An Unsuccessful Angler
Each day seems less an invitation to do something new and exciting and more of a demanding and determined course of action that includes or perhaps expects a certain amount of productivity. This seems to be particular to the unimaginative, which is maybe all I’ve ever been. I only imagine morning coffee with writing, meals, the gym, some fly fishing, applying for jobs, a nap, and that’s just about it. Usually in there, there is spending money. Consuming things seems to be a necessity in order to feel like I’m a part of something. Pathetic.
What was that quote from the Philip Guston book? It was: “He who seeks to find himself is lost. He who consents to be lost, finds himself.” Jean Starobinski wrote that. Taghkanic is the former spelling—and I assume the same pronunciation—of Taconic from the sub-mountain range of the Applachians. I pulled off alongside Spook Rock Road at a sign that read, “Taghkanic Creek Fishing Access” even though the creek, as far as I could tell from the map, was called Claverack. Unfortunately, when I opened the trunk of the car, I realized I only had my chest pack, boots, and net. No rods. I went ahead to scout the location for future purposes in hopes that it would prove fishable. The fishing report stated that at the headwaters, an abundance of wild trout could be found.
Neither the Taghkanic nor the Claverack creeks were in sight, however, a sign was posted that there was a trail up ahead for anglers that cut along private property. A wooden fence separated the trail from the neighboring mobile manufactured home throughout the half-mile hike with bright orange signs posted on trees nearly every hundred yards or so warning of trespassing. After only a dozen steps into the walk, the trail began to disappear beneath overgrown buckthorn and elderberry shrubs and dense thickets of reeds that looked as though they might be hiding a timber rattlesnake.
Previous to my Rocky Mountain tour through Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, I hadn’t seriously considered the dangers of fly fishing other than slipping on a rock and twisting an ankle or even toppling over with the small possibility of drowning should my waders fill with water, the very reason I sold my waders a month before. I had opted instead for some slip-on wader boots that I bought for $35. I wore the boots in every river and creek in the Rockies without waders despite the frigid temperatures. Even in June, the lows dipped into the 30’s and many of the afternoons were only in the high 40’s with consistent rain.
At a bar in Ennis, Montana, after a day of fishing at O’Dell Creek, a friend and I drank a few beers and chatted up the bartender. She told us we were “out of our minds” for going to Valley Garden Campground where we were fishing everyday without bear spray. At the entrance of the campground, there was a sign warning that grizzlies frequented the park. My fishing partner scoffed at my anxiety. So we went fishing while I looked over my shoulder for bears after nearly every cast. I never did see a bear nor did I stop looking for them.
When I finally bought bear spray, I praticed removing the canister repeatedly from its holster even though the likelihood of encountering a grizzly was small as was the possibility of getting my defense out in time should I actually have a run-in with one. In the end, I handed my canister over to the Boise airport since I couldn’t find a proper place to dispose of it. The one waste disposal drop-off in town was only open for a handful of hours once a week and I had missed my window. Three weeks after I returned, a woman was mauled and killed by a grizzly on a trail between Island Park, Idaho and West Yellowstone, Montana, more or less down the street from where I had been fishing for a week.
On the trail to Claverack Creek, I wore only my flip-flops, shorts, and tank top. I hadn’t expected the trail to be anything more than a clear-cut walkway nor had I thought about wildlife encounters much after I landed back on the east coast. Typically, I only see squirrels, chipmunks, and deer around the northeast but there are black bears mostly throughout the entire US with the exception of a handful of states in the midwest but who’s to say for certain. What was catching my attention were the thorns that I pushed out of the way with a walking stick I picked up in the tall grass, possibly left behind by a previous angler even though it seemed unlikely that anyone had walked the path in years.
When the trail began to form again, it opened to an assemblage of thin trees before clearing again to an escarpment that overlooked the creek. The only way to get down to the water would have been to slide down with very little room to return. The water was slow moving with a few pools near some fallen trees although, since their had been significant rainfall the past week, it left the the conditions less than favorable for dry fly fishing. It looked far too treacherous to descend, especially for some trout that may or may not be there. The whole sport is a funny one. In fact, even calling it a sport feels like a misnomer. A sport, I think of, as a type of competition. Am I competing with the trout? If so, they’re (hopefully) unaware of it. I’d call it more of a recreational activity, which, looking at the definition of recreation is just an activity that one does “when one is not working.” That could mean that life is separated into work and recreation. What is in between? My lady, while we were walking up the stairs the other day, offhandedly said that life seems like a series of maintenance duties: clip your nails, wash and feed yourself, work. The amount of upkeep required to avoid squalor and general unkemptness is rather insane when one thinks about it. Perhaps that’s all meditation is: the avoidance of one’s upkeep for a short period of time, the best we can do to do nothing. “Nothingness” must be the in between. Nothing is needed for meditation other than a pillow. Even then, I don’t quite have any use for a pillow these days. I usually roll up anything in sight to put under my ass for ten minutes or so. And when I’m finished, it’s time for either more duties or more recreation.
I made my way back the way I came although, I don’t have much in the way of orientation which means, as soon as I turn around, I’m more or less lost. I found the path by using the trespassing signs as simply a way to avoid and followed a somewhat invisible boundary, walking towards what might be a course back. If anything, it felt like a small adventure into the woods with no real purpose as though I were a child again in the forest without supervision which, if memory serves me correctly (and it rarely does), was often. I don’t remember that I even had thoughts of being lost, dehydrated, or worse while on my childhood excursions.
I was overheated when I returned to the car and my legs were scratched thoroughly from thorns. My skin was beginning to burn and I could only imagine the potential rashes that were forming from cow parsnip, giant hogweed, stinging nettle, and poison ivy and sumac. I did the best with what I had and wiped my feet, legs, hands, and arms with car interior cleaning wipes and then emptied a bottle of cold water over them.
At the gas station, I bought another bottle of water to dump on my legs and a share-sized package of peanut M&M’s, my recent vice. I washed the bird shit off the windows, filled the tank with gas, and went back home to Catskill. The bridge was full of traffic and the atmosphere was hazy from the wildfires in Canada even though the worst of the fires were nearly seven-hundred miles away.
The next morning, we drove to Kinderhook to the Jack Shainman Gallery, otherwise known as “The School” for the Michael Snow exhibition. We stopped for bagels first and had a small argument about my sarcasm. I don’t think New Englanders—a place I still strangely don’t identify with even though I grew up there past the age of nine—know how to speak any differently. At all times with friends and strangers alike, you must mock. Worse yet, if you have intentions of stopping, speaking earnestly, compassionately, lovingly, the more you must expect that you’ll receive derision in return. It’s no wonder New Englanders spend all of their time watching sports. It’s the one area of life where they can express passion openly and without ridicule. After bagels and some tender moments, I fished the Kinderhook Creek unsuccessfully while she squatted along the bank holding my net and occasionally hunted for flowers where, eventually, she made a wreath of hoary alyssums.
