My first fifty-five years were spent living in cities. Some of my more cosmopolitan friends would not include my six years in Anchorage, but Anchorage is to Alaska as Mexico City is to Mexico. There’s nothing else close to it in terms of size. Heck, it has two Costcos. Anyway, Los Angeles, Denver, Houston and London definitely meet the relevant criteria, so I won’t quibble if you want to hold Anchorage against me.
The point is that, like 80% to 90% of city dwellers everywhere, I spent a lot of time professing my longing to be outdoors “communing with nature.” I think I can safely say that I was among the 10% or 20% that actually did something about it. For two or three weeks a year, as vacation benefits and weekend commitments would allow, I got out and fished, hiked and “communed.” Or, at least I thought I did since I was never entirely sure of the steps involved in “communing” which is defined as “being in intimate communication or rapport.” Nonetheless, after fifty-five years I concluded that what I wanted more than anything else in retirement was to live in the country so that my wife and I could “commune” with nature more regularly.
The good news is we were blessed to find a place that friends and family enjoy coming to visit as their vacation benefits and weekend commitments allow. We love where we live and love hosting our guests. They typically drive off content after, in so many words, advising us of how great it was to “commune” with nature.
So, no matter what I say after this, don’t get me wrong, life is good.
With each passing season, however, I have a stronger sense of being party to, as a former President liked to say, a hoax. My study looks out at a pastoral scene of swaying grass or golden leaves or sparkling snow as the season dictates. Out the back windows I can watch the creek roll on interminably with trout dimpling the water, mink and muskrats cavorting, osprey and eagles cruising and Blue Heron fishing. Out the front, white tail deer and wild turkey graze on acorns, apples and whatever else the trees and bushes bestow upon them. “Idyllic” is a word that frequently drifts up and down this canyon.
In small helpings, this is nature as most of us envision it. In the large helpings I am privileged to consume now, if I am honest, it is a horror show of mayhem, death and destruction.
The osprey and eagles don’t just soar gracefully overhead, but regularly seize unwitting small animals like fish and squirrels and voles and snakes and fly away with them in their talons that they then use to rip their catch into bite size pieces. Our small dog was in danger of such a fate but was saved thanks to the intervention of our large dog. Since that day, they never get far from each other.
One night, I watched off and on from 6:00 in the evening until 6:00 the next morning as an owl that looked (as a neighbor put it) like a flying shoebox methodically sat across the creek from me and stripped a muskrat down to the bone with violent jerks of its beak. Sitting 50 yards away staring through binoculars I was still nervous and ready to bolt for the back door in case I was next.
The Blue Heron are marvelous fishers. They can remain motionless far better than any of the humans I have tried to keep still while fishing. But rather than presenting their fly or bait with finesse, their inertness is broken with a vicious stabbing of their beak that has to be a terrifying shock to the fish, just before the life is squeezed out of it.
The muskrat and mink are adorable…until they meet and the mink crushes the back of the muskrat’s skull before dining on it. You can almost hear the mink saying “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”
The deer and turkey are the essence of “communing” themselves, until you happen upon their remains littered in the tall grass or the shade of a tree or rock where the mountain lion that seized them made camp. “Back away slowly” is good advice that is almost impossible to follow in these instances.
None of this begins to touch the tenacity of the plants and insects. The whole “survival of the fittest” thing plays out every day here in the place we call “nature.” I have yet to find a pacifist in the whole lot.
My beloved trout are no exception. As I learned to fly fish, Stan Spangler instilled in me the notion that there is nothing more satisfying than presenting a small dry fly well and watching the nose of a rainbow barely disturb the surface as it slurps the fly and descends again, having burned the minimum number of calories possible in the process. I still relish those catches.
I have concluded over the years, however, that trout do not succeed in their quest to be the “fittest” by slurping mayflies day in, day out. To take things to the next level, they eventually have to graduate to meals of greater substance. In short, they need blood and protein.
From the first time Stan showed me how to chuck a streamer, I knew that the fly was intended to mimic a crippled minnow. For the most part, the action happened below the surface and I was only a party to the jolt of the fly line that told me it was time to set the hook. It was great fun if you didn’t think too hard about what the fish was trying to accomplish.
Then J went to Alaska and came back telling me of how he fished mouse patterns and, shockingly, said it was the most fun he ever had with a fly rod. That did not seem particularly genteel to me until I tried it about a decade later and, I am a little abashed to admit, had as much fun I ever had with a fly rod.
I stood in a creek a few years ago and looked down to find a two foot long brown trout nestled up against my wading boot. It was in shallow water and did not move when I lifted my boot. That was when I noticed that its midsection bore the perfect shape of a small muskrat. Much like me after devouring a whole pizza, movement was simply not an option. I could almost see the plea for a Pepsid in its eyes. But I was still grateful to have missed the carnage as it undoubtedly drowned the muskrat before it could return to its den.
Then there are the terrestrial flies like grasshoppers and dragon flies that large trout will explode out of the water to chase, knowing that success will more than offset the calories burned. This summer started out very wet leading me to believe that it would be a weak hopper season, since I usually associate hoppers with dry conditions. But, the lack of rain the last month dried things out enough to cause me to break out the hopper flies as I watched the trout exert themselves to an extent rare on our placid little spring creek. The gurgling of the flowing water is interrupted only by the splashes of trout intent on murder. Well, that, and my laughter as I egg them on. And then I release them so they can continue their homicidal tendencies.
We tend to put ourselves at the center of nature. We think of ourselves as all that stands between the destruction or preservation of the great outdoors. But as I watch “nature” continually do anything but “commune” among itself or with me, I have come to appreciate that my fly rod and I are bit players in a drama/comedy where I will never be privy to the full script. More importantly, my immersion in “nature” has strengthened my passion for human vs. natural rights. To paraphrase Timothy Keller in The Reason for God, we do not hold “animals guilty for violating the rights of other animals.” If we truly are ruled by natural law and nothing else, then there is no reason to hold us guilty for violating the rights of other humans.
My wife and I continue to enjoy the beauty of nature with our family and friends, delighting in both its order and its chaos. But we don’t commune. We are privileged to watch nature do what it has to do to exist, and would still do if we had never been born. Then we take those lessons and pray that, as humans, we strive to “commune” with one another.
The View from the Study…
Hopper fishing