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| Uncle Carl, age 93, after a recent trip to Quebec, on what turned out to be our last trip to the family “camp” (cabin, we would call it here) at Tug Hill, NY. He was still walking – carefully – and casting a flyrod on this trip, but he would die within two months |
It took me 40 years to realize that it wasn’t just a fish I was chasing, it was the life I had created in my mind that I would have lived if only: if only my family hadn’t moved south, if only I had lived closer to my aunt and uncle, if only I could have traded the really not too bad life I had grown up with in Virginia for the unproven but dreamed of much better life I might have had Upstate. By then, my father had been dead 20 years, my mother and my uncle Carl had died four years previous, and I had put my life and businesses on hold to assure that my ailing aunt died in her home, as I had promised Carl I would.
Driving back from an evening of fruitlessly drifting flies on the surface of Grindstone Creek, it suddenly occurred to me that chasing ghost fish was the only reason I would have left to return Upstate when my aunt died. Back at the house, standing on the porch, staring out over the moonlit field where I had run and cross-country skied countless laps, that revelation called for a second shot of Laphroaig Scotch. And a third shot, to be honest.
Months later, driving back south after settling my aunt’s estate, and realizing the Upstate part of my life was now a huge, empty crater wrapped in memories no doubt destined to fade, I dug deep for the lesson in all this. Forty years of trips up north, of time spent with two family members the rest of my family never bothered with, of hours chasing the ghost of a fish from my youth, surely there had to be a lesson there. But I couldn’t find it.
Ten years later I still haven’t been back, still haven’t drifted a dry fly at sunset while hoping for a mystical salmon to reappear. And I still haven’t found the lesson, but I may have found at least a sense of understanding. And it burns hotter than I wish it did. White hot.
How many years of life did I miss in Virginia because I was imagining the life I might have had Upstate? How many fantastic moments in my life did I gloss over because they weren’t the moment I wanted?
| Copyright © 2020 by Paul Clark |
A lot of what ifs there, Paul. Really enjoyed the story.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Ed. It is a difficult, perhaps impossible, feeling to explain, but some places never feel like home--even if you grow up there--and some places do feel like home, even if you are only an occasional visitor. Or maybe I'm the only person to ever have this feeling?
ReplyDeleteI have the same feeling about Costa Rica. It was the first place I really felt like I was home. I know however, it'll never be the Costa Rica I fell in love with again, while the memory is clear that Costa Rica belongs to the past. Costa Rica has moved on without me. I did love taking this trip through time with you. Be safe.
ReplyDeleteI remember returning to the San Joaquin Valley after my first year in New England. I couldn’t comprehend how I’d survived in that flat, boring landscape. I need a forest, trees, birds, leaf fall, rustling leaves, ideally with a dog.
ReplyDeleteI got lucky. Right out of college to Colorado, where I could head for the woods, or for the music school, on my lunch hour. I'm still here fifty five years later. Maybe I'd have preferred someplace else, but I doubt it. Beats the hell out of Tulare.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Chuck. You did get lucky!
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