Brook No Imitation

Just fifteen minutes drive from my home in the Wisconsin Driftless Area is a clear ribbon of water that flows past my local UNESCO World Heritage Site, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio, Taliesin. The water, Lowery Creek, is home to wild breeding browns and a rare strain of native brook trout, of special interest to Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Frank Lloyd Wright knew this trout. In December 1946 he went through a severe bout of pneumonia at Taliesin. It was touch-and-go for a while, and when the fever finally broke, his daughter Iovanna told friends with considerable relief that her father was feeling better, and had asked for a meal of “speckled trout and champagne”. Ah-ha! Somebody was catching brookies for him in the stream below the house. 

A local cattleman, Dick Cates, has been a leading, active voice for conservation of the creek. A long stretch of the stream flows through his pastures, and he has worked closely and supportively with local conservation organizations and the DNR to protect the creek and its special brookies. Lowery Creek is lucky to have him, and with the courtesy of a simple ask, he is usually happy to allow anglers access to his land to fish it. I gave it a try not long ago, when the weather was warmer, and this time it was browns I was after, in hopes of a meal of fried trout. Given the valuable genetics of the brook trout population here (and the stream’s small size), by law it’s catch & release only here for the brookies. 

It was a clear and gorgeous early morning, one of those times when all is luminous and cool, and it feels good just to be alive. As I headed from my car toward the creek the only sounds in the world were bird song and the swish of the tall, dew-drenched grass against my waders. When I reached the bank the music of the rolling creek came in, and I geared up my DRAGONtail Mizuchi zx340 (designed, in collaboration with Tom Davis, with small creeks like this in mind). The stream is not long – just a handful of miles from its headwater springs down to its rendezvous with the Wisconsin River. I’d come to one of the middle reaches, below the more brookie-friendly upper stretch, in hopes that browns would be more common here.  

On one of my first casts to a shallow, swift run a fish hit my offering of a prince nymph. As I played it in and the fish came into view, along its back I could see the dark olive scrolls of a brookie. My ‘disappointment’, if that’s the right word(!), was short-lived. As I eased the 10-inch trout into the net, it rolled onto its side, and my God… Its array of yellow, pink and blue spots glowed in the morning light. I’ve seen plenty of brookies, but this was something else – like coming upon a drab square of canvas and turning it over to find a Renoir or Monet.

We often use the words ‘overwhelming’ and ‘breathtaking’ to describe an experience, but rarely is it literally true. This time it was. Every brook trout I catch is a small miracle, one I never dull to; as likely as dulling to the sight of a shooting star. Yet this particular moment and sight of this trout, lit by the sun through the clear riffling water, was so beautiful I couldn’t take it all in. It filled me completely, and it felt as if my cells didn’t have enough room to absorb and hold it all.

When I remembered to breathe again with the brookie in my net, I was dinged by the realization that I’d left my phone in the car and couldn’t photograph it. But it probably wouldn’t have done much good. This was something, and a moment, that couldn’t be captured by a photo and shared later. 

There’s the familiar story of indigenous people declining to be photographed, for fear that the photograph will take part of their souls. But perhaps what they really fear is that we will confuse the photo with the essence of who they are. And this perhaps explains why some of us sometimes still recoil at having our picture taken – for fear that people will mistake a distorted or deer-in-headlights look for who we really are. The image is not the thing – a snapshot ‘takes’ something, but not the thing itself.

A contemporary of Wright’s, another great creative mind of the 20th Century, Picasso, had something to say about this. He was once riding on a train in France, and a woman in his train car recognized him and struck up a conversation. She expressed great admiration for his paintings, but then ventured to ask why he didn’t paint people the way they really looked.

“What do you mean, madame?”, Picasso asked.

She went into her purse, took out a small photograph, and handed it to him.

“For example”, she said, “This is my husband. This is how he really looks.”

“My dear woman”, Picasso replied, handing the photo back to her, “It’s intriguing that you married a man so small and flat.” 

I caught no browns that morning, and just a few more brookies – none of them photographed, killed or eaten.  Still, I spent the rest of the day filled.

Although I wasn’t able to share that first brookie with you, there is, of course, abundant beauty in this stream of life. In this New Year, I’m resolving to see and hear and feel as much of it as possible – and tenkara is one of my entryways.

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