Some of us will stop at some point and make the realization that this isn’t a past-time or hobby anymore. Words like obsessed or passionate get thrown around too easily these days. After another day on the water we eventually have to reel up and turn our backs on the river, yet we smile solely because we had the privilege to cram in a few more hours where we know we belong. We walk away feeling nothing more than normal.
But the roots are so deep, internal dialogues can’t put things into perspective during long drives back home. It’s why we wake up in the morning and go to work every day, why we stayed up too late the night before. Why we pay our rent, various insurances, and occasionally act like an actual adult. Flies need to be tied and gas tanks need filling, this is our reality. We make it work, just so we can ride out the feeling that the next outing is going to bring us, no matter how many fish eat our flies or how hard we get our asses whooped.
What often feels like a controlling and selfish pursuit evolves into a presence that becomes too much to be ignored. If suppressed, we end up doing more harm to ourselves than good. To deny the act of fly fishing is to deny our very happiness.
Over the years I have met a select handful of people that rely on fly fishing to make sense of certain aspects of life. It closes the blood knot connection between daily interactions and our very much alive and kicking 12,000 year old human instincts. These stories are dedicated to those people.