Growing Gills

by David Joy

  On the way, my felt-soled wading boots brush a patch of bluets and the petals take flight. The flower patch transforms into a swarm of beating wings as the bodies of summer azures lift from the ground. I stop and let them spiral up around my legs and torso; a smile spreads across my face, and I am again thought-less. Not thoughtless in the sense of carelessness or insensitivity, but because nothing else exists besides the moment, a Ram Dass way of experiencing the “now.” Fly fishing becomes my LSD, my meditation into existence. Nothing breaks the moment. I missed the fish, but I am not disappointed.

  *****

  For me, fly fishing has become more than just catching fish. Yet it is too simplistic to say that it is an escape. In all honesty, I am not escaping anything. Rather than escape, fly fishing is a medium of becoming. A means of becoming animalistic, it is about a positive regression to primitiveness. As humans, our entire existence is defined by language, and language is the key difference between primitive instinct and cognitive thought. By breaking through all language-derived thought, I am able to revert to my primal self.

  When these moments are achieved, language is out of place. I do not speak because I am too busy listening. The wild has no systemic, lingual tongue, only a dialect that can never be fully understood for anything other than what it is: wind on leaves, rustling; unseen birds’ calls echoing off silence; the slight glup of a wild trout rising; water pouring over rocks; phantom animals brushing through rhododendron; my breathing.

  The flowers are still defined by words and the birds still separated by empty syllables, but during brief moments of wildness these confines vanish for me and nothing is left but basic instinct: smell, sound, sight, touch, taste. For animals, there is never anything besides the moment. Primitiveness is not savagery. I want to return to Rousseau’s noble savage: only then do I know that I’m there; only then do I become real; only then do I exist.

  *****

  With the morning sun rising behind the jagged leaves of an Allegheny chinquapin, I approached a short, shallow run in the creek. A log lay on the right side of the current, and I was sure that a fish would be holding on the left of the fallen tree. I glanced to the left of the stream and saw a meadow of field grass through a thicket of briars as I took another stealthy step upstream. Edging closer to the line where I knew a fish would be holding, thought-less and in tune, I readied the fly line to make a cast.

  Suddenly something burst through the briar patch on the left and came right toward me. The flapping intensified—something big. I turned and saw a wild turkey flying right at me. “Holy SHIT!” I screamed like a baby, high-pitched and piercing, the sound breaking the silence, my moment of instinct ceasing as I reverted back to my lingual consciousness.

  The big jake took flight, flapping a six-foot wingspan at my head. As the bird flew forward, it slowed, outreached spurs aimed at my face, and hovered for a moment like a mockingbird attacking a hound. I swatted with my fly rod, grazing the jake’s left wing, and a few feathers ripped from flesh fluttered toward the current. The turkey landed three feet upstream, then took off across the creek and up the hillside.

  I thought that would be the end. I’ve seen hundreds of turkeys, generally hens, in these Appalachian woods, and every time the birds flashed a few short strokes and then ran for cover. I’d seen a bobcat burst from hiding and chase a raffle of hens across a logging road. Even then, the birds disappeared, gliding down a steep embankment without a feather spared. Evidently, my previous encounters hadn’t taught me everything in a turkey’s nature because this jake turned back toward me.

  His head raised, his chest swelled, he exposed his long coarse beard, fanned out his tail, and gobbled loudly before ducking his head and dragging his wings across the ground as he came after me. I dropped the fly rod into the stream and reached into the water, picked up a smoothed rock the size of a mason jar, and prepared for the attack. The jake ran down the opposite bank and across the creek, about ten feet upstream from where I was standing. In the thicket, the turkey swelled again, iridescent plumage shining through briars. I was taken over by primal fear; fight or flight kicked in, and I don’t have wings; I’ve never been much on running either.

  In a moment of instinct, I lofted the rock over the thicket and, to my surprise, struck the jake in the breast. The thud was loud as bellowed air escaped from his chest. In that second of primitiveness, I had left the language-defined realm of humanity and become wild. I was thought-less. The turkey didn’t fall but quickly scattered in zigzagged lines up the mountainside. I watched as he disappeared behind a patch of boulders. He would not be back.

