Read an Excerpt
This is not principally a book about fly fishing, or about catching fish. It
is, more fundamentally, about the rift between the mind and the heart in the
souls of men, and the process that may make them whole again.
We would like to think that every good story has a clear beginning and end.
While that may be possible in fiction, it is rarely true in the course of a
person's genuine spiritual awakening and maturation. Between the singular frame
of birth and death, we encounter endlessly repeating themes -- and,
if we persist, we make some progress toward the resolution of those patterns
that impede the full expression of the soul. Indeed, our most important lessons
repeat themselves over and over until there arises sufficient insight and
commitment to sustain a new pattern of living in the face of habit. Spiritual
enlightenment, at least from this standpoint, is not a fixed state of awareness
into which error can no longer insinuate itself. It is the dynamic capacity to
reaffirm, on a moment-to-moment basis, the highest that we know to be true,
without falling prey to unthinking reactions based on fear and illusion. From
this perspective, enlightenment is more of a yoke than a mantle.
In telling a good story, there is a fine line between creativity and deception.
Walking that line, we may reorder the facts and fit them neatly into a
convenient time frame. Some of this, I believe, is acceptable, as long as we
don't lead the reader to think that the story is over when it's not. For, the
consequences of such deception would be to instill expectations in the reader
that cannot be quickly realized in anyone's life.
This is all to say that my fly fishing quest on my home waters in the summer of
1997 provided a convenient time frame for telling most, but not all of the
story. My retreat to the Laguna Madre served as a powerful catalyst for
awakening me to patterns in my life that impeded my ability to live fully, and
it provided a context for working through many of these problems.
The climax of the story revolves around a broken promise -- one among many in
the course of my life -- and the consequences that ensued. It
provides a dramatic example of what can befall us when we persist in turning
away from our deepest calling, but it also shows how the inevitable ensuing
crisis can precipitate a veritable "turning about in the deepest seat of
consciousness," and inaugurate a new pattern of living informed by the heart.
Since this crisis was eerily foreshadowed by my experiences during my fly
fishing retreat in 1997, and became a life and death matter for me five years
later, it seemed fitting to bring this culminating event into the whole picture.
G. Scott Sparrow
Arroyo City, Texas
November 2004
"The phenomenon itself, that is, the vision of light, is an experience common
to many mystics, and one that is undoubtedly of the greatest significance,
because in all times and places it appears as the unconditional thing, which
unites in itself the greatest energy and the profoundest meaning." [1]
Jung
When
Jesus chose his first disciples, he selected several men who had fished for a
living. People who do not fish may consider this fact irrelevant. But those of
us who do fish -- if only for sport -- and who enjoy the companionship of others
who do, can imagine what Jesus might have seen in the likes of Peter, James,
John, and Andrew. For the dream of catching a big fish is not unlike the dream
of communing with God: The fisherman and the mystic alike are driven by a
yearning for something elusive and essential just below the surface of ordinary
life. Whether we think of it as a great fish or as God himself who beckons us
onward in our quest, it feels remarkably the same.
Some of my first memories on the Gulf Coast of south Texas are of blue crabs and
piggy perch, and of my father untangling my fishing line, again and again, on
the dock below the cottage. Dad was always patient, and looking back, I realize
now that this was his gift to me.
We lived 45 miles inland, but we spent many of our summer weekends at the
cottage on the Arroyo Colorado. Dad had "inherited" the cottage from my mother?s
entrepreneurial father who had suffered a financial setback and could not afford
to keep up the payments. So Dad, who would never have bought such a place for
himself, took it over for several years until his penchant for self-denial under
the guise of prudence prompted him to sell it for $4,000. I can remember that
for many years afterward -- as we launched our boat from the public launch like
everybody else and boated past Arroyo City toward the bay -- we would try to
pick out from among the assortment of vacation homes the cottage that had once
been ours.
The Arroyo Colorado was once the riverbed of the Rio Grande River. It begins as
a mere trickle 70 miles inland, at the point where the Rio Grande broke away
centuries ago and followed a more southerly course. By the time the Arroyo
reaches Arroyo City, it is over 100 yards wide and looks like a substantial
river. Five miles east, it enters the Lower Laguna Madre -- a shallow
hypersaline estuary that lies between the mainland of south Texas and Padre
Island. From the point where the Arroyo enters the estuary, the Lower Laguna
extends about 40 miles to the north and 20 miles to the south. Encompassing
nearly 300 square-miles of sand flats and grassy lagoons, the Lower Laguna is
remarkable for its primitive and unmarred beauty. It reveals itself as a
spacious expanse of clear water, and it is the largest continuous shallow-water
flat in the North America.
Circumstances have conspired to protect the Lower Laguna from the encroachment
of modern life. One of the largest ranches in the United States -- the King
Ranch -- claims much of the western shoreline of the estuary northward from the
Arroyo. And then, to the south, the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge
insulates the shoreline for another 15 miles. Consequently, the Lower Laguna
Madre remains one of the last remaining primitive estuaries in the world. Except
for a few fishing huts on stilts, there is absolutely nothing unnatural to see,
except for an occasional barge on its way somewhere, or a small boat that seems
lost in the expanse of water and sky.
As a child, I knew nothing of the Laguna Madre?s secrets, nor of its beauty. My
father?s plywood V-bottom boat could only travel in the channels created by
dredging, which limited our range of exploration considerably. We were
restricted in our fishing to the murky, manmade channel called the Intracoastal
Waterway that slices unnaturally through the Laguna Madre from north to south,
permitting deep-draft vessels to pass safely through the estuary.
Back then, we would leave the dock at daybreak, and travel eastward five miles
to the mouth of the Arroyo. We would stop and buy live shrimp from an old
gentleman who lived in a hut on stilts, and whose loss of his larynx to cancer
made him a man of a few whispered words. My father, whose responsibilities to
his family always prevented him from pursuing the dream of a simpler life, often
had something good to say about this man who lived so simply on the edge of the
bay, and who could be so generous with his shrimp. At the mouth of the Arroyo,
we would intersect the 50-yard-wide Intracoastal channel, and turning north or
south, we would find a place to anchor along its edges. There we would cast live
shrimp on treble hooks back into the deeper water and wait for the bobber --
which we properly called a "cork" regardless of its composition -- to disappear.
For years, we caught innumerable spotted or "speckled" trout that way, so there
never seemed to be a reason to go elsewhere or to innovate. But every once in a
while, we?d see something that made us wonder. A tiny boat would pass us by to
the east, skimming over water that was only a foot or so deep. These homemade
plywood "scooters" were, essentially, wide flat-bottomed skis powered by
outboard motors. When they would come to the dock, their captains -- whom I
remember as kind, but tightlipped old timers -- would unload huge trout and
redfish, the likes of which we had never seen at the end of our lines. Denial is
a powerful thing, so somehow we kept explaining such miracles away until, in the
face of the evidence, my brother began to wonder out loud what secrets the
spacious shallow waters would reveal if only we could go there. But my dad,
whose strong suit was consistency, was content to do what we?d always done. It
was years before my brother and I left the old ways behind. When we did, we took
our father with us.
