This can hardly be the description of our Highland river that you anticipated when, lying on our backs in a green strath, we idly talked the idea over. Certainly it is not the description I anticipated myself. Some ancestral instinct, at first glimpse of the river, must have taken control and set me off on a queerer hunt than we have yet tackled. Or am I now trying to cover up the spoor? You will early recognise that though there is no individual biography here, every incident may have had its double. Some of the characters seem to have strayed in from Morning Tide under different names. I cannot explain this odd behaviour – apart from the old desire to be in on the hunt in any disguise. However, if only I could get you to see the hunt as a poaching expedition to the source of delight we got from a northern river, I feel that you might not be altogether disappointed should you come back (as we have so often done in our time) with an empty bag.
With brotherly affection,
NEIL