  *****

  Fly fishing can serve as meditation through which I can occasionally achieve complete consciousness, becoming fully aware of the moment. Oppositely, instances arise that thrust me so hard into primitive instinct that I immediately understand the steps my species has taken in our evolutional path. When the turkey attacked, I had no cognitive thought but shot immediately into survival mode. I have come to understand that moments of fear are one of the few catalysts for reversion. Faced with fright, I instantly go back to something deep inside, something not driven by language but guided only by the instinct of kill or be killed.

  Animalism is much harder to achieve through meditation, taking hours to fully come into, and at times never occurring. Fear, on the other hand, forces you to become wild. I don’t know whether one way is better than the other. Meditation is much more rewarding because of the lengths to which I must go in order to achieve those moments. However, the instant reversion to primal instinct seems more organic and reminds me of what I once was. The remnants of evolution are buried deep, but moments of fear light the fuse and I erupt.

  *****

  A year prior, on the same creek where I was attacked by the turkey, the embers burned low as the night cold set in. It was late summer, but frost still covered blades of grass each morning. I crawled into my tent, opened the sleeping bag, and climbed into the goose-down cocoon. On the hillside, something rustled through underbrush. Too small to be a bear. Probably just a raccoon, opossum, or rabbit; but the sound was still enough to make me sit up and contemplate what was out there. I opened the tent, stepped outside wearing nothing but boxers, and chucked a rock where the noise had sounded. Then the night was silent, out there.

  Out there. The idea of nature as outsider began to roam around in my mind like a feral hog searching for acorns. As I went back inside my tent, I wondered where it began and why early humans had felt the need to separate themselves from their animal relatives. Why did I feel the need to separate myself from the wild by enclosing myself in a thin nylon dome? As the night progressed, I drifted in and out of sleep, awakened periodically by scattering feet, wavering leaves, and an uncomfortable root that dug into my back. Finally, I gave up. I opened my eyes, adjusted to the dim moonlight illuminating the blue tent cover, and just sat.

  I sat there all night, wanting to know why we go to these places, why we enter the wild only to separate ourselves in the comforts of civilization. We want to be there—we just don’t want to always be a part of it. I wanted to climb a tree as my primate genealogy suggested, erase my civilized footprint, burn my tent, and stamp out the coals. Instead, I just sat there wondering, wanting, waiting; but the answer never came. The sun lit the inside of my tent at five thirty. The light bearer didn’t rise, but glowed faintly behind the mountains, a lone candle behind a jagged black curtain. I climbed out of the tent and breathed in a mixture of hickory smoke and something indescribably fresh. Frost had laid down the field grass like parted hair, and my fly rod, waders, and boots shimmered with the dawn’s touch. I sat Indian-style, poking at the blackened coals with a slim dogwood branch. Underneath, the embers still burned. I felt coals inside me, too, wanting air, waiting to flame into wildness.

  Unwilling to wait, I slipped the damp waders over my pants, tightened the laces on my boots, pulled the fly vest onto my shoulders, grabbed my rod, and headed for the creek that murmured in the distance.
When I got there, I dipped my hand into the frigid stream and wiped its cold water across my eyes. There wouldn’t be any bug activity for hours, and on a creek this small no trout would rise this early. So, I just lay on the bank, the sandy gravel my mattress.

  Birds began to call from branches, and slowly the sun ascended behind the peaks. It grew lighter but I still didn’t move. By nine o’clock, I could see cumulus clouds sliding above the foliage. A caddisfly landed on my cheek, waking me from my trance. I stood up, stretched, grabbed my rod and dried my fly, and headed to a small pool where I had cooled my beer the night before.

  I stood there for a minute watching the falling water aerate the head of the pool. My mind flashed back to the night before when I had sat on a stump staring into the fire. The glow of the flames had encircled my body, closing off what was outside, separating me from what I yearned for. Did our separation begin with the discovery of fire? I wanted to know: is this as close as it gets?

