Gone Quiet

I’ll explain later, but I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotations – the last graphs of Norman MacLean’s brilliant novella, A River Runs Through It.

It’s worth reading if only so you can truly appreciate these last graphs, and be able to go back to them from time to time. That’s great writing.

Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn’t. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Artic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.