ON LIVING DELIBERATELY

A month in paradise eventually comes to an end. As one with an adventurous spirit, this is a fact I knew all too well. It was summer in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom—July, one of the prettiest months—and my only obligations were to my slept-in bed and the half-full woodshed. Winter would be along soon. You could feel it whisper in the night.

Connor Island, common loon nesting ground, NEK, Vermont. Photo by Matt Reilly

    As I had many months to prepare for the sojourn, I was bubbling with a diverse bucket list, though I was without an agenda or timeline of any sort. That’s simply not how I operate. In the afternoons, and sometimes before breakfast, after my duty to the woodshed was filled, I disappeared.

    The tires of my mountain bike repurposed wintertime snowmobile trails, dry and cobbled in the warm season. Hiking and bushwhacking to unnamed ponds, mountainous peaks, mysterious rivulets, and feeder brooks preceded my fishing efforts, and were enjoyed much the same, if not more for the discovery. The larger ponds, Bald Hill and Newark, which gleam crystalline within the folds of the mountain I called home, I plied thoroughly with an aluminum-hull canoe, sometimes late into the night, and rarely without finding finned supper. Minks and otters of the shoreline, fish, vistas, landmarks, and intriguing features alike fell prey to the sharp memory of my digital lens. Blueberries were picked after an afternoon swim in the frigid glacial lakes with the dogs. Little time was lost for thinking.

    There came a time when the day had not yet been exhausted. Dinner had been concluded, and the late sunset of summer in New England was only looming. A short bike ride to aid in metabolism, down an old logging road and around a shallow, boggy pond, landed me at the lower end of Bald Hill Pond.

    I followed a trail of large boulders, extending out into a shallow bay, hopping carefully all the way, and found a relatively flat place on which to sit. My back to the few camps built upon the shoreline, human habitation was undetectable, save for the faint smell of smoke and my own thoughts. The cooling evening pulled air down from Bald Mountain, accented at the peak by a locally recognized fire tower, pooling above the lake’s surface the exquisite smells of spruce, hemlock, and maple.

    Life was evident. The frilly howls of common loons echoed through the hollows as quintessential reminders of the untamed character of the North Woods, as they pinwheeled from one pond to the next.

    The pond’s surface was calm, save for the erratic but delicate dimples of egg-laying mayflies. Because of their small size and constant movement, dimples are often the first indication of their presence from a distance, and they focused my attention on the happenings in the film.

    These insects spend most of their life as aquatic nymphs. Should they be fortunate enough to evade the hungry gaze of a trout during their time underwater, they become particularly vulnerable when they reach maturity and ascend in the water column and attempt to wriggle free of adolescence and into winged adulthood.

    The successful adults I could see, celebrating their victory by completing the circle of life. Upon depositing their embryos upon Bald Hill’s glistening surface, the mayflies took off—up into the air, only to disappear. It was then that an observant pair of finches took their turn in the process of life, darting rapidly from the haven of an adjacent cedar tree into the air to nab one of the unsuspecting parents, and returning to a limb to feed and prepare to do it again.

    Life is markedly short for the mayfly.

    To look back on that time, when I had no job, no commitments, from a time of intense study and work, I am thankful for the clarity it provided.

    It’s easy to lose sight of what’s important. Not what’s important to society or our community, but what’s important to us as individuals. That may seem an inherently selfish resolve, but without the time to allow our own minds and souls to be stimulated, it is hard to be outwardly and genuinely individual. We were all endowed with gifts meant to be manifested, and without pausing from time to time to reflect on those, there is waste. A gift is a terrible thing to waste.□

*Originally published in The Rural Virginian

A NORTH WOODS HAUNTING

    All my life I’ve been haunted by waters, by fish lost.  

Photo by Matt Reilly

It’s our very nature as humans to try and quantify the world around us—science in its most primitive form.  Thus, it is the habit of fishermen to yearn for understanding of the underwater worlds they frequent, to try to place limitations on that which they cannot see.  It’s no surprise, then, that when a fish of unexplained origin or unheard of proportions reveals himself to us, only to slip from our grasp, that we are haunted by its very existence—the wonder and the allure of the unknown.

    The fish that most effectively taught me this lesson inhabits a large glacial pond in the Northeast Kingdom.  On a bluebird day, boaters slice the water’s surface toting tubers and excited passengers; and swimmers clog the fishing access from mid-morning to sunset.  Houses and cabins line the shorelines.  A gravel road winds in amongst them, around the pond, and slides 1000 feet down the mountain to the base of Mount Pisgah, into a town just as cheery as the summer scene above it.

