Our Outdoors: Go Fishing
By Nick Simonson
It’s fitting that this week is “National Fishing and Boating Week” because we need it now more than ever. I don’t know what last week’s title was, but it was awful. With the world still reeling from a bombing of a concert for tweens and teens across the pond which left 22 dead and dozens injured, we endured black-letter racist slurs spray-painted on a sporting legend’s home and uttered by a late-night comedian which reminded us that the bigotry of the last century still remains. Add in an unfunny attempt at headless political humor and the fact our country now joins the all-star team of Syria and Nicaragua in its open, non-support of the environment, and the weekend was looking like a pretty welcome relief from the endless churn of news cycles and subsequent social media rantivism that followed each story. That is until a second attack in Great Britain on Saturday bookended a bad seven-day run.
For the last 20 years, no matter the issue, no matter the headlines, no matter the challenges, no matter what set me off or made me mad, I have found my answers outdoors. Whether standing in the cool running waters of a small stream, in the dew-soaked grass along the edge of a flowing river, or alone in the early morning gray with the call of a loon in the middle of a lake, fishing has been the reset button on many a day that’s left me bewildered, angered or saddened, and has lifted me up to come back and do what is necessary to ensure that my impact, no matter how small or large, affects others for the better and maybe prevents someone from doing something stupid, or dangerous, or petty, or hateful somewhere down the road.
There’s something simple, rewarding and enjoyable about fishing that connects us to the very basics of who we are, and while I’ve never been able to put my finger on it exactly, I know the secret to life is somewhere out there in the act of catching a fish. The process finds a way to connect us with what is real, what is personal, and what is truly powerful. It gives us space to breathe, to think, to vent and disconnect from that other world of endless news scrolls and updating post feeds. It’s that smile-inducing mixture of luck, skill, science and art that serves, like the rippled moon on the night water, as a reflection of how the world should be.
It gives us a chance to share time with others, to provide them an opportunity to learn, to care and to find their humanity and become attached to the timeless water and the history that has been with us since the first line dunked the first worm in front of the first fish to be caught by hand. For all the people who all-capped their disgust at what was going on last week, the simple act of taking someone fishing – a child, a neighbor, a grandma, anyone – does more to share our goodness and our true ability to change the world than any social media rant ever could. Because those trips make for the days that stick in people’s minds, those are the moments that make them want to pass on your generosity, those are the memories that, when a choice between good-and-evil comes up, will hopefully weigh heavily on the light side of the scale, and prevent a descent into darkness for just one soul.
I recognize that’s deep, but I’m not being an idealist. This is as real as it gets. The act of fishing is not a distraction from life, it is a conduit to life and our ability as a society to continue living. The good things we do today echo in some way throughout the halls of history; not only in the photos of those smiling youth holding up their first bluegills and in family pictures behind a stringer of keeper walleyes, but also in their decisions to do the right things, to work hard, to share laughter and love, and reject anger and hate and remember the peace found in the calm mornings or the sacred nights when we stood on shore, or floated under a ceiling of infinite stars.
That’s why this week is so important. It gives us a chance to close the book on the last one, to reset, to breathe deep the clean morning air of a new day and move forward with renewed purpose and kindness. Change comes from doing something good. Here’s your chance to change the life of one person or the lives of many for the better, or perhaps to change your own life. Go fishing. Take someone else with you. Share joy, share passion, share the skill, the science, the art (and if you’re willing, your lucky lure) that make us who we are. The answer is out there, on the edge of a stream or the middle of a lake, I hope you’ll use this week to continue to search for it with me…in our outdoors.