A River Trilogy Read online

  Praise for A River Trilogy

  “W. D. Wetherell is a good fisherman, a better writer, and a most agreeable companion who has a deep feeling for the natural world in which his quarry swim.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Wetherell writes about fishing with an angler’s love for the sport and a novelist’s eye for detail.”

  —John Gierach, author of All Fisherman Are Liars

  “Wetherell defends the plain pleasures of his sport and the environmental purity to sustain it, as well as what he, a novelist, calls ‘the wild upland province of words.’ He moves naturally from the beauty of a Copper Run trout to Beauty itself . . . He has a naturalist’s eye, glorying in the things mankind has not yet sullied, grieving for those we have.”

  —New York Times

  “Wetherell has better than any writer I know caught the character of Eastern fly-fishing: the energetic personalities of its seasons, geographies, politics natural and unnatural, and inhabitants both civilized and wild. These books have been provided us courtesy of an artist unwilling to concede that there is a distinction to be made between what is said and the manner of its saying.”

  —John Engels, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry

  “Vermont River is one of those rare instances when fly-fishing writing overflows its banks and spreads freely into the fields of literature.”

  —John Merwin, founder of Fly Rod & Reel

  and author of Stillwater Trout

  “These are bold little gleeful books by a writer I’ve admired for years that should endear themselves to everybody who likes streams and woods and country as well as simply to other fishermen, who will find them both astute and lyric.”

  —Edward Hoagland, author of In the Country of the Blind

  “Immensely readable books by a young fisherman-writer equally obsessed by the twin pursuits of the elusive trout and the elusive word. I both love and envy them.”

  —Robert Traver, author of Trout Magic

  “Wetherell understands the currents that flow through a fly-fisher’s soul and he taps into them with rare wit and grace. One of the most talented voices to be heard in angling literature in a long while. I found myself wishing for at least one page more, or one chapter more, and one book more. So will you.”

  —Steve Raymond, author of Trout Quintet

  “Delightful books that impart the soul of the river the angler, and the surrounding countryside.”

  —Ted Giddings, journalist

  “This is my idea of what fishing books should be—and too seldom are. Like fly fishing itself, the books soothe the soul and answer more than a few questions all of us have asked of a day, a river, or a trout.”

  —Gene Hill, former columnist for Field & Stream

  “Deeply felt yet resolutely unsentimental, consistently generous yet unflinching in its allegiances, Wetherell’s is a voice of sanity and sense for our increasingly virtual age. Reading him is like coming home.”

  —Mark Slouka, author of Nobody’s Son and

  recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship

  “Literary gems.”

  —Paul Marriner, author of Atlantic Salmon: A Fly Fishing Primer

  “Wetherell is the ideal armchair companion—an elegant writer, a fastidious, observant angler, a charming streamside companion.”

  —J. Z. Grover, writer for In-Fisherman

  Copyright © 2018 by W. D. Wetherell

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Skyhorse® and Skyhorse Publishing® are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

  Vermont River originally published by Nick Lyons Books, 1984

  Upland Stream originally published by Little, Brown & Company, 1991

  One River More originally published by the Lyons Press, 1998

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Tom Lau

  Cover painting credit: The Rapids, Hudson River, Adirondacks (1894) by Winslow Homer

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-2824-0

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-2825-7

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Celeste, Erin, and Matthew

  Contents

  A Word at the Start

  Vermont River

  Upland Stream

  One River More

  A Word at the Start

  My books on fly fishing—“Celebrations,” I like to call them—are now back in print, published together in one volume as I’d always intended. Thirty years have gone by since the first of the trio, Vermont River, came out, so I’d like to briefly explain how I came to write of rivers and fishing, then go on to talk about how the books have fared over the years, and how I view things now.

  In 1981, I published my first novel, Souvenirs. It fared as most first novels do, or at least first earnestly-imagined, ambitiously-written, philosophical/experimental ones do. Respectful reviews, friends and relatives being kind, a publisher unwilling to do any promotion, the buzz surrounding its publication lasting all of ten minutes—and then nothing but remainders.

  Bruised, battered, but in no way ready to quit, I cast about for my next project. I had fallen in love with fly-fishing as a teenager, thanks to my parents buying a summer house on a bassy Connecticut lake. This led me to fly-fishing, and then—a passionate reader as a kid—to the literature fly-fishing boasts of, the “fishing in print.” Don Quixote fell in love with chivalry by reading romances about it; I fell in love with trout fishing by reading romances (for that’s what most fishing books are) about it—and for many years my passion, like Quixote’s, went largely unrequited.

  My twenties were a wretched decade—and at least part of the reason was that, stuck in New York, I hardly fished at all. It was only when I met Celeste and we moved to northern New England that I at last began to fish as much as I wanted to. My love (well, two loves; Celeste and I were married now) was at long last requited—and the miracle of this gave me lots to write about.

