Memory

"Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?"


It has been nearly two years since I've been fishing in the mountains of California.  Two years is a long time to be away from a place, and what with everything that has transpired in those years, those mountains have begun to feel like something out of a dream.  My memories of those mountains are like snapshots now; although in color, they are rather one dimensional and...flat, somehow.  I can picture things - the cabin, the way the sun plays on the surface of the lake - but there is a thinness to the memories.  Try as I might, I can't feel the places I picture.

I sense this keenly whenever I go fishing here in Virginia.  Those snapshots well up into a cascade of fragmented memories that put themselves on parade whenever I happen to be wetting a line.  It is as if I am constantly seeking to put substance back into the fragments; to connect the memories of some long-released mountain trout with the feel of the fish I catch here.  The cascade of memories flows on, however, and I find that instead of substantiating them I have robbed the present of its vitality.  

So it was that, when the wife and I recently drove several hours West to see about some wild brook trout in the Blue Ridge mountains, my expectations were somewhat low.  They might be wild, but they weren't California trout.  They would not complete my memories.  

We drove up a mountain to a promontory overlooking the ravines and valleys cut by the stream I intended to fish, and got out to savor the view.  As we stood there, the wind started up, carrying the scent of sun-dappled Pine into our faces from across a distant lake and up a long, steep valley.  To my surprise, I found that in a flash the cascade of memories had gained that indescribable substance!  As I breathed the scent of the trees and the memories flooded by, each seemed to flare and become whole again like embers in a breeze.  

The scent of those Pines - the fragrance of the mountains both here and in California - completed those memories that I hold most dearly, almost like remastering an old photograph but somehow much more fully...

It is a phenomenon that is not easy to describe, since it takes place in the realm of feeling.  Suffice to say that as we drove away at the end of the day, I felt no unconscious comparison taking place; no stale memories robbing the new experience of its color.  Although far from the mountains of my memories, I had come home.