The Soft Chains of Comfort
I wasn’t hopelessly tied to the comforts of home and work life. I could still make it out here. I could adapt – I’d done it before.
Read more "The Soft Chains of Comfort"Risking it All
In my 2016 book, The Dying Fish, I tried, in Chapter 28, to capture an idea I felt was important as I went on with my long walk and talk on nature and attempted in this chapter to merge those ideas with some much more human concepts. The excerpt below pertains to risk and I […]
Read more "Risking it All"Hope Springs Eternal
Fishing is the finest pasttime known to man and one reason for this is that your enthusiasm for it can quickly be “re-set” if it ever becomes dull. The people I’ve met who have given up fishing over time usually describe years of going to the same places and fishing for the same things, imagining […]
Read more "Hope Springs Eternal"Diagnostics
At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. H.D. Thoreau “Walden” Andrew and I started by taking the windshield wipers off then removed nuts and bolts […]
Read more "Diagnostics"Tubular Bliss
For me, the joy of fishing arises from its variety. First, there is great variety in the species of fish themselves, especially here in Pennsylvania. Our fishes largely adhere to our major watersheds, the Ohio and Susquehanna but then also the minor watersheds: Lake Erie, the Genesee River, Delaware River and Potomac River, […]
Read more "Tubular Bliss"Wealth is Good for Us and Our Environment
During the months of coronavirus lockdown, I’ve been eating more from the wild. I haven’t been working as much, there have been shortages of things I want to eat and I simply won’t wear the mandatory mask to the grocery store. Things haven’t been dire though and I certainly haven’t gone hungry. I just did […]
Read more "Wealth is Good for Us and Our Environment"Simple Pleasures
Brook trout water remains a simple pleasure, as do the trout themselves. I could walk the mountain runs of the Alleghenies for days on end with no rod and remain content. Looking and knowing that the magical little fish are there is enough. I’ve been away too long. Too much pavement, too much […]
Read more "Simple Pleasures"It’s Still Worth Saving
“Now I ask you: what can be expected of man as a being endowed with such strange qualities? Shower him with all earthly blessings, drown him in happiness completely, over his head, so that only bubbles pop up on the surface of happiness, as on water; give him such economic satisfaction that he no longer […]
Read more "It’s Still Worth Saving"Reishi and the Noble Savage
Alexander seemed shocked to see me when I bumbled into his camp, high in the western Allegheny ridges. And he should have been shocked – I was the first human he’d seen since December. I slowly raised my hand in a universally understood greeting salute and Alexander tentatively returned the gesture, still unsure whether to […]
Read more "Reishi and the Noble Savage"The Element of Surprise
It was good to be out today but I felt I was wasting my time. Alright, this wasn’t really true – I was exploring a new place and getting fresh air and exercise which is never really a waste of time. But I was in search of a special mushroom and it now seemed I’d […]
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the dying fish 