A Night on the North Branch - PART ONE

After this year's Michigan Trout Unlimited Flyfishing School, I went across the state to the North Branch of the AuSable River to fish.  It was great to see my pal Judy Fuller, who runs Fuller's North Branch Outing Club in Lovells, and whose son is the head guide, shop keep, and Captain of a saltwater boat down in Florida.  It's a great Bed and Breakfast: completely quiet, remarkably true to the history and tradition of such a latitude and locale, and just plain cozy as can be.

On Sunday night after the school, I was completely beat and in fact had been fighting the tendency to fall asleep at the wheel on the drive across from Traverse City.  I love teaching at the school, taking my students out fishing, and generally running around with a thousand things on my mind, but when it's over each day,  I'm good for nothing.  So after three days of this by Sunday night I might as well have been in a coma.  Ahh, but it was a pleasant evening and the bugs looked promising; anglers were reporting good hatches of BWOs, sulphurs, and isonychia, and among the guests was a general watchfulness for brown drakes and hexagenia.  So I fought the urge to go to bed early (it stays light until almost 10pm here at this time of year), and fished a small stretch not far from the B&B. But I wasn't very alert and didn't catch many fish and really didn't have the stamina to wait for whatever spinner fall might come with darkness, so I heaved myself out of the river, through the woods, to the truck, and finally, filthy, to bed.  I had bought the book "Predicting the Bite" from Dave Leonard's shop earlier that day, but could only read and re-read the first sentence six times before I lost consciousness.  Usually it takes about 20 times.

In the morning after breakfast, I hemmed and hawed about whether to drive home or stay another night.  Judy and I worked out a barter for one of the nights, and I decided to stay.  I design and create printed hand towels for the bathrooms in the Inn and she was due for some replacements and additions to the collection.  No problem.  Now I had to decide where to fish later that day.

The year before I was granted a rare pleasure of access to some private water not very far from Lovells, and I decided to drive down there and ask permission if I could fish it again.  I'm the world's worst salesman and hate asking for things - intangibles, tangibles, you name it - but I felt myself to be fairly non-threatening, and if I reminded the property owners that they had let me fish there the year before, I didn't think they'd be very likely to send me packing.  My biggest concern was what to do if no one was home.  What's the etiquette? I asked Judy Fuller.  Do you leave a note? If so, where -- on their door or on my windshield?  Judy shrugged and said she didn't know because she didn't know the people in question, but her guess was to not even drive onto the property if I didn't see any cars.  That sounded about right to me when I thought about it and I was ready to accept the results.  The North Branch is a big enough river, bigger on a Monday night, and I had had enough fun for the week if I didn't get on any water at all.

Three or four cars were at the house when I pulled in and when I knocked at the door a very happy-looking gentlemen came to the door beaming.  I explained who I was and what I wanted while he nodded enthusiastically and smiled directly into my face. He was tall and fit, somewhere his 60s, I guessed, and wore a sparkling white shirt that brought out the color in his cheeks. Everything about him was open and welcoming and healthy. "Well, I don't live here," he announced, gesturing with abundance, "but if it's okay with [owner's names], it's okay with me!"  At that moment another car pulled up and we both went out to the driveway.  He introduced himself as Bob and I told him my name again. "We're having a little reunion here this weekend," explained Bob as we crossed the yard, and I was immediately struck with panic about being invited to something.  "It's our 50th," he added. I stopped and turned:  "Congratulations!" I said, and meant it.  "It's wonderful, really," said Bob, as the guests began to unload suitcases from their car.  "Some of us aren't here any more -- God bless their souls -- but several of us haven't seen each other in all that time -- in 50 years!" I told him he was very lucky and wished him a happy reunion.  I then added that I would be back later on that afternoon, that he shouldn't worry about me since I knew the property and the river, was an experienced angler, and would not be bringing anyone with me.  He seemed completely unconcerned, which I read as distraction due to the arriving guests.

At around 3pm, I returned to the property.  There were now about 10 cars in the driveway. I had decided to fish with my beloved little bamboo rod that my friend made for me, and assembled everything I thought I would need for the afternoon, figuring I would come back to the truck later to change rods, get a snack, and generally prepare for night-time fishing.  When I looked up from getting dressed into my waders, Bob and about 3 other guests were waiting for me at the side of my truck.
"Tell us what you're doing!" said Bob after he introduced me around. He seemed excited to be sharing me with these people and perhaps vice verse.  The way they were looking at my outfit, you would have thought I was an eskimo astronaut.  I explained that I would be fly fishing, but their expressions of bafflement were unchanged.  Perhaps I should go into the difference between flyfishing and "regular" fishing, but just then one of them, a friendly looking woman, pounced forward, peering intently into my eyes. "Tell us, please, what it is about it that speaks to your soul!  We would really like to know."  She was wringing her hands but smiling.  Next to her was another man whom she said was her husband, and he was equally intent.  "What is important for you in doing it?  What drives you to seek it?"  she asked, and her husband nodded in agreement, as did Bob, who was standing beside me.

"Well, for one thing, there's the quiet and the solitude," I began, because that's what I had on my mind. They waited for more.  "There's the sound of the water, and the birds, and the wind in the trees."  They seemed to know this already, too. "There's the sky and the weather and the woods."  Nodding all around, hands clasped as if in suspense. "And the bugs," I said.  "Bugs?" the husband said. "Oh, yes, all kinds of bugs," I said.  "Well, yes, all kinds of bugs, of course!" said the wife to all of us.  We were in agreement for a moment, and I then I added, "But then there's the fish."  "Oh, yes," whispered the woman.  "Yes!" said the men, hushed.  "There's that electric moment when you hook a fish," I said.  They leaned forward, and I became brave. "It's like nothing else in the world.  In that instant when it strikes - sudden and wild..." I felt myself accelerating. "When you bring one in -- and you must do this quickly -- you're lifting a magnificent wild small alien creature -- a creature from another world, really -- out from the dark water into the light where you look at each other for one split moment of pure connection and shock and –." I stopped myself.  They didn't care that I was headed off into the clouds.  "And mystery."
Whereupon their shoulders fell and their faces relaxed.  They had arrived at the truth, a truth they must have suspected from the start.  A truth they saw in everything, it seemed.
"It's spiritual," said the woman.
"A sacrament," said her husband.
"God," said Bob.
"A prayer," I added, stating the obvious in full understanding that it was safe to say such things, and had been all along.   But they had already stepped back and were laughing up at the trees and it was then that they told me the anniversary they were celebrating was 50 years in the clergy.  I stuttered something in half-congratulations, half surprise, but mostly recognition, after all.  Who else would ask such questions?  Who else would hear such answers?
50 years before this group had been ordained in the Catholic clergy,  Bob explained, and the couple before me had met afterwards, fallen in love, and then left to marry. "It's nature!" they were saying to each other standing in a patch of sunlight beside my truck.  "Precisely," I said, and then told on myself yet further by revealing I had been raised by the nuns at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Connecticut. 13 years of Catholic school.
And we all understood exactly.
They began to wander toward the house.  "Happy fishing then!" called Bob. "Good luck!" said the others.  "Thanks!" I replied, and I closed the back of the truck and didn't lock it.  In a moment I had crossed the yard and descended a wooden stairway to the start of a path carpeted in lightly trod switchgrass with blue flag irises ready to greet me 'round the first bend.  The river was a glossy ribbon looped randomly in a field of Michigan June green.  There was a moody breeze and low cloud -- a perfect day for it.  And catch fish I did...