Rarely do I accept any lessons from life and not because they aren’t valuable and applicable, but because I am normally blind to them. Rarer still is a life lesson’s obvious applicability. Yet, here is one.
Not long ago, I scrambled down a creek bank fairly well under a truss bridge to go fishing. Just to the right of my spot on the bank, the little creek collided with the Tennessee River in a watery T intersection. The truss bridge spanned the creek at the creek’s last identifiable moment as its own blueway.
I do not enjoy fishing with others, yet on this occasion, a fisherman with whom I’d conversed a time or two in the past at this very spot, appeared again. We hello’d one another and he got to work. He came with two rods. One, a simple rig with which he, like me, would cast into the creek from the bank. A hook with a worm, maybe a sinker, and a bobber too. Mostly child’s play.
The other, a mighty rod with an enormous reel that was plated with hubcaps, and threaded with line thick as a the vagus nerve on a horse. He baited the hook, which was a piece of rebar twisted into a hook shape and sharpened on a grinder, with chum normally reserved for starving white sharks.
All of this in hand, my friend trooped back up the creek bank to the bridge, walked halfway across the span, and faced the big river. I saw his plan: The elevation of the bridge would give him plenty of height above the water so that, with all the muscles in his body constricting at once then exploding, and a little bit of luck, he could send his baited hook high and far out into the river, where it would sink to the bottom and, eventually, hook a monster.
Except he failed to look behind himself. He drew the rod back for the throw and, unbeknownst to him, the hook buried itself in the bridge’s railing. Before I could shout it out, he slashed the rod forward. The line immediately tightened and the rod leapt from his hands. The sudden release of tension on the line dislodged the hook from the railing and the entire thing—rod, reel, line, and bait—slid into the water beneath the bridge. It all happened in about once second.
“Shit,” he whispered. “Shit,” I whispered. “That was my best reel,” he said. “Shit,” I said and, then, “Shit,” again.
All fishermen know a certain amount of loss and attrition, when it comes to gear, is inevitable. Hooks snag the bottom all the time and bobbers float away and springs bust out of nowhere in bail arms, rendering them as floppy and limp as a dead bass. In fact, it’s not all that disappointing. Broken gear means a sooner-rather-than-later trip to the sporting goods store for more gear. I felt bad for my friend, and a little embarrassed for him, but I knew his loss would quickly turn to gain the minute his next paycheck cleared the bank. With a twinge of jealousy, then, I turned my attention to my own set-up.
The next thing I knew, my friend was in the water. His clothes, all but his boxer shorts, were piled on a rock on the creek bank. I saw nothing but his head bobbing above the water and then it disappeared, exchanged for his feet, as he upended himself and kicked his way into the depths. After some time, he reappeared on the surface, holding nothing. And then, after a few more dives, he surfaced and said, “I can’t feel my hands.” It was, I’ll grant, a chilly spring day. He dog paddled to the bank and laid himself, nearly completely nude, in the sun and closed his eyes.
A valiant effort, I thought. I’m not sure I would’ve had the fortitude. A shame he wasn’t able to grab it, but what were the chances he would in the first place? Oh well, good show. Cracking dedication to your things and to your sport.
The next thing I knew, my friend, clothed again, was back on the bridge with his other rod, dropping the hook directly into the spot in which his Goliath had fallen. By this time, I myself had stopped fishing completely, content to watch him fish for his fishing rod.
I was saddened to realize how much time had passed and that I would have to leave and get about my business, the business I’d happily neglected for an afternoon by the creek, but which nonetheless still nagged.
“I’ll see you later,” I shouted up to him. He may have mumbled his own goodbye or not, the entirety of his attention taken by the task at hand, one he couldn’t have predicted as he set out from home for the creek and the river but to which, nonetheless, he’d dedicated the entirety of his being.
I shook my head as I headed back to my car. I really felt badly for him, knowing what he must’ve known, what all fishermen know, that when the water wishes to keep and to withhold, it does so. Poor fellow, I thought again as I got in the car, he will learn his lesson from this.
Hours later, he texted me. “I got it,” he said, “The entire thing.”