The following piece first appeared on the now reposed website, Floodplains Magazine, in 2018. It is shared now on AFIELD Notes with limited edits for accuracy and impact. Original accompanying art by David Wilson is also included. To support David’s work and learn more about him, please explore his website or instagram.
Mark bundled beneath the hood of his sleeping bag and pondered the precipitation. A week of incessant clouds made damp feel dry and any rest from the rain seem a change in the seasons. His view was faded canvas. The saturated tent material was his refuge during the few hours of darkness during the Alaskan summer. He lay at just the right angle on the cot so he didn’t hurt, could forget the drift of his body into the snags and hydraulics of aging. He reached for his waders behind his head and cool air snuck into his synthetic cocoon. Moving from warm darkness to the cold light was less painful done quickly.
Warmth crept into Mark’s clothes and he knelt to leave the tent. His longtime fishing friend, Dennis, still slept on the opposite side. Mark wondered if Dennis’s body was fighting the cancer in his mouth or if sleep wasted valuable living time. For a moment, Mark forgot his own ills, felt like he was primed to go forever. Cancer hadn’t caught him, neither had ALS, or a heart attack. They were searching though, reaching out, hitting friends each year that had once been imposing physical specimens. Mark couldn’t help looking over his shoulder. If it could happen to Dennis, it could happen to anyone.
The river was six feet away, his two-handed rod rigged and ready. The rest of their camp was already awake. One guide cooked breakfast and the other painted Rembrandts with two hands and a 500-grain line. Dennis’s son Harrison stood on a boulder at the top of a seam in the river and launched line at a forty-five degree angle and dropped the fly to soak in the sweet spot. It had been four days on the river and Mark could still watch the three younger anglers without growing bored. They played with water tension, the loading of line, and manipulated physics into beautiful casting loops. Mark waded to another stretch of water and let fly a black leech pattern. He finished strong with his bottom hand in his chest and his line rolled out through the air. If his morning hadn’t started watching Harrison snake rolling line two thirds of the way across the water he might have been pleased with his cast.
Mark stopped looking over his shoulder at the younger generation and focused on not focusing on his elbow. It stopped every other cast short. It was a nagging arthritic annoyance brought on by fighting salmon for a week. Fishing for king salmon in Alaska was a life’s work, a world where time passed with fatigue, a place where Dennis would live as long as the rest of them. Mark’s angling career was peaking, culminating in a wet world in the lost corner of his home continent. He pulled out a cigar from the pocket of his wading jacket in some attempt at a lifetime victory celebration. He leaned his head in close to his hands and sparked a gas station lighter. The hand-rolled tobacco was too damp. It was just as well; Dennis couldn’t smoke, anyway. Dennis couldn’t even chew food. He encouraged Mark to enjoy himself, but his diet was limited. Dennis lived on chemo and gazpacho; but no Cubans. Mark’s victory cigar would have to wait.
Mark pushed the cigar back into his pocket with the lighter and looked over his shoulder. Harrison was battling an aerial salmon that needed a net. Dennis hobbled out of his tent like some fish-netting zombie of joy and held the oversized boat-net in one hand and his unbuckled waders in the other. His first attempt at landing his son’s salmon saw the fish swim between his legs. The pirouette from Dennis to avoid the line ended in a landing that would have pleased Olympic figure skating judges. Harrison laughed and yelled at his dad to net the fish from the head but Dennis tried to trap it like a kid chasing after a frog. Mark smiled; Dennis was younger than Harrison for an entire minute. When the fish came to net, Dennis sat on the bank with an arm around his son for balance. Mark bent his elbow and took a picture.
It was morning on the river and Mark wasn’t thinking about fishing. Somewhere at the end of the universe Dennis was laughing again; it was his fuel, his reserve of energy that he called on to fight his failing health. Mark tried again for a cigar after a nefarious rapid and tried again to light the hopeless wrap of rapture in his hands. He felt a puff this time, something close to a tease. And then Harrison started yelling. He stood above a seam so perfect it could have welded the world. There was enough room for three anglers and enough fish for twice that amount. Mark shoved the cigar and lighter into his pocket, brushed the whitewater from his beard, and unfurled his line toward the opposite bank.
Mark felt nothing on his first few casts and looked upstream at another shout from Harrison; Dennis was fish on, fighting a king. Harrison’s line went taught too, and he set the hook, clutched the bottom of his reel and readied for a fight. Mark focused back in on his own casting and the familiar feeling of a throbbing elbow. When the fish hit he was as young as he had ever been. Line raced off his reel into the backing and he eased the take with the bottom of his blistered hands. He steadied his arm and reeled. The salmon glided in, and Mark waited for a last run at his feet. None came.
Three fish for three friends. The photo was full of big fish and bigger smiles. Mark hoped it wouldn’t be their last time on the river together.
The rivers were smaller in Ohio; so were the fish. Steelhead were no king salmon. Mark released a young jack into the glass-framed river and pondered his recent fishing crescendo. Even full grown, the small steelhead wouldn’t reach the elbow-straining strength of a king salmon, match the strike on a swung fly. He was comfortable again on his home river in the Midwest. He knew where the fish were, how to add weight and change the size of flies to fit the water. No guide necessary. There was no one younger than him to teach him how much he didn’t know. His roll cast was as crisp as any snap-t from a spey rod and his presentation was a matter of when, not if.
