On a recent Friday afternoon, the day before missiles and bombs of fear and myopia started flailing, yet again, across the Middle East, I drove from my home in Wisconsin across the Mississippi River to the Driftless Area of Iowa. Time had come to stretch my legs and some of my fave tenkara rods (which these days include my Oni Type-1 and DRAGONtail Nirvana Kokoro 360). I drove a quiet back road, following one of my favorite streams, along an unfamiliar stretch I’d not fished before, reconnoitering. The day was mild and fine, made even finer by the prospect of soon standing in flowing water and courting the spotted Grails we call trout.
I eventually came to an old steel truss bridge, such beauties still being found in this part of Iowa, and pulled over to take the measure of the stream. As I stood at the bridge’s railing and peered down to the water below, I was somewhat startled to realize there was a young woman, a girl of perhaps fourteen, fishing from the bank near the foot of the bridge, just a few dozen feet away. We exchanged pleasantries and notes on the state of trout fishing that afternoon, and I left her in peace and drove on.
Although our interaction lasted less than a minute, it left with me an afterglow the rest of the day. It made for a memorable outing, on what, it turned out, was a somewhat marginal day for fish. I don’t know this girl’s story, and I don’t know why she wasn’t in school on this winter early afternoon. But here she was, not at home on Facebook or TikTok or gaming online. She came to the stream, on her own, to trout fish. And I thought, here’s a special person I’ll wager.
As I pondered the impression the encounter made on me, I realized that few things I’ve seen of late gave me so much hope for the future as briefly meeting this fisher girl, with her clear love of being in the world, the true world. At least for one afternoon, she chose to come to a place where Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos or, who knows, perhaps bullies online or at school, couldn’t touch her. And in doing so, she touched me.
So let’s get out and fish and, importantly, take young people along when we can. A tenkara fishing kit – and some of our time to show them how to use it – can be a spectacular gift for a young person. A gift for them, and for the world.
“Good things come to those who wade.”
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