    Pushing upward, past the pond, towards the mountain’s peak, there sits back in the hemlock and spruce trees a log cabin, my grandparents’—a B&B they adapted after selling a larger establishment in town.  I was staying there for the month of July, when, except for my daily duty to the woodshed, I was free to explore and fish the surrounding woods and waters.

    It was on one such bluebird day—the kind with the boaters and the swimmers, when the air smells pure and flows freely through your lungs—that I decided to spend the afternoon on the larger pond chasing smallmouth.

    I included my younger brother in the ritual, lugging paddles, vests, rods, tackle—all essentials down the short dirt road to the cabin where our aluminum canoe was tied to a paper birch, bobbing in the wake of the boats, tugging at the rope to be set free.

    When we had filled the canoe and untied the rope, I put my brother on course towards the southern shoreline, and paddled into a gentle breeze.

    The pond’s bed dropped out from beneath us for the length of the trip, carved by ancient glaciers and since filled with cool spring water, but recovered again into a wide, rocky flat when we reached our destination.

    Casts in all directions provoked strikes; and the medium-sized, energized bass, grown strong on the abundant minnows and leeches, rattled our light tackle for excitement that lasted hours.

    Evidently we should have taken food, because our stomachs bottomed out before the fishing did.  So, after turning the bow towards the tie-up, I dropped a small spinner 60 feet behind the canoe and rested my rod perpendicular to our course to try some trolling on the return trip as an extension of the day’s fishing.

We settled into a paddling rhythm fairly quickly, but slowed the pace when we passed over deeper water to make trolling the most effective.

    My mind occupied itself recalling the contours of the bottom from a map studied earlier in my stay, but was interrupted by my brother’s probing question:  “Do fish really even swim out here in the mid—“

The aluminum of our vessel rattled.   My reel lodged firmly in the thwart, angled back.  Conversation was ended abruptly.  Our forward progress tapered quickly, as the monofilament protruding into the depths stretched.

    We were moving slightly backwards by the time I grabbed the rod.  It throbbed, powerfully, and any doubt of life on the other end was eliminated.

    The first few moments of the fight consisted of using the canoe as a drag system as I held onto a steadily pulsing rod, bent double over the stern.  Soon though, my opponent gained height in the water column, and flanked us to the left, into open water.  There the fish remained again, rolling, until finally feeling a particularly violent bout of desperation.

    The line sliced towards the surface, guided by an unidentified ball of energy.  When it broke the surface, it was a bony head that then dove again, propelled by a double-jointed green tail, splashing water with each stroke.

    It was headed towards us when it dove, and I could then feel a slight relaxing in the pressure as the end of the line made steady progress towards the surface.  Staring over the side of the canoe, into the depths, anticipation bubbled in my face. 

    Just then, a hint of a golden flash broke the darkness for an instant as pressure lessened on the rod.  But in a last effort to evade comprehension, the Unknown freed the hook from its jaws, and dashed tragically back to into the rocky abyss.

    The canoe continued to rock for several moments, as I sat in silence, contemplating, trying to grasp my loss and what had just transpired.

    Solemnly, I inquired to my brother in the bow, allowing me my time, “How big, you think?”  After a thoughtful glance at the paddle in his lap, he placed a fist around the paddle, several inches up from the blade, and held it up.

    “You too, huh?,” I returned.

    Though disappointed, and deeply heart-wrenched at losing what I was relatively sure was a northern pike—a reclusive species for that region, and a fish not known by biologists to inhabit the pond—I was filled with a warm sort of appreciation for the mystery the world had spared me the answer to, and a thankfulness for the opportunity to brush paths with such a creature from another world, if only for a moment.  In that, wonder is a fickle beast—its quest is for answers, but their acquisition is the ruin of it. 

Born Too Late

                A few times in an angler’s life, one stumbles upon a gem—seemingly unspoiled and genuine—and when an unforgettable day’s fishing is coupled with this discovery, a deeper, personal relationship is formed with the water.  Its mystical qualities enable one to deflect life’s bullets instead of dodging them, ready to turn to the earth for sustenance, and leave behind what is unnecessary, in order to do what you feel you were born to do.  You’re left feeling empowered, peaceful and humbled.  This is who you are—you are a different person standing within Creation.  This rush soon runs out, when the river carries you back through the portal to your modern life full of violence and political correctness, and can be easily written off as adrenaline.  The feeling that ensues is one of longing and remorse; longing for a simpler time that wasn't complicated by modern culture, when the people made their living from the earth and went back to it when they were done.

                One such setting that holds this meaning to me is a dynamic river in Vermont’s north country.  This historic river called “The Clyde,” flows out of a pond in the northeast corner of the state, and flows lazily, meandering through the forests and ponds of the Northeast Kingdom, exploring the land in the broad river valley as if it likes what it sees and wants to stay.  After running through five ponds, and over two dams, the water finally makes its way to a vast lake with a name meaning “big water.”

