Time for (re)awakening!

 This month is SiSi’s birthday with us. She’s been living in her “forever” home for nine years this month. I have a Labrador retriever cross-breed who doesn’t retrieve often and doesn’t much care for the water either. Then, again, it’s been more than a few years since I’ve launched a duck boat. She’s wonderful company; does a great job warming my arm chair for me; always reminds me when it’s time for her to be fed or get a snack; and stays close to comfort me during thunderstorms. A guy can’t ask for much more and I hope we get to share many more years of fun and games.

SiSi, when she first moved in

Photo by J. Harrington

Recently I’ve been rambling on about fishing, especially fly fishing, and its role in my life. This morning I read something that has me truly pondering and scratching my head. Understand, I’m completely and totally in favor of the concept involved. I just wonder how normal folks like us can attain the same results on our budgets. Take a few minutes and go look through:

The Tao of Trout

What does a week-long, $12,500 fly fishing class look like?

Are you back, good. What do you think? Is fishing, or hunting, or gardening, or writing poetry, for you, about keeping score? I hope not. BUT, and it’s a big butt, it’s easy to slip into the habit of counting as the way to value experiences in life. One of the things about money is that it simplifies keeping score, a score based on quantity, not quality. I was very pleased to see a similar theme emerge in a recent piece by the editor of TROUT magazine, Kirk Deeter, in which he asks the question: 

Can we be done with “ripping lips” already?

We’ll wait again while you go look at his answer.

Back again? Good, thanks. When I first learned how to fish and hunt, embedded in the what to, how to and where to lessons was a fundamental of respecting the quarry and protecting its habitat. Fishing, hunting, gardening, living, should not be extractive activities. If we keep taking more than we put back, soon there’ll be nothing left to seek. We’re already doing that with much of the world and that’s left US and others between the proverbial rock and hard place.

I’ve recently begun rereading Leonard M. Scigaj’s Sustainable Poetry (1999).  The following quotation helps explain why I’m so doing.

In my estimation changes in personal behavior and voting patterns are more likely to appear after the reader has altered his or her perceptions about how humans ought to relate to the environment.

We are frustratingly overdue for altering the perceptions of many, perhaps most, people on how they ought to, and can, relate to the environment. I just don’t think we can afford to spend $12,500 for a one week course for everyone. Let’s modify the curricula of all our schools instead. 

What We Need Is Here

by Wendell Berry

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

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