Oh, how I love to fish. There is something so calming about just sitting on the water waiting for your line to dip down. Last week I joined a friend on Sawbill Lake in the BWCA to do just that. It was exactly what I needed as I was living between two very big life events, one daughter’s wedding and another daughter’s move to New York City. Sitting in a canoe gave me space to breathe as we just waited together for walleye to bite.
My love for fishing came from my Dad. July 19th marks 39 years since he died. I always use Lindy rigs and leeches when I fish because that’s how he taught me how to do it. And the rules in his boat were that you had to bait your own hook, take off your own fish and know how to clean them. Luckily for my friend, Lisa, she could definitely do all three, so she was in no danger of being dumped from the canoe.
My Dad had a aquamarine, aluminum fishing boat with a 40 horse Johnson outboard. We spent many hours on various lakes together, trolling for walleyes. He would always say to me, “Watch your line, watch your line, don’t get it caught in the prop”.
He would smoke cigarettes while we fished, trolling backwards. The smell of gasoline, water and cigarette smoke still evokes powerful memories of him for me. Smoking would be his downfall. He died of lung cancer at 54, which seemed old back then, not so much anymore as I am almost a decade older than that.
The summer before he died, we did get out fishing one more time. His best friend Kurt arranged it which was no small feat as my Dad was in a wheelchair and required oxygen. Kurt was an incredible friend and man of deep faith. He truly worried about my Dad. That afternoon they had a conversation out on the lake that I will always remember. Kurt asked my dad if he had been saved. My Dad answered quietly, “Each and every day Kurt, each and every day.”
Yes, there is something saving about being out in the water still. Later on the second day of our camping trip back in small bay behind an island we hit a walleye hole. Within minutes my friend and I each had a walleye on the line. She caught hers with a worm and me of course a leech. We pulled them in slowly. The fish barely fought until they reached the surface.
It was a perfect evening with just the sound of the waves and an occasional loon call. When we returned to camp there was a feast. We cleaned the fish and fried them up just the way my Dad taught me. We served them with Annie’s mac and cheese.
My dad never met our daughters over whom I have lost some sleep in recent weeks. But he did teach me how to savor and be saved each and every day, especially while out on the water.
There is as Wendell Berry wrote, “The Peace of Wild Things”:
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
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