                It is from this large, glacial lake that the largest salmon run on the east coast once began.  In the early nineteenth century, three times a year, Landlocked Salmon reaching twenty pounds or more would make runs upstream to feed on the eggs of suckers, who also ran the river, and to begin a new life cycle.  Walleye would also accompany the salmon on their runs in equal or greater numbers.  Dams constructed later, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, soon blocked the annual movement of spawning fish.  Before long, sport fishing and salmon tournaments stripped the river of its greatest quality.

                In the days when the salmon still ran, after traveling fifteen miles against the mild current of their home river, the river’s resistance would ease; finding depth in a broad valley, and the scenery would change from that of a north woods salmon river, to that of a riverine bog.  It is this stretch that I too have a personal connection to.

Today, it is on this stretch that the passerby loses sight of roads, houses, plowed fields, and all other hints of human existence except for the ancient riverside cabins that can be found in the shadows of the birch trees on the banks of the river.  Completely in place, they are part of the river, one with the river as part of the long-standing equation that was the salmon run; but without the salmon they are vacant, only because of the very humans that once occupied them.  That passerby is me.

It was our last day in the place I call my home, and the last day for my father, my brother, and I to fish together.  We had several options, but after weighing them, we finally discounted a few local ponds and made the safe decision to paddle the beautiful Clyde—where we knew we could catch fish.  Full of energy and excitement, we poured out the front door on a mission.  After loading the aluminum canoe full of paddles, fishing rods and gear, and food, I assisted my father in sliding it into the covered bed of my grandfather’s Dodge pickup.  My father and brother would occupy the canoe.  So as they piled into the front seats of the truck, I stuffed my yellow kayak and paddle into the bed, and slid into the front seat as the ignition started and the green truck carried the three of us down the driveway.

Rolling down the mountain, I began thinking of my own personal quest and the challenges that awaited me on the river.  Naturally, I’d utilize this outing for both fishing and photography, and being alone in a kayak on a flowing river presents some issues.  These issues will need to be resolved if I want to protect my fish-catching reputation and keep up with my father and brother in the canoe—but I digress.

The red-orange fields backed by dark conifers and bold mountains reaching through the low-laying clouds remind me that my real objective for the afternoon is to have fun and enjoy my surroundings before setting off for home in the morning.  My first glimpse of flowing water reminds me of the sizable Brookie I landed on my last trip to the Clyde.

Something about the three of us being in the car together tosses weighty topics out the open window.  My father either begins singing, “making Neil Young look good,” or cracking cheesy jokes to entertain himself and I, like he’s been doing since he started taking me along squirrel hunting or trout fishing in the mountains of western Virginia when I was just old enough to walk.  My brother, relatively new to the events that take place in the truck, tries to make sense of it all, and tries to introduce more “sophisticated” topics.  One of these days, he will learn.

After arriving at our put-in the boats were launched with no hesitation.  The sky was cloudy, and the midday sun’s intensity was beginning to ease with the slightest breeze.  I was now on my own, and the fish would surely be feeding.

When the river finds width, I beach the stern of my craft on the pickerel weed covered, southern bank.  Sitting, straddling the kayak in shallow water, with no sign of human life in sight, ankle deep in water, and boating fish after strong fish, it’s hard to envision a time when this bounty of Yellow Perch would have meant so little.  Visions instilled in me by sporting stories written a hundred years back and further come to mind.  Rivers thick with fish; birds so plentiful, with their songs so diverse as to give you a headache; but no humans—these visions taunt me from the safety of my imagination.

I realize that settings such as these now offer a simulation of the world that exists in my imagination.  When light is shone on modern culture, the shallow shadow falls on the natural world, veiled and cheated by society.

With river water cooling my ankles, I myself feel cheated.  Staring out across the water and marsh grass, to the foot of the river’s mountain, I can’t help thinking about our precarious position.  The term “untouched wilderness” now comes with a side of disappointment, with the knowledge that these words are indeed just an empty promise.  Perhaps a more accurate term is “less touched wilderness.”

Off again, exploring the rich river.  As predicted I’m feeling empowered, yet humble.  The sun is setting, and I’m a mile from my put-in, but my mind is at ease.  The water of the Clyde River, now swirling below me, makes clear to me my mission.  The need to keep what is, to bring the world back where it came from, now fills me like the river water that saturates my pores.  

A North Woods Haunting

            As a fisherman, all my life I have been intrigued and haunted by waters.  And as far as my angling career has taken me, I have been haunted by fish lost.  A summer trip to Northern Vermont brought me home and my hopes up.  My yearning for trout in a mystic place made my most recent loss much more important.

My twelve-year- old brother and I were staying with our grandparents in their bed and breakfast cabin in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.  We had the whole month of July to adventure and fish at our own dispense—a dream of mine a long time coming.  While most of my days were occupied filling the seemingly endless woodshed, I was still left several hours each day to spend on the water.

            It is this time of year that the warm, summer air in Vermont brings about the swelling of blueberries, and it was to these tasty berries that the grandparents were devoting the latter half of their day to.  As for my brother and I, we grabbed our fishing gear and peddled our bikes down the road to the nearest glacial pond.  The sky was clear, and the temperature was in the seventies, and even though the trout probably wouldn’t be very active, the canoe seemed to be begging for use.

            My brother in the bow shoved the craft from the rocks on shore and I pointed us in the direction of the piece of shore near a small island we usually fished for Smallmouth and Yellow Perch.  Over the course of an hour, many scrappy smallmouth bent our rods.  We were hunting for table fare though, and were only keeping the tasty Yellow Perch.

We fished South, down the rocky bank, until we reached the shallow, rocky southern end of the pond, where we slid a few perch onto the stringer.  We hung around there for a while, fishing the flat thoroughly, adding still more smallmouth to the ranks of fish caught.

            It must have been past noon by this point, because the two of us were getting hungry.  So I pushed us off from the sandy shore the light, north breeze had pushed us onto, and pointed the bow of the canoe down the shoreline towards the camp where we tie up.

            As we emerged from the shallow south bay, and the rocky lake bottom slipped out of view, I wedged my medium weight rod in the canoe and opened the bail to try some trolling.  Finding the speed of the canoe too fast, I relieved my younger brother of his paddling duty, and towed the lure myself.  I had never caught a trout out of the pond, but I hoped to on my white Roadrunner on the way back to the camp.

            A few minutes passed—uneventful.  My brother broke the silence with a criticizing query.

“Do fish really swim out in the middle of the pond?”

As I attempted to answer his question, my lure lodged in something solid and the rod steadily started to bend.  I threw the canoe in reverse to retrieve my lure from the snag when the rod tip throbbed.  The events that followed were surreal.

            The initial throb of the rod tip wasn’t enough to convince me that anything in the pond was large enough to bend the medium rod double.  The first powerful surge brought me to my senses, and as I tried to guess what kind of fish I was tied into, ruled out every fish I knew to inhabit the pond.

In what seemed like hours, I got no view of the hefty fish.  The line headed for the surface, but I prevented the jump, intending to keep the hook in its mouth.  In another fit of rage, the fish bored down on the lake bottom, turned, and started to rise just as fast.  I thought to myself, “Here she comes.”

A half second later, a gray-green missile cleared the water by feet, showing just a narrow view of its flank and its snow white belly.  Adrenaline shot through my body as the long fish sliced back into the dark, clear water like a loon after a fish.

I put more pressure on the fish as he entered the water, pointing his head towards our craft, spinning helplessly at the mercy of the fish.  It was almost under the canoe now, and I realized that the size of the hook and the fact that I didn’t get a true hook-set put me in a position to land this fish as fast as possible.

With the fish just feet below me in the stern, tension was easing up on the rod, and I prepared myself, clearing space at my feet, to boat the magnificent creature.

My eyes probed the clear water beside me, hopeful and expecting as ever.  Just as I was making out a different texture in the water, my query turned and dug his nose down into the rocky bottom.

At this moment, the rod straightened abruptly, my spirit flattened, and the fish wiggled back into the unknown.  Just as the fight seemed to be a dream, the twirling Roadrunner returning to the surface from the unknown depths seemed to be a harsh reality.  A familiar feeling began to set in.

My mood soon rebounded, as my knees and hands began to tremble, and a smile replaced my gaping mouth.  I called to my brother in the bow, asking him to indicate on his paddle how long he took the fish to be.  Without hesitation, he lifted his paddle, with his hands glued in the paddling position, indicating the neck of the paddle.

“That’s what I thought,” I said, admiring my paddle.

I began to study my lure and line for signs of teeth, but none existed—not even chipped paint, or tearing on the plastic grub.  A soft-mouthed fish had engulfed the lure, and it was at this moment that I realized I had just lost the biggest trout of my life—a good thirty inches, maybe eight pounds.

We paddled back to camp in excited conversation.  The water that swirled around my paddle now carried an utterly different meaning.  Once again, my head swam with thoughts of my experience, and the dreams and attempts to reproduce the fish in the weeks that followed all seemed to push me towards the harsh realization that I may not get another chance at the fish I now wanted so badly.

“This is why.” I thought to myself, “This is why I’m here.”