Sometimes finding God is as simple - and sacred - as a good day’s fishing

If a Garden of Eden exists on the earth today, it would for me reside in the topography of a trout stream. My favorite trout streams are in the high desert of eastern Oregon where they are spring fed — cold, clear and clean. They are swift and rocky in places, and deep, languid and gravely in others.

The slack water behind rocks, beneath cut banks, and the grottoes under downed trees provide shelter for the little wild denizen of the stream — the Redband trout.

The Redband trout is a remnant of the last ice age when the species became stranded in the upper reaches of streams that drained into huge glacial lakes. Those lakes are just salt flats today, but the trout have lived on for 10,000 years surviving spring floods, drought, warm water and silt from overgrazing of the stream banks by cattle, and even the planting of non-native trout. The Redband trout are wary and — to be caught — must be approached by anglers with a certain respect.

Fly-fishing requires a special sort of fluid grace, a grace that patterns itself after the flow of the stream. Done properly, it is as graceful as a ballet.

Fly-fishing is a solitary sport, more meditative than competitive, more reclusive than social. The tools of the craft at their best are subtle and light. The favorite poles are lightweight and strong, made of graphite or bamboo. The reels are small and highly machined, smooth in action and precise in tolerance. The lines are lightweight, floating and tapered. The lures are made of threads, fabrics, hairs and feathers with tiny hooks without barbs. The flies float, and some of them are miniscule.

Because the Redband trout are survivors, they are naturally suspicious and cunning.

The fisherman must make the fly drift down upon the water like an insect, or cast it into the grass on the opposite side of the stream such that it bounces off and appears to fall directly from the grass. The fly must drift beneath the cut banks and rocks and tree branches in the river, not so close as to hang up, but close enough to lure the trout out of hiding. If the trout does come out, it will be with the speed of lightning. The good fly fisherman always leaves just the right tension in the drifting line to allow the striking trout to hook itself.

I like to think of fly-fishing as a metaphor for finding the God that inhabits nature. The wild God naturally tries to hide.

The successful spiritual seeker must go alone with a light touch, and a certain acrobatic poise and grace. The God must be lured out and if found and caught, it must be released unharmed. Fly-fishing as an encounter with God is not as dangerous as Ahab’s encounter with the white whale in Moby Dick. Fly-fishing is an exception to the Biblical rule that “You cannot see my face, because a man cannot see me and live.” (Exodus 33:20)

Norman Maclean in his classic book “A River Runs Through It” describes the stream so well. “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”

Some of the words are also God’s.

This story was originally published March 2, 2018 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Sometimes finding God is as simple - and sacred - as a good day’s fishing."