Home Water Gratitude

by Knox Campbell

I've fished through pretty much any life situation a person can experience. I’ve fished angry and I've fished sad. I've fished beer-buzzed in the morning with friends and I’ve fished sober in the dark with total strangers. I have at times wrecked my life to catch fish, and I've caught fish in periods of redemption. There was a very long period in my life where I spent so much time on the water that my boots, waders, and fly boxes were never dry, so for two days last week it was odd to be doing the very thing I've done thousands of times while having an overwhelming and unique feeling of gratitude.  

I think a big part of this gratitude was that everything about those two days was gifted to me, whereas, in the past, time on the water was a given. The gift started with my wife encouraging me to take a few days to myself, and then further gifted by Galen who insisted on giving me the bow of the boat for two days straight. In those two days the weather was typical for late February- bipolar and unpredictable. We floated under calm, bluebird skies the first day and skies that were low with silent, heavy snow on the second. 

As familiar as everything felt- the same voices, same weight of the rod, same rocking of the boat, same Holston Mountain in the background- it all felt new. There wasn't the old expectation or desire to prove something. In the past I'd over-prepare before any trip, chugging coffee and staying up till 3:00 AM tying flies, tormented by the idea of giant brown trout, but this was trip was different. I didn't even bring my own rods, opting to grab one of Galen's. And I assumed my streamer box and other gear were in the same disorganized order I'd left them nearly a year ago. 

I met Galen at Food City at 10:30 AM on February 19, 2020, the 7-hour drive from Wilmington done mostly in silence. I took in the mountains as I drove up through Wilkes County, steering through the curves with my wrist on top of the wheel, thinking about the waters that waited for me. I thought about my wife and 2-year-old daughter, my new career that I was about to start, and my dad and his daily fight with cancer. And as my route began to descend into Tennessee, contouring the headwaters of the Watauga River, my thoughts turned towards my friends that I was about to join- one with his first child due any day and the other juggling the daily challenge of being a small business owner, husband, and guide. We'd all experienced a lot of change recently and were staring into the teeth of even bigger changes and needed time on the water for different reasons. 

Mid-way through that first day, Galen and I anchored up in a back slough of the main river channel just feet away from a private dock, looking downstream at rise rings, and prepping our dry fly rods with the intent of picking up a few fish. Suddenly an old, black, cranky dog appeared on the dock and began to bark. After a few minutes of endless barking and guttural threats from the dog the owner himself emerged and slowly made his way down to the dock. Galen slowly pulled anchor and pushed on his oars to create distance from the man and his dog, somewhat expecting a confrontation for being so close to the man's property, when the man knowingly says "They're eating emergers" to let us know that he was an angler and wanted to talk. We nodded in agreement, noting the urgency the fish were eating with. He was curious about our fly selection and expressed his frustration with how stubborn the trout had been recently. We listened politely but didn't engage him too much. Galen handed me a tiny emerger pattern, and after a few minutes more of polite, if not slightly irritated, talking with the landowner, with our fish-brains fully focused on the feeding frenzy just downstream, we slowly drifted into the head of the run. My first downstream drift produced a fish, which really made the old man's day, but then the rises stopped. The commotion had put the fish down. I kept making long drifts into the feeding lanes with no takes. Just as I was on the verge of giving up, slowly beginning another cast while simultaneously turning to talk to Galen, who was still keeping us in position from the rower’s seat, a fish ate my fly as it accelerated through the film. This look-away cast appropriately defined what the entire trip was to become, a deliberate act with just the right balance of intention and I-don't-give-a-damn. After catching a few more fish with that same technique the old man was still watching us from his dock, surprised and even more curious about our fly selection. Galen switched gears and rowed back over to the man's dock, gifting him a generous handful of flies. In return the man went up to his house and came back with two signed copies of a book he had published, The Blue Winged Olive ~ by Don Johnson. Without realizing it Galen and I settled into a conversation with the man, letting go of whatever agenda we had, before finally pulling anchor an hour later and moving downstream so we could let Rand jump in the boat for the last part of the day. As we rowed away from the old man we both felt a strange sense of gratitude, not really for anything in particular other than being reminded that the really good and genuine things in this life are usually unexpected and very close to never being realized. 

We want on to catch some really nice fish over the next two days with a steady flow of laughter, beer, and bullshit.   

This look-away cast appropriately defined what the entire trip was to become, a deliberate act with just the right balance of intention and I-don't-give-a-damn.

Forty-eight hours later, as I drove back to Wilmington, I thought it was strange to not feel sad about leaving the place and people that I considered home. I wondered why this trip had felt so different compared to the countess other trips I'd taken across my life. What I realized was that in my former life I had been very intentional about fly fishing as often as possible, and that when this happened the power of spontaneity no longer existed, and when that doesn't exist neither does the possibility of receiving a gift. So, on that long drive, in place of sadness I felt gratitude, and I allowed it to sink in. For the first time in my fishing life I was as grateful for the act of fishing as the fish themselves, which I know sounds like something people say that don’t catch fish. But I caught good fish, and I fished hard, but hard work doesn’t always produce results, and I know the fish I encountered were as much a testament to chance as they were to anything I did. 

Fly fishing, whether it's in my foreground or background, has been a life-long companion, an end, and the means to help me drift into new phases of life. I tend to focus so hard and long on my goals and where I'm trying to go that I miss the step-by-step journey. I've come to realize that it's not about being positive, but neutral- to avoid the negative at all costs- to do what's necessary without a sense of servitude so that you can freely accept the gifts as they come. Over the course of those two days I was grateful for the smell of cold water, the rocking of the boat, the freedom to choose between casting or taking a long sip of my beer, of being outside of my thoughts with such good friends in such a cool place, and realizing that the river flowing under our feet is never the same twice no matter how well we thought we knew it . 

…realizing that the river flowing under our feet is never the same twice no matter how well we thought we knew it.

…the really good and genuine things in this life are usually unexpected and very close to never being realized.