  Even now as I stood above the pool, I was separated by my Gore-Tex waders, leather boots, and graphite fly rod, all unneeded modern conveniences, but also my most accessible means of getting close. I put Gink, a floatant for flies, onto the calf-tail parachute of my Adams and cast the fly into the pool. The incoming current pushed the fly into the far corner of the hole. As the Adams Parachute caught the outside edge of the seam, a trout rose to the imitation. I watched the fish come up on the fly, and as I did, all of my thoughts and cares drifted away downstream. My mind was empty as I set the hook and felt the pulse of the fish tugging on the tippet. I lifted a beautiful twelve-inch wild rainbow from the water and held the fish in my hand. For a brief moment, I was exactly where I wanted to be: thought-less and wild.

  I wondered if wild was even the right word, considering it gave a negative connotation of something uncontrollable when nature should really just be. What’s wild, in the truest sense of the word, is how land has been parceled and skyscrapers built, creating a world where peregrine falcons stalk from buildings rather than treetops. Maybe we’ve come too far.

  I kissed the gorgeous rainbow trout on the nose, took in its sangria-colored lateral line peppered with black specks, and then released the fish into the stream. I knew the trout was born, had grown, and would die in that same stream; and I found something incredibly beautiful in that. The answers to my questions were no longer important as I watched the trout glide back into the riffles where it belonged.

  Untouched

  Tin roofs shone like shattered mirrors spread across the mountain range. The land didn’t seem parceled around the homes like most development nowadays, and I probably wouldn’t have even known the houses were there if the roofs weren’t reflecting the midday sun. I drove toward a creek that I’d never even heard about. All that I knew of the water came from a blue line that wove across a topographic map. I often closed my eyes, ran my index finger across a flattened page and found the nearest creek on the atlas. Today as I headed for Beetree Fork Creek, I had no clue what to expect.

  I estimated the drive from Cullowhee at an hour, but an ninety minutes into it, I realized that mountain roads could be deceiving in a book. I didn’t complain. The drive was strangely exhilarating, winding through unfamiliar hollows where overhanging trees scattered the late-August sun across the rough pavement. I felt like an explorer on the hunt for new land, only I wouldn’t exploit the wild. I would find a place, love it for what it was, and keep my mouth shut.

  An orange-breasted robin flapped sporadically over the pavement and chased a tiger swallowtail. I rounded a curve where water trickled from a tall granite face cut into the mountainside to make way for the road. The mountain air felt wonderful against my sunburned skin. It was late summer, miserably hot on flatland, but deep in the Appalachian peaks, the temperature remained cool, chilled by streams, shade, and elevation.

  Coming out of the bend, the road dropped, and at the bottom of the hill, I could see a man standing on the back of a harrow being dragged through turned soil by a fat-bellied mule. The mule’s head bobbed as its hooves pushed through the loose dirt. When I reached the field, I slowed down to get a good look at the old timer. I couldn’t discern his age (hard lives tend to wear on appearances), but if I had to guess, the man was around sixty. He held onto one of the plow’s handles, reached into the back pocket of his beaten overalls, pulled out a red bandanna, and wiped the beads of sweat from his brow. The image looked like a scene out of a movie or a character from a Flannery O’Connor story, only there he was, close enough to touch.

  Ragged wood posts lined the property, and rusty barbed-wire dangled between each post like bowed twine. Honeysuckle vines twisted around the posts and coiled out along the wires, the leafy plants converging in the middle of each wire. A black crow cawed from atop a post, and the bird’s iridescent plumage shimmered blue and purple in the sun. The bird watched the farmer, glided down in the freshly plowed path, grabbed a churned-up worm, and flew away into the trees. Nature and man seemed to fuse back together there, making it hard to decide where one ended and the other began.

  Past the field, the farmer’s house sat at the bottom of the hollow, nestled below a steep hill. The house was sided with hardwood planks worn gray with age. A metal pipe bellowing hickory smoke stuck from the rusted tin roof. Knowing it was too warm to need heating, I thought that the family was probably still using a woodstove to cook meals. A rafter of wild turkey hens strutted in between grazing cattle on the hillside behind the house. White painted bee boxes lined one edge of the property, and I remembered the belief that when a beekeeper dies, someone must inform the bees or else they will leave. I wasn’t sure who would tell them if that old man didn’t wake up in the morning. Some folks are born at the beginning of a long row to hoe, but looking at how perfectly the man fit into his surroundings, I wondered if that saying was necessarily a bad thing.

