| western watershed romance |
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To link severed threads of mind, I eddy back to a
much earlier time, back to Pyramid Reservoir, an oasis of estuary water
in the drab over-sprawl and scrawl of southern California, back to the
mid-1980s. Dulled split-shot sinkers, small dull hooks, an old rod
found in the grandparents' cluttered garage, and many bejeweled
bluegills, my first, iridescent, violet and brilliant orange, tightened
my lines when I laid my baits within the shade cast by an overhanging
walkway leading to a massive dock. Strong little fish, spinning and
shuddering against the conquering rod, and I netted 'em with
difficulty. I stumbled onto 'em - wasn't a strategic decision for
bluegills that led me to that locale, but a tactical one based on
biggies: I caught my first largemouth by imitating some dude who bagged
a nice one under a dock with a nightcrawler, and here, a similar
situation, so out went the worm, and in battled not the loud-mouthed
green fish but the feisty little spiky cousin of the green fish. I
heartlessly stabbed a stringer through the gills of 'em, every 'gill I
caught, and not because I wanted to eat 'em, but because I wanted
recognition of my success, and my word wasn't enough - no one ever
listened. It's agonizing, in memory's eye, seeing 'em struggling,
gasping against the stringer's cruel, frayed, prickly rope. I extended
death's prelude when I brought 'em home alive, dumped 'em into a big
galvanized tub, then filled it with poisonous tap water. This second
act was beyond seeking recognition, however - a fascination, a
perplexity, forced me to ogle 'em, a domesticated cat playing
quizzically with a rat it had captured - the instinct to pursue and
catch was there, the mechanics for stalking and striking were there,
but the reason why - gone. Staring hypnotically into the metal bucket
at the frightened fish, it was a struggle between what I'd been taught
by my tamed, suburban life and what that had buried, but not smothered,
deep inside; too, it was the ugly, bloody afterbirth of a relationship,
a relationship back then that was still in its crude infancy, a
relationship with myriad nubbins that eventually branched out and
flowered and overlapped and superseded those originally destined only
for humanity.
Over 30 years later, and a renewal of that
relationship between bluegill and I, a relationship of saltation.
Haunted by the depleted stock of self-killed fish in my freezer, my
limited mobility precluding a hunt on wild waters such as the surf or a
big river, I had few options for redressing my freezer's anemia. Late
summer at low elevations along well-defined weedlines during the day
promised good chances for good bluegill, chances that didn't require an
Iron Man-fit body to access. An ignored stretch of Putah Creek close to
my house beckoned, a reach flanked by a lovely floodplain restoration
where myriad native plants flourished amid present but not obnoxious
non-natives. Harmony. With odonate nymph jigs, with bluegill the focus
instead of being a bass-hunt by-catch, with a clear and conscientious
fate already ordained, on a mild, gilded afternoon, I slipped
heron-like into the creek, slowly working my way upstream with diligent
presentations feathering the waving weedline. I got my fish. The first
I venerated with a photo, a lusty photo illustrating bluegill's
vibrancy, their sunshine rays of art. Documentation complete, that fish
and all that followed her - four - were immediately killed with a blow
to the head from a dense black pipe. I looked each fish in the eye, I
felt the precious life energy, and I felt that energy evaporate to a
lifeless calm as I lifted the black pipe away. I stopped fishing after
killing the fifth - I no longer needed to, and neither did they. I
filleted 'em, pored over their gut contents to further inform future
episodes of the saltating relationship, and everything I planned not to
eat - the guts, the heads, the spinal columns - went back into the
creek, to inform the rebirth and renewal of that which I took from the
stream, a partial mimic of the ancient salmon that once gave their
bodies for the stream's life. When I pulled the fillets out of my
freezer, dressed 'em, cooked and ate 'em - completion.
So
many more chapters in this recent episode compared to the initial one.
It was only the pursuit that was well-developed at Pyramid - the
ritualized preparation, the kill, the restraint, the rendering, the
return of that unused, and the assimilation of the animal's energy into
my own, they were either rudimentary or absent. Though so long ago, I
can still faintly feel the exhilaration I had when catching Pyramid's brawny
bluegills; more pronounced is the shame I now feel for how I treated
'em, albeit I had no teachers. But impressions from the recent foray
feel inverse: the elation of capturing such sunshine, due to the length
of the relationship, the familiarity, had certainly cooled, but the
shame's gone, now replaced by a solemn respect and a subdued joy, both
earned by feeling and then acting on the shame. I'm better because of
it. So are they.