Norman Maclean wrote some of the most beautiful words concluding one of his stories: “All existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.”¹

My apologies to Norman.

A POND RUNS THROUGH IT

It’s not uncommon for cattle farmers to keep livestock ponds stocked with fish. In the Midwest, bass are considered the primo catch. Penny and her husband often take their guests out to the pond, but they are more sophisticated fishermen than most. They have outgrown the crude, clunking lures, the simulated plastic worms, the ticky-tacky spinners, and the ohso-amateur refrigerated night crawlers.

They are fly fishermen.

Their friend John is a fly-fishing aficionado and a frequent guest. One afternoon, Penny walked with him across the pasture to the pond. They strode with the confidence of Olympic athletes. They competed, not against each other but only against themselves.

John, the minimalist, went up the bank carrying all his tackle in his shirt pocket. Penny, the princess of preparedness, set her backpack on the ten-foot dirt edge of the half-full pond.

She laid out everything she would need neatly along the bank: four boxes of flies, sinkers, net, forceps, suntan lotion, bottled water, energy bars, creel, combination knife and scaler, bug spray, and wire cutters. She kept her feet dry and began back-casting, laying the line, reeling and pausing, ebbing and flowing, all in perfect rhythm to the lapping of the wavelets on the shore.

Her concentration was intruded upon by the feeling that she was not alone. She looked around to see forty curious Angus heifers looking over her fly-fishing inventory like single mothers at a yard sale. They were licking, nudging, drooling, stomping, and scattering woolies, nymphs, slug bugs, hellgrammites, sunscreen, and oatmeal raisin cookies along the beach.

Penny tried shooing them back, but it was like trying to shoo snow off the porch. They had her surrounded and were closing in. “John! John!” she kept calling, trying to get some help.

She was actually whacking heifers on the head with her bare hand whilst holding her rod above the milling crowd. John was steadily giving advice: “Move sideways! Stand tall! Stoop and run! Twist and shout!”

As Penny was maneuvering, one of the heifers stuck her head under the fishing line. It startled her! She began backing up. The line hooked on the round ear tag button on the backside. The crowd parted as Penny played the heifer like an eight-hundred-pound walleye.

“Keep yer tip up,” encouraged John.

The heifer ducked and dived, breached and sounded, wiggled and shook until she finally broke free. “Wow,” said John to the panting Penny, “that’s sure the big one that got away!”

“Yeah,” said Penny, “but we mostly just catch and release.”