in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly
fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others.
He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume,
as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of
Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was
a dry-fly fisherman.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the weep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost
Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand
when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.
Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of
course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think
I shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the
days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until
the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon,
all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the
sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rythm and the hope
that a fish will rise.
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.
A River Runs Through It, p. 113
Norman Maclean
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both lay that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somehwere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less travelved by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
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