  The farm disappeared from my rearview mirror. The glimpse of the olden days, the type of life Granny told stories about, was gone, vanishing in the distance just like everything else. Gassing the battered Chevy up the next ridge, I turned up the bluegrass. Mandolins, dulcimers, and banjos twanged from the speakers, and I drove on—only a few more miles to go.

  *****

  The older I get, the more I notice that the places become just as important as the fish I catch there. In the beginning, I didn’t really care where I found them; all that really mattered were the trout. Nowadays, if I can’t find a stream not bordered by houses or a place where I’m not bombarded by other fishermen, then I would rather not fish.

  I find sanctuary in places unscathed by development, naked of human footprints, places where the wild remains. I read about West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee where over eight hundred square miles of mountaintops have been flattened, the million-year-old rock blasted into dust clouds. Twelve hundred miles of streams have been polluted by runoff and over a thousand creeks buried. I wonder what happened to those mountains’ farmers, their rich Appalachian heritage, their essential wildness? I wonder if my mountains are next.

  I hear stories of rainforests disappearing in South America and ice caps receding at both poles, but the destruction doesn’t become real to me until I see a multimillion-dollar home plopped beside a creek that used to hold native brook trout. Environmental destruction doesn’t consume me until I watch a stream I’ve fished for years be strangled with sediment pushed into creeks by bulldozers.

  I banged the steering wheel with my fist and drove on. The road darkened as I motored downhill and listened to chatters and screeches that echoed from invisible sources hidden in thick woods dense with briary underbrush and hazed with fog. I tried to identify what I was hearing, but without seeing the animals, it was hard to tell.

  Aside from the road, there was no sign that people had been there. This was no tourist attraction, no highway lined with billboards erroneously portraying the Cherokee as Plains Indians. I tried to imagine that this place was exactly how it had always been. I wanted to push the fact that this was
all new-growth forest out of my mind. I wanted to think these animals had no fear of man, that they’d yet to encounter the sputtering smoke of earthmovers; yet, the road was a constant reminder that I could never fully get back to what was.

  As I emerged from the thick grove, a red-tailed hawk shot low across the road ahead. I wondered if a chipmunk, rabbit, or mouse hid in the patch of clover to the left. The land began to flatten out, and up the road, a concrete bridge crossed a deep gulley. The sound of water became evident, and I suspected I’d finally arrived.

  I steered the truck over onto a small gravel pull-off after the bridge. I didn’t see any tire tracks in the dirt, so I figured no one had fished that section in some time. I was two hours from home—a long drive but definitely worth it. I stepped out of the truck and heard the purr of water over rocks. That sound, more musical than chords from instruments, beckoned me to come. I pulled on my waders and laced my boots. I was anxious to get in the water. I threw my vest around my shoulders, grabbed my rod, and headed for the stream.

  Pink rhododendron blooms were scattered under the thicket of trees, and a small path ran down the embankment between the bridge and the rhododendron. Midway down, Turk’s-cap lilies sprang from the ground, with petals rolled upward toward sparse sunlight. The creek was gorgeous. The freestone bottom looked like a cobblestone street beneath a foot of moonshine. The water was so clear I could make out caddisfly casings stuck between rocks.

  I knelt down beside the stream and began running my leader through the guides of my rod. With the tippet through the tip-top, I laid the rod on the ground and began rummaging through my vest for a couple of flies. No bug activity made it hard to choose which patterns were most suitable, but when in doubt, I always go with an Adams and a Pheasant Tail. Those two flies have caught me more fish than anything I’ve ever tied to my line. Sticking with my old faithfuls, I cinched a Uni-Knot onto the Adams Parachute and then tied the Pheasant Tail off the dry’s hook bend.