Modern society has
convinced the outdoorsman in me that I was born too late. The rivers that I frequent are suppressed in
spirit, their wonder restrained to their actual dimensions by urban sprawl,
highways, and water treatment plants.
When I take to the field, I thirst for the refreshing experience of new
waters; but I lust for those places tucked away, out of sight, lost in
nature—where their essence extends for miles through some black hole of the
mind, never threatened by development or the idea that they might, in some
dimension, end.
 |
| The mighty Saco River at low water, crawling through a White Mountain valley. Photo by Matt Reilly |
Development. My parents know what it means. Their age is told in their memories. There was a time when Charlottesville,
Virginia was not a city, but a town.
Before Walmart and Sam’s Club took their anarchical perch above Route
29, farmer Matheny tended to his cows on the grassy pasture behind a blackboard
fence and an illusion that things might never change. The Rivanna River, in the gulley behind
Walton’s culturally-obese babies, coursed higher and stronger through the
rolling hills of the Piedmont, its lifeblood not yet stolen by the host of
housing developments to come, its finned inhabitants still unrestrained by dams.
I hear these memories
as a young child. Fear briefly enters
and exits my mind. What will the world
look like when I am grown? But at 8
years old, as far as I know, things don’t change.
I eventually learned my
lesson.
The woodlot that was
destined to be subdivided behind our newly-furnished house was just large
enough to be reminiscent of Maine’s “Big Woods” that I had learned of in Field and Stream. If I walked along the length of the
creekbottom, in the shadows of towering ridges, I could escape with the
perception of total isolation.
One spring, I happened
upon a stream of moderate girth. I
returned countless times in following seasons, slinging spinners and flies to
feisty panfish and pickerel.
One day I was startled
by the sight of two houses. Both were
under construction; and their backyards had torn into the woodland veil
protecting my secret gem, revealing it for all to see, eroding the banks, and
slowing the current.
Sour and cynical over
the soiling of my stream, I retreated into my mind to a place where rivers run
free and woods seem endless, where constant human activity does not hamper the
wildlife activity, and the flora is ornamental by God’s design, rather than that
of a landscaper. It was from this
experience that I began to crave wild lands removed from human occupation.
By the time I earned my
driver’s license I was a passionate fly fisherman, completely lost in the sport;
and my search for new water took me to where my childhood fantasies existed in
actuality—the Shenandoah National Park, where my dad had taken me to grouse
hunt and trout fish at a very young age.
Now, with the means to transport myself, I set off into the Blue Ridge
when I yearn for the tug of a sprightly brook trout.
I drive west; and as
the roads turn from pavement to gravel to dirt to nothing, and the hardwoods
close in above my head as I’m intertwined into the deep, meandering hollows
where the freestones run, the shackles of society and modern, complicated life
disintegrate into the air.
I can fish my way
through the gorge that the Rapidan River flows through in consensual
ignorance. In my mind, the Park does not
end, but extends forever in every direction, as does the river; and the fish in
its watery depths are virgin natives—refugees, like me.
When a brook trout
comes to hand, my suspicion is upheld.
The fiery brilliance that adorns its belly and pectorals, the olive
river rock along its back, accented by strong blue and red bull’s eyes make me
believe that they are a purity in nature, a stronghold of all that has been
lost in the world, safeguarded, hidden in the bottom of a mountain stream.
But alas, I know this
illusion is false. The trout in my hand
is a species endangered by a host of man-made threats; and its range retreats
into the mountaintops yearly. However,
unlike the Piedmont stream of my childhood, this one is protected, forever
sealed from peripheral development by 197,000 acres of federally-protected land. To the brook trout, and to me, that thought is
full of hope; as it is a symbol of like-minded individuals concerned with the
state of the environment doing their best to secure recreational areas and
wildlife havens for future generations, to preserve our spiritual haunts. In a word, it is a promise: For as long as I, and my children, live, places
like Shenandoah will be protected and cherished by sportsmen.□
*Originally published in the Rural Virginian
