You can learn a lot by slinging a fly on a summer trout stream. When you pull your first wild trout out of some trickle in the high Sierras, with the life blood of the mountains swirling around your legs and the tangled willows whispering in the breeze, you cease to be a spectator. That gasping thing, that bar of silver and gold and gossamer and scarlet in your hand reveals you to yourself. Predator - no, you are more than that. A predator is unaware of its role in the drama. You have become aware, and that is what sets you apart. You are a steward, and some of the fire that flashes off the flanks of the fish flows in your blood. Maybe that's why the fish's home - the golden rocks lining the streams, the deep pools and long riffles, the shade cast by the pines - increasingly becomes the only place in which your soul is truly content. Like the fish returning to the river of its birth you return again and again, not chasing a high but going home.
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