We fishermen, I think, are lucky. Our sport can take us back to the fundamentals, back to the shallow waters where we first wet our feet, back even to those primordial beginnings we so long for in our dreams. A day fishing that quiet brook meandering through that unspoiled meadow can, however momentarily, carry even the most befouled modern man back to the natural rhythms of life and death and to that Eden toward which, in our haste to leave it behind, too few of us have bothered to steal a backward glance.

— Paul Quinnett, Whatever Became of Fishing Man?, Pavlov’s Trout —

And that’s why I fish.

Not for the competition, not for the landing of lunkers, not to be able to prove that I somehow know what I’m doing when I land the biggest best fish in the waters I’m fishing.

I like to fish.

If it somehow gives me a moment of clarity after being beat down on a daily basis to survive, surviving in a world I neither like much nor feel like I fit in much, that’s a nice benefit.

If catching a little smallie and holding it in my hand, with the fish barely extending beyond the palm of my hand, brings me a hair closer to the natural rhythms of life and death and Eden, then I’ll take it.

If doing that on a small stream, surrounded by woods with trees arching over the water from one shore to the other, brings down my blood pressure and gives me a few more days of tolerating the unnatural world I live in, then I’ll take that as an extra added benefit.

What I would like to do, someday, is not only steal a backward glance at that Eden that is being left behind, but to turn, relax my shoulders a bit and start the hike back. Only, when I arrive, I want to stay there indefinitely.