I am not sure when I first started obsessively reading the back page of Fly Fisherman magazine. I imagine I was in high school, but I might have been slightly younger or a little older. I am pretty sure I hadn’t left for college yet because I remember hunting and pecking through a stack of my father’s collection of Fly Fisherman issues from the ’80s that were stored in the wide shelf at the bottom of a massive ancient record player. I’d leaf through the stack of magazines like so much vinyl until I found one I had not read before. Then I would turn directly to the back page while ignoring the ten-year-old article on the Madison river.
I don’t subscribe to fly fishing magazines anymore, for a variety of reasons that aren’t very interesting. But when I come across one–via dumb luck or after trading some gold–I still spend some time at the back page, at least skimming the essay.
Nick Lyons’ back page column was called The Seasonable Angler. Upstairs in my bookshelf I have two collections of those columns. I’ve read them both more than once and often feel like reading them again. I don’t do it usually, because if I do I find that my own writing is for a time rendered nothing more than a poor voiceless imitation of Nick’s. I can’t help it. He writes in a way the connects to me for aesthetic and sentimental reasons. I love his writing for its own sake but also because it reminds me that I was young once, and I remember how it felt to discover that writing about fly fishing was not limited to articles about destinations or roll casts, fly tying instructions or gear reviews.
Nick Lyons’ columns taught me that writing about fly fishing could be something else–it could be beautiful.
Lyons the writer is so self effacing that I imagine he would choke on that adjective. But I’ve read Spring Creek and I know the truth. That discovery led me to other writers like Harry Middleton and Norman Maclean and its safe to say nothing has quite been the same for me since.
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For the past eighteen months or so I have been working on a collection of my own essays–if you can call them that. I don’t want to discuss it too much and you probably don’t care to read it. But I decided that if my book was to ever be read by more than just myself and my family I should probably try to get some of the chapters published.
So between life’s other events I have been polishing some while also trying to write new material for the collection. Occasionally I send something out. Its not very organized. One unintended consequence is the reduction of my work that is published here.
I sold my first fly fishing essay a couple of months ago. My first back page essay. And today I flipped to the back page of American Angler and there was my name. It doesn’t look right or feel right. Its thrilling and ridiculous and that makes me feel like a narcissist and a fool–just like writing this post does. But I don’t know if I will ever sell another. The eighteen-year-old version of me would be fiercely proud, I think, and there’s something to be said for that.
What that younger version of me wouldn’t understand is that the fly fishing magazine may be a relic of my own youth. That this blog post might get more readers. That would screw up his brain as it does mine a little. But those are thoughts for another day. Today I’ll simply be happy that I did something I thought I might never do, even if it feels vain and slightly anticlimactic. Thanks for indulging me.
