Travers Corners by Scott Waldie

Author:Scott Waldie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2013-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

7

Pastime

LIKE EVERYTHING THAT gains in the aging—whiskey, memories, and women—angling, his angling anyway, had improved over the years. And Jud wasn’t thinking about his skills as a fisherman, since he was certain any proficiencies acquired and refined had undergone subtle losses now that he stood on the lee side of fifty.

He was in his apron, up at the Boat Works, hand-working some stubborn cedar in the workshop, and reviewing his life as an angler. . . .

He’d gone through all the stages all young men must. In his teens he knew all a man needed to know about fly fishing. In his twenties he tried to learn all the things he hadn’t needed to know, as well as all the things he’d thought he knew only the decade before. He also treated fly fishing as a sport. Fly fishing isn’t a sport; basketball is a sport.

In his thirties he went about fine-tuning his love of fishing, collecting the arcane and completing the scientific filigree. This was all fine and well, and enjoyable on a cold January night; tying flies, wrapping rods, and reading Haig Brown. But all these endeavors are only the periphery, simple wintertime diversions, indoor amusements. But fly fishing isn’t a parlor game; Monopoly is a parlor game.

And now, thirty-odd years a fly fisherman, he could say that his angling continues to amend. Sure, some of this betterment could be attributed to all those long winter nights of study, as well as to three decades of practiced dedication, but mostly these enhancements could be attributed to the people he had met along the way, specifically those people he had met through guiding. It was from those fishermen, almost always older people, as older folks have a tendency to distill everything down to its essence, that he came to know what fly fishing really is: one of life’s most pleasant pastimes and nothing more. Nothing more, because there are few things more fulfilling than a pleasant pastime.

(Author’s note: Now there will be some readers who disagree, thinking that I have just reduced something regarded by many of you as a passion down to a pastime. Please allow me to defend my reasoning in the following pages. But, dear reader, know that: this is not a yarn; this is not a story; this is not a fable tucked away in the long list of allegories that is the fiction of Travers Corners. This is a simple and true tale; and as with most tales that are more than twice-told, it holds a lesson.)

His chisel had grown dull and Jud walked over to the stone on the workbench. He then grabbed two other chisels, as an afterthought, thinking that if he was going to sharpen the one, he might as well do them all. It was a cold spring afternoon, a good day for mindless work and reminiscing. It was fifteen years ago, fifteen years this coming summer. . . .

Jud had just stepped outside the Boat Works for some fresh air.

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