Creaturely Concerns

“And the sabbath rang slowly, In the pebbles of the holy streams.” — Dylan Thomas

I just finished a book by Chris Dombrowski. “Body of Water,” it’s called and it’s the story of a pioneering Bahamian bonefish guide, a thoughtful take on a man with an innate sense of being in the world and a relic in a new reality. A fishing guide, he observes, is a person who “dedicates one’s self to the occupation of being creaturely.” It was one of those books I read slowly so it wouldn’t end.

Being creaturely is something I’ve aspired to since I was a kid. Walking on the lakeside trail at Lake Vesuvius with my Grandpa Dave, my brother and I would walk as quietly as we could, heel to toe, like the Shawnee we had read about. I wasn’t so much Tecumseh as an awkward Howdy Doody in braces. That simple act changed me and I go back to that walking meditation even now, over 30 years later. Walking as an animal made the woods come alive with possibilities. You become something more than yourself. You become part of a world still foreign.

I found a creek on a map recently. I mean, I didn’t find it. It’s been there for thousands of years. But it was new to me. Dutch Creek in Valle Crucis. In an earlier phase of my life, I lived a mile from this stream and didn’t ever engage it. I was more focused on the more obviously magnificent Watauga River it spills into right near the Methodist church I attended. Man, I tell you what, I didn’t know what I was missing. The little creek I drove over every day that looked like a ditch was a world unto itself. It comes down the mountain through Valle Crucis, the valley of the cross. The upper valley of Valle Crucis is an enchanted place where three creeks — Dutch Creek, Clarks Creek, and Crab Orchard Creek — come together and form what people say is the shape of a cross. Dutch Creek starts off way up at the base of Hanging Rock and winds through deep woods where I’m sure the creatures range from bears to toothy, undiscovered species of gnomes before it meanders through the farms of the upper valley. I’m talking the kind of gnomes that only come out certain nights of the year and wreak havoc on the houses in the valley, stomping around gardens and leaving odd footprints on car hoods. I have a theory about these gnomes also existing in the hills around Blacksburg, Virginia but that’s a story for another day. 

After finding it on the map, I went there to fish it with my fellow fisher-in-crime, Philip. Coming off a night at the Boone Saloon, we haphazardly made our way up the mountain scouting the stream a little later than I would have liked. We found Dutch Creek Falls. We found a couple dead ends. We found a pile of scat from what animal I had no idea. This animal relieved itself on a rock right in the middle of a stream, not so much an act of desecration as one of pure nonchalant freedom. Had it been human it would have been another thing entirely. The creek was so small up there it didn’t look like it held any fish; or if it did, there was no way to keep from spooking them, especially in our haggard Saturday morning sasquatch states. We moved on.

On the way back down the mountain we almost didn’t stop. Something made us. There was a sign on a tree put up by the nearby Holy Cross Episcopal congregation. It was marked private but the signs made it known that anglers were welcome. Good vibes from the beginning. Good enough vibes that I wasn’t even phased by my friend having forgotten his fishing rod. Who forgets their fishing rod when they go fishing? Reminds me of a time my college roommate and I went out to mountain bike some trails outside of Athens, Ohio. We were totally psyched to be getting off campus. We arrived at the trailhead only to realize that in our excited haste we forgot our bikes back at the dorm.

This stream commands reverence. You approach it like a prayer. The grasses and wildflowers grow so thick on the banks it becomes a tunnel in spots. The thing about fishing a stream like this is you have to be stealthy. Truthfully, I was feeling about as stealthy as a rabid dog in a culvert. We walked up the stream, spooking trout as we went, seeing them dart upstream alerting every trout in the area that idiots were about.

This was a joint effort, being that we had one rod. Turns out, I like that kind of fishing. Fishing by committee. Fishing in consultation with a good friend of the same skill level, which is to say we catch fish wherever we go but we aren’t getting sponsored by Howler Brothers any time soon. One of us would hand off the rod to the other. We stopped when we saw a trout upstream. We whispered. We crouched. It was my turn. Philip stood downstream while I crawled on all fours upsteam. The banks were close enough to stretch your arms and touch both sides and the trees so low over the stream you had to duck.

Moments like this make an angler jittery. The anticipation can easily ruin it if you can’t keep it together. I pulled some line off the reel and made a twitchy false cast. My caddis fly imitation landed right downstream of the trout and left a wake. Fail. But I cast again, this time right on the fish’s nose. It wasn’t a delicate presentation but BLAM the trout ate my fly right as it landed. I imagine the sound of a toilet flushing every time this happens. Fluhdoooosh. Fuhloooonk. Something like that. Not really a bucolic image that one typically associates with fly fishing in god’s country but it goes through my head nevertheless. I raised the rod and pulled the fish to hand. A beautiful little wild rainbow.

There’s something about this moment when a fish comes to hand. I get a sort of tunnel vision. If I’m not careful, I will forget to breathe. I remind myself to take it all in. The black spine turns olive green and then to silver with pink spots and the reddish stripe of the lateral line (the lateral line being the organ that allows a fish to detect movement, sounds, pressure changes, and idiots trotting up the stream). I always take a moment to look in its eye. This is a survivor with ancestors going back to the ice age. But it’s not from this area. It’s an immigrant just as I am. Only the brook trout are native. But this moment. You are temporarily part and parcel to the environment. You have found a stream, observed it, waded in, observed some more, and finally decided to take action. Your reward is the acute sense of being a creature in the world. You get the privilege of being part of it. You release it by opening your hand so you can feel it muscle out. Back to its world and you to yours. But you’re changed. You’re walking again like the Shawnee. Not a day older in your mind than you were back in the days before life became more complicated and before you became so focused on matters besides being “creaturely” in a world unrealized.

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