Giving Thanks Again*

Let the sea resound, and everything in it, 
       the world, and all who live in it.
Let the rivers clap their hands, 
       Let the mountains sing together for joy.
-King David, Psalm 98:7&8 

Thanks for fish and fishing,
For wool socks and gloves,
And tin cups of coffee,
For hunting and fishing partners
Like W.L. Gore, A.W. Danner, and C.C. Filson.
For rutting bucks and bulls and full curl rams
For mud flats, flood plains, rim rock, and ridge tops,
And alpine meadows and muskeg bogs,
Headwaters, tributaries, tailouts,
sloughs, seams, pockets, and pools,
And high tide and low tide and high tide and low tide…  
Thanks for roe and redds and riffles;
Spring migrations, Fall runs, 
The light in June,
And the night in Winter.
For tannic lakes and glacial lakes
And phosphorescence in the bay,
For cedar, spruce, and hemlock–
Ancient giants still alive– 
For the Aurora and thunder
And the rain that brings the river back to itself.
Thanks for safe passage overland,
For birds in the hand,
Fish for the pan,
And wood for the fire.

Thank you Lord for this life,
And for giving me
The need to fish
Until my arms can’t hold a rod,
To hunt until I cannot see to hunt,
And to watch and walk
Until I reach Your shore.

 

*This updated post appeared in its original form here two years ago.

What Economic Crisis?

“My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer…”
-Robert Burns, Farewell to the Highlands

This week my family ate salmon from our home river marinated with the berries we picked while fishing for the salmon. Tonight we’ll have venison that’s never been packaged, frozen, processed, or touched by anybody other than me. Next week we’ll thaw halibut or crab from the bay and eat it in a home warmed by wood fire and an intense love for each other and the land that preserves us.

It’s not just a good way to live. I’m starting to believe it’s the right way.

Fly

“When the trout is rising to the fly, the salmon to the fall.”
-William Allingham, The Winding Banks of Erne 

The salmon come here following some genetic impulse.  The trout come following the salmon. 

You know why I’m here.

Rainbow Variations IV

“In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
-Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Water rises from the ground,
Mist to quench the dust;
And falls like manna from the sky–
We fish because we must.