A young man stood on a rock at the edge of the river, late afternoon sun cascading over the steep riverbank above him and illuminating his lean frame. Sweat glistened on strong shoulders. His eyes scanned the water as it swirled and foamed among the stones near his feet, then ran heavy and smooth and green into a flat pool at the bank, where it disappeared into the darkness of the evening’s first shadows.
The dry air was hot and alive with the erratic flight of stoneflies rising and falling. They looped high, blazing sunlight flashing through translucent wings, bright orange abdomens glowing, dancing to the score of the midsummer breeze. The man’s eyes flickered between the water and air. A fly buzzed past his face, faltering as if its engines had stalled, crashing into the glittering rock on the far side of the river. It came to rest in the clear water near the rocky bank, legs thrashing, wings flat, spinning. Up from the deep a silver fish charged and sucked the fly from the surface. Water shot into the air and suspended, splitting the sunlight into primary colors that scattered like a handful of diamonds over a silver platter.
The droplets rejoined the river, the fish descended, the man’s heart beat faster. He remained still and intent. The sequence repeated and the river’s silky song filled the space around him. Time passed, merging with the flowing water. A rhythm emerged like a distant drumbeat as the stoneflies careened into rock and danced on water, drawing the silver fish from their underworld.
The man crouched and leapt into the air, landing on a rock. Three times he did this, until he stood in the middle of the river where the foaming current turned flat. His back was to the sun, his face in the direction of the river’s source. From his pocket he removed a small tin box and opened it. The man removed a dry fly and held it to the sun, admiring his work. He had fashioned a thorax of bright orange foam and fixed it to the hook’s steel shank with waxed thread. The body was elk hair, spun and trimmed with a razor. Thin white foam made delicate wings.
The man threaded a wisp of monofilament tippet through the eye of the hook. His hand turned and he ran the line through his lips. With a soft tug he seated the knot and flicked the fly into the water. It made a small wake in the current as it pulled against the leader, rubber legs twitching. The man’s fingers stripped line from the reel and let it drop around his feet, where it coiled, snakelike, on the water. He gazed again at the seam of clear water at the base of the sheer rock bank. The silver fish reappeared, keeping cadence with every third stonefly that floated along a narrow seam of current.
When the fisherman felt the tempo, the muscles in his forearm tightened, snapping the graphite rod toward the sun. The dry fly jumped from the water and the yellow line climbed and floated, connecting sky and earth. The man’s arm pushed forward and the serpent at his feet uncoiled and hissed toward the rock wall in a tight loop. He was sweating more now, his body gleaming as the muscles contracted in even time, music of a sort. The rod sliced air again and again, loading, releasing, shooting line across the river.
The fly line rolled out, hung golden in the sunlight, then floated soft and clean to the water. The fly drifted free and high on the seam and the man’s heart surged in his chest. His breathing stopped, but the river flowed on.
The silver fish rocketed to the surface as natural elements converged in crescendo. Water touched air and refracted light and electricity surged through the man’s body as his soul became one with the river. In that instant his heart and the air and water and fly and silver fish all beat once. In perfect rhythm.