as he waded into the water.

He stood very still in the water, and the time slowly flowed away from him, carried gently downstream by the river. Closing his eyes, he tried to dislodge the thoughts that were troubling him, but it was as futile as today’s fishing, and it was as if he was trying to dig a hole in the waters of the river, only to have the waters rush back into the void he was trying to create. With every thought he tried to push away, another would quickly take its place and he drifted further away from the present.

Now he was again a child, and could remember the feel of the greasy mud in his toes when he would search for frogs and tadpoles, and the anger he would face when he returned home wearing clothes so dirty that they could not be clean again. He tried to recall the many different jobs he had held that he had loved, but only the short-lived others that he had hated came to mind. He wanted to fondly remember the many wonderful friends he had known, but could only feel the sadness that all of them were gone now, their faces remaining as photographs in his mind, forever frozen in a smile or a laugh. He tried to conjure up visions of women he had never met, but was only reminded of the fact that he had never married, his mind filling only with the regrets that he thought he had long ago defeated.

He was drowning in pain now and could not find his way back to the surface in his mind. He was desperately reaching for any memory that he could cling to, when suddenly, and like a branch hanging over the river that would pull him back to the bank of the present, he oddly thought about the neighbour’s cat waiting in his yard for him to come home, and he warmed at knowing how he would never admit to anyone that he loved the sound of its purring while it ate the pieces of fish he would always share with it.

When he finally reopened his eyes, he saw that the sun was now much lower in the sky and had already moved behind the tops of the trees that grew alongside the river. He looked down and the calmly moving waters were clear again, the cloudy silt having long ago settled back down into the bed of the river. He could see down to the river bottom now, and that is when he noticed the very slow movements of a glistening group of fish gathering around his legs, and that he could feel the touch of some of the circling river trout when they would briefly pause to do this, even as they continued to gently swim around him.

Featured image photo courtesy of the author.