Bend in the River

Seated on a log beside my favorite stream, cushioned by moss that has crept across the fallen tree’s bark, I wonder why it is that I tend to gravitate toward these little ribbons of water.

Although the sun is bright on this afternoon during the third week of September, it’s lost most of its heat. The leaves are turning the distant hills into a painter’s palette that reminds me of a bowl of Kix, a pastel-colored breakfast cereal I enjoyed as a kid. So too, are these western Maine brook trout that I’ve been fooling with a little wet fly over the last few hours. Each is decked out in autumnal attire—flaming belly of golden orange, back as dark as it is strong, and those familiar red-in-blue dots along the flanks, the reason, I suppose, old-timers continue to call them speckled trout. These are small fish, the largest fitting snugly in my palm. Like me, they prefer the solitude of the deep forest to the more readily accessible big rivers.

A number of years back, my wife and I spent two weeks along the western coast of Ireland. Our daughter had spent a semester at the Burren College of Art outside the seaside town of Ballyvaughan, in County Clare, and we’d traveled there to fetch her home, a most difficult assignment since she’d met an Irish lad, a tender in a tavern, with unruly brown hair and a lilt to his speech.

The plan had been to tour the countryside. While I teased a few brown trout, Trish and Emily explored the ruins of ancient castles and convents, some of which stood side-by-side with recently constructed condominiums thanks to the economic expansion that had followed the cessation of the country’s “troubles.”

In County Mayo, we finished another Irish breakfast of fried eggs with bacon (called rashers) and sausage (called bangers), accompanied by a fried tomato and black pudding (made from pig’s blood), washed it down with a cup of steaming tea, and stepped outside into the fine mist that had descended upon the village of Cong. It was what the Irish call a soft day. While the girls snapped pictures of an Abbey built for the Augustinians in 1120, l unpacked my fly rod.

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The people of Cong are proud of the fact that The Quiet Man was filmed in their little town. For many of us growing up in the nineteen-fifties, this movie, starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, remains synonymous with St. Patrick’s Day.

“John Wayne? Wasn’t he that guy who played a cowboy?” my secretary replied when I later asked if she’d knew of the movie.

On that day, a number of years back, the wind had picked up by the time I took the turn at a wooden sign with the words QUIET MAN BRIDGE painted on it. Above the little stone structure, a slow-moving stream resembling more of a pond was surrounded by a wild marsh filled with grassy hummocks. Below, the current quickened as it flowed through the narrow openings under the bridge’s stone arches.

After tramping through tall reeds, I stood where more than sixty years ago Barry Fitzgerald carried John Wayne to his ancestral home on a one-horse cart. I was about to cast a tiny pheasant-tail nymph into that Celtic current when an old man with ruddy cheeks humped over the muddy lane that led from his white-washed farmhouse down to the bridge. The farmer’s threadbare coat was buttoned to his chin, his hands sunk deep in its pockets. Wisps of white hair danced around the wide-brimmed hat he wore low on a brow that appeared permanently creased from a lifetime of weather and wind. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. By his side, a dog of unknown origin snarled until the old man kicked him with a rubber boot.

“Tell me boyo, what might you be doin’?” He spoke without removing the cigarette from between his lips.

“Was hoping to catch one of your Irish browns to write home about,” I replied.

“A yank, are ya, then?” he said, a lilt to his speech and a twinkle in his eye.

“Meant no harm.” I gave him my best smile.

He was missing a number of front teeth, and the wind grabbed a long gob of spittle, carrying it over the old man’s shoulder.

“Well, guess I’ll leave you to it, then,” he croaked. Turning his back, he called to the dog that had continued to stare with bad intent.

I spent my final few nights listening to “trad” music in the pubs we found along the road and my days searching out streams that flowed under the shadows cast by the “twelve Bens,” a series of mountains found in Connemara, a part of the Emerald Isle that Oscar Wilde described as having savage beauty. I did so, not so much to catch fish, but to stand near the places where they are found. Perhaps, John D. Voelker said it best in his short piece entitled Testament of a Fisherman:

“I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful, and hate the environs where crowds of people are found, which are invariably ugly…”

You should read the entire essay. Voelker lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a part of the country where the rivers and rills are as wild as those flowing out of the mountains that separate Maine from its northern neighbor and as untamed as those found along the western coast of Ireland. It is there, where the distinguished jurist rose from prosecuting attorney to judge.

If you don’t remember The Quiet Man, you probably won’t recall Anatomy of a Murder. Based upon the novel written by Voelker, this intense movie, starring Jimmy Stewart as a mild-mannered, defense attorney, who enjoys fly fishing, was also filmed in the fifties. The money Voelker made from the film allowed him to spend the remainder of his days on trout streams where he preferred to spend his time.

Jimmy Stewart? Wasn’t he in that movie they play every Christmas?

I first discovered John Voelker a few years after graduating college. Back then, a spinning rod lay in the trunk of my Dodge Dart. He’d written a wonderful book of stories entitled Trout Madness under the pen name of Robert Traver. It inspired me to purchase my first fly rod—a cheap fiberglass model manufactured by the Cortland Company.

A number of years later, I too became an attorney, and even wrote my own book of stories, which gave me a greater appreciation for the richness, texture, and humor of Voelker’s life and work. I now own a number of fly rods, most constructed of graphite, a few from bamboo, while the Cortland, with its chipped paint and frayed wraps, rests comfortably on my den wall.

On the six-and-a-half-hour flight home from Ireland, my thoughts swung from fishing to the war in Iraq that had been far from over, despite rumors to the contrary. I thought of The Intruder, a Voelker tale found in Trout Madness about a stranger who unexpectedly shows up at the angler’s favorite pool. You’ll have to read it to see why the times, they apparently are not changing. The story has haunted me since I first read it. Upon my return home, I took down the book from the shelf where it had sat for too many years and reread it cover to cover.

Now, seated on this log, surrounded by the spruce and balsam that characterize western Maine, listening to the timeless current pass by my boots, I’m once again reminded of John Voelker aka Robert Traver, who died in 1991 at the age of eighty-eight, and of my father, who at age eighty-three passed away after struggling for many years with a heart condition, and my uncle George, who joined him a few years later, an affable guy, with a bum ear and bad back, a guy who tried as he might, rarely hooked a fish. Inexplicably, this inability to catch fish never dampened my uncle’s enthusiasm for his favorite pursuit. And of my best friend, Trish’s dad, Charlie, who found it hard to release a trout he’d fooled fair and square, and who later in life, after losing his sight, I’d entertain with tales of my western Maine adventures. I like to think of them, not as they were in those later years, but as young men filled with possibility, after a war they’d fought for no other reason than it was the right thing to do. 

I remember that Irish farmer humping down the wind-slept lane to see what “a yank” was up to, and all the other fellows, now in their seventies, eighties, and older, some still wandering the rivers and streams, with backs stooped forward, leaning on their wading staffs, their eyes still twinkling with mischief, their minds filled with a lifetime of memories.

From my seat on this moss-covered log, I can see the next bend in the river. Perhaps that’s the best thing about a trout stream. There’s always one more bend to explore.

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Bob Romano is an author inspired by the connection between the fly angler and the natural world. Bob is passionate about fly fishing, the connection to the places he is at, and is purely inspired by it all. He takes pride in his work, and hopes that you can smell the balsam, hear the river, and feel the melancholy of the deep birch-and-pine forest. Bob’s one regret in writing is that he didn’t begin writing sooner.

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