Mark reflected on what kind of angler he would be had he picked up a fly rod in his twenties. Some kind of socioeconomic group-think had him baiting his hook with worms for fifty years. His mind wandered to the ease of trolling, jigging, drinking. And a cigar. He patted his chest pocket but what he pulled out was left over from Alaska; a damp stump of wrapped leaves and no lighter. He’d be better off throwing it in his lip.
The fish in the next riffle stopped any reminiscing.
It was some kind of buck and when it moved its wake wreaked havoc on the edge of the shelf ice. Destruction was scale and Mark was pleased to be of a size safe enough that the calving river ice was of no threat. He froze and cupped his hands to the side of his eyes to be sure of what he saw. No reading glasses were necessary, no need for a guide to point it out. Mark would handle this one alone.
Mark unhooked his egg-sucking leach from the guide and pulled out line, fearful the clicking of his reel would spook the brute in front of him. He dropped a few drifts above and watched as his flies moved by with no interest from the fish. A new dropper and extra lead initiated a head swerve but no strike. The glow of the snow faded. He moved one step closer and tried again to display something edible to a creature intent on nothing more than procreating. The increasing lack of light cancelled his final casts and yet the knowledge of the size, the sheer existence of such a steelhead in Ohio fed him excitement, intent. For the first time in a long time, Mark forgot about his elbow.
The water in the river the next day was welcome. The sloping shale floodplain buffered any noise from the road and Mark’s rod filtered foul thoughts of fading friends and last hurrahs. The walk-in had him shed a layer and a wading jacket. Mark returned to the seam that held his fish the day before and after a brief scan through polaroid glasses; he recognized the camouflaged torpedo.
Mark clipped off his rig and re-tied; no mistakes on a fish like this, not with a second chance. He approached from a different angle, walked further downstream to come up on the other side and attempt a different presentation. He rolled his line to the top of the run and threw in a delicate mend. It was fine drift, but the fish remained unimpressed with the presentation
Mark could not take so much time on one fish without imposing some anthropogenic naming scheme. The scientists had already categorized the fish, locals added names of chrome and steel to set it off. Mark called it Moby. The fish was big, Mark was old, and he wanted it in his hands. He hoped he wouldn’t die trying.
Mark followed the flitting of the fins and the patterns Moby made as he held his place in the river, discovered his tendencies and behavior. The fish roamed an aquatic kingdom. Mark wondered how many hours he could spend on one fish and part of him welcomed the evening shadows, the end of the day. On his drive home, Mark wondered what the young guides in Alaska might try.
Mark attempted another cast at Moby and his line cut through the morning mist. Cast, mend, set. Mark’s indicator sank and he yanked his rod to bury the hook in the side of Moby’s jaw. The fish was not happy with such an invasion of his kingdom. Water churned and Mark rose to get a better angle. Confident after Moby’s second run beneath the shelf ice, Mark flipped his rod to the other side and moved onto a shallow sand bar. Moby felt the disturbance and bolted. It was a desperation run. Moby was afraid.
Mark took one step forward and readied his net. He reeled again until he felt the click of his leader in the top guide of his rod and pulled it back so the angle of line approached his outstretched hand. Moby would not go quietly: only two thirds of him fit into the small trout net and Mark knelt down to handle the swimming shank of muscle. Where was Dennis to dance and net a fish when he needed him?
Moby pulsed under his hand and struggled against the bank. Mark looked to the tail and saw a chalk white color that crept up along the fins and into the body of the fish; a sure sign of sickness. Mark looked at the white, an indicator not so much of age but of time remaining until death. He scratched his graying beard. The two matched, both moved forward toward an inevitable end somewhere in the headwaters. Mark wondered how many friends Moby had lost along the way.
Mark held the decaying tail of the fish in his hand and maneuvered it upstream. The fish’s gills filtered oxygen and fed its recovery. Mark was in Alaska again, had found it somewhere in the geologic folds of Ohio. When he let go of Moby, the flash and the flick of the tail took him to the river banks of Alaska with Dennis, Harrison, and the guides. Moby was no whale, but neither was he a steelhead. Moby was a king salmon, in a place as foreign and strange to his own life as Alaska was to Mark’s.
Mark pulled out a cigar and lit the tip. The embers blazed a bright orange. He was pleased to still have the will to catch fish, to do it on his own in the waters he loved. But the salmon brought something else to mind, something missing. He thought of the cancer spreading through the bodies of friends, of the days on the river they’d miss together. He listened for the laughter of the guides and the sound of rain on canvas and heard silence. His own selfie photo to prove his catch felt empty. Mark tasted the sweet buzz of victory and realized the fish of a lifetime wasn’t half as good alone as a lost fish with friends. Mark thanked Moby and watched the decaying fish continue its one-way journey upstream, alone.
Mark put out his cigar to save a few inches of leaf. He had a stop to make on the way home. There were more photos to be made, more laughs to be had, more fish to be caught. He even knew a great place to buy gazpacho on the way.
