Having just made a great run back home to Montana in the past few weeks, in particular to welcome a new life and family member into the world (grandson Brantley, who took his first creek outing a few days ago), we’ve been re-awakened to the simple fact that one of life’s greatest, and simplest, pleasures is to be still, look, listen, and soak up the little bits (some days big pieces) of the natural world we see about us.
On our trip we made the easy choice to shut off the media world for a week; not just the often-angsty, sometimes toxic news of the day, but even the fly fishing media world. It’s amazing how many folks in the fly fishing world that we follow on social media spend as much time talking about what’s wrong as what’s wondrous out there, and there’s more than enough wonders at hand to fill a century of social media chatter. (Some of the ‘advocacy groups’ might wanna take note of that simple fact.)
Most of us didn’t stumble into fly fishing to save the planet; we came because fly fishing is a beautiful way to engage with the watery natural world around us, waving noodly sticks around for hours, flinging strange materials tied to hooks at finny creatures of all shapes and sizes. (And granted, we may want to save to planet because of fly fishing, but it’s still most likely not what brought you to the fold.)
Soaking our toes in a cold freestone river (or crick, creek, bayou, backwater, pond, flat, beach, etc.), sharing a laugh and story with friends and family, teasing little cutthroat up out of the creek to a green humpy, or just watching your favorite piece of water roll by are all pretty-danged wonder-inspiring experiences, though we need to downshift and pay attention to those little sparks of wonder, before they drift off on the wind like the sparks from your last big summer campfire by the river (when’s the last time you took time out to do that my friend?).
Clearly everybody’s sense of wonder gene gets switch on by different things, unique to you or your family; don’t forget this late summer and fall to spend a bit of time cultivating your own sense of wonder. Wonder cultivation is a skill that gets much better the more you use it.