  I told my agent—a sophisticated West Sider who thought Siberia began just north of 86th Street—that I was interested in writing a book about fly fishing. “Fine,” she said, lifting her lovely aristocratic nose. “But I am no longer your agent.”

  “Fine,” I said back to her. “But I am writing it anyway.”

  It’s a fool’s errand now, but back in l983 it was just barely possible to have a book considered by a publisher by sending it “over the transom” without anyone at the house ever having heard of you. The odds were long—your manuscript, if read at all, was pulled from the aptly named “slush pile”—but no worse than buying a lottery ticket, and all it cost you was postage.

  I wrote a first chapter, sent it to Nick Lyons Books in New York, and why I picked them was because I knew Nick’s name. I’d been a fan of his writing for a long time—he was one of those fly-fishing essayists I found in my teens. His Fishing Widows became one of my favorite books; here was a writer who, like me, was stuck in cement most of the time, but, on his treasured moments stolen on a trout stream, cam
e alive both as a writer and as a man. His writing was (and is) witty, learned, lyrical, sensitive, street-smart and river-smart; he had a column on the back page of Fly Fisherman magazine, and, like thousands of flyfishers across the country, I read each one eagerly as it came out.

  (How good is Nick’s writing? Our summer house was broken into one winter, though the only things stolen was a Heddon fly rod I loved and my treasured copy of Fishing Widows. A thief of unusual discrimination!)

  I wrote that first chapter, scratched my head for a title, came up with Vermont River (important, not to have an “s” on the end), typed it across the top of the page, and sent it to Nick in New York, with a letter briefly explaining who I was and what I was up to.

  I can’t remember if it came via a phone call or letter, but after a month went by I was surprised and pleased to find Nick loved it. “Make it brilliant!” he wrote across the bottom of the contract, and, armed with his enthusiasm, I did my best to comply.

  Nick remained my editor for the next two Celebrations: Upland Stream and One River More. Anyone who follows fly fishing won’t be surprised at this, Nick having godfathered into print more fishing literature than any editor before him, and, almost certainly, any editor that will come after. The secret of his success, from a writer’s point of view, is simple: he does something no other editor seems to have time for now. He appreciates you. He’s on your side. He cheers you on. “You’re really writing well,” he’ll say—and while this doesn’t sound particularly profound, only a writer used to the neglect that comes with publishing with the big boys will understand how important these rarely-uttered, morale-boosting words can be.

  Vermont River was my homage to the fishing writers I loved as a boy. And Thoreau—I can’t forget Thoreau, even though he was a perch and pickerel fisherman, not a fly fisher. Reading him at fourteen literally changed my life. If I could blend lyricism with preciseness, include some humor, find words that once in a miraculous while mirrored the beauty of what I was describing, then at least an infinitesimal increment in the debt I owed him would finally be paid.

  The reaction when the book was published? It was the same as when I went on to publish Upland Stream and One River More, or even now when one of my essays appears. Readers who know me only through novels are surprised to learn I write about fishing; readers who know me only through fishing are surprised to learn I write novels.

  To me, it’s not the serious-unserious division some think. If you write contemporary fiction you have to deal with many hard and tragic things, and it’s a relief to turn to writing of happier matters—a joy to write lyrically, wearing your heart on your sleeve.

  And while fly fishing may not be one of the world’s most important subjects, it is one of the most important nonimportant subjects, so when I write of rivers I never feel like I’m slumming.

  You have to hide much of your meaning when writing fiction; it’s part of the art to let the reader discover this on their own. Writing essays can be relaxing, even liberating in comparison—you have permission to flat out say what’s on your mind. But not too relaxing—it’s the first rule I made myself. If I was going to write nonfiction, not only about fly fishing but about travel and opera and soccer and family life and any other subject that caught my interest, I wasn’t going to condescend to it, but give it the same attention and respect I gave my fiction.

  There were several of us making the same discovery at about the same time, the mid l980s and l990s. Baby Boomers who were crazy nuts about fly fishing, and realized that a fishing essay could be about a lot more than fly fishing. We’d pay attention to the form—there was usually at least one trout caught somewhere in our twenty pages—but we’d take it in bold new directions, widen its focus, so instead of just writing about trout streams, bourbon, and male bonding, those staples of earlier fishing writers, we’d talk about politics and ethics and love and lust and family and culture, and—though me, not so much—drugs, sex, and rock and roll. Fly-fishing literature’s New Wave—though none of us knew each other or fished together or frequented the same bars, and it was never an organized movement.

  Reviewers picked up on this. One, writing in the New York Times, opined that I was only pretending to make my essays be about fishing, when they were really about so much more. Yes, good point, Mr. Reviewer sir. But in response I’d offer this: My essays that aren’t really about fishing contain an awful lot of fishing.

  All three books brought me new friends. People called and asked me to go fishing. Readers sent me gifts in the mail: hand-tied flies, homemade fly boxes, poems they had written about their own favorite rivers, fresh-baked cookies. Two of my oldest friendships began that way, with people telling me how much they loved Vermont River, and this happy fringe benefit continued with Upