How Anglers Got Their Literature

 

From

The Whole and Ancient Company of Anglers

A “tedious brief” Essay

Part of a talk on writing about angling

By

 Gordon Wickstrom

The Bouldercreek Angler

At

Front Range Anglers

3/30/13

                                                      

In the beginning was the Word

Saint John

    And then, you and I came along to generate the Word, make it flesh, objectify it, give it body. And the Word continued to increase, each one of us re-imagining it and then applying it.

    For us anglers it had to start somewhere. Perhaps it began those eons ago with that little female hominid of my dreams (shall we call her a “woman”?), who in her sluggish consciousness and her busy new thumbs, saw a good fish hanging close in that African stream. Something happened… something to do with lying down, with those thumbs deep in the water, under that fish’s belly, carefully, and suddenly lifting, tossing, and the fish flies up out of the water onto the bank.

    And such really good eating!

   I want to think that at that instant, the sluggish consciousness of her small brain conceived. She had thrown that fish not only onto the bank, but into her brain where it lodged as an IDEA. There, like that original Word, it could reenact itself again tomorrow, and produce a new, another fish.

    With this, the little Mother of us all, became the First Fisher. With her, angling and its literature were born.

   Should I go on Boulder creek tomorrow, I would, perforce, put into practice, materialize, what she taught me of her primal IDEA, from that first literature, when that original fish entered our consciousness. She haunts me.

   But now, that I can no longer cope with the stones of Boulder Creek, I am comfortably content in that Idea of Angling-- which serves to remind me of everything else under the sun, and keeps me and my Mac trying to write it all down-- before it’s too late.

                                                  ~~~~