To fly fish is to cast a line into a Monet painting

It is to wade in and stand toe to toe with your quarry

And do so on nature’s terms with no skinny boats with fat motors

As a 10 year old child I once met, backstage, a world famous orchestra conductor.

I remember that he took the time to talk with me, asked me if I liked the music, I’m told I told him that I did and that, according to my Aunt & Uncle who took me, I said to him something to the affect that “It makes me happy and helps me think.” With that he took his baton, placed it in my hands and “showed” me how to conduct a symphony.

That was long ago…60 years easy…and mostly forgotten until one day as I stood on the banks of some river and…

I found myself never watching the fishing line, instead I watched them stand there, watched them tight as I found myself watching their hands…

…something, something out back there in the back of my mind was saying, whoa…wait a minute…but it never quite came into focus until…

…one day I was on a boat in the Atlantic Ocean with a buddy who started fly fishing, and instead of watching from a river bank 100’s of feet away, I was right next to him…and as I watched, and watched, the fog of memory cleared and I suddenly saw it…SAW IT…it became CLEAR…it was the movement, the act of fly fishing, the movement of the hands brought back to me the memory of the symphony and…

and from the moment I held a fly rod in my hands the act of casting involved the same movements that the symphony conductor used to guide my hands.
So, even though I have never actually caught a fish fly fishing, I love to do it because with every cast, every movement while the line is in the air brings me back to that 10 year old child and the symphony…
…and in my head as the line floats in the air I hear music, and that my friends makes me very happy.

I once got a note from a reader who wrote that they worked in the “financial canyons of Wall Street” and “that while I don’t fish or get out much the photos you take out there tells me that the great outdoors are still great and that keeps me sane.” And so the following is for all of you within windowless cubicles or high rise office buildings with only a view of the offices across the street.

All of you anywhere who never get a chance to go Inside the Outside, I think often of that note and of you as I stand within a Monet painting.…

And photograph those also within it…

…or what flies above it.

They say a river runs through it, and unlike most of the world, I don’t buy that…

…what I do buy, and the only thing I buy, is that in fact, Love Runs Through It.

Love of those who fish in it, on it, or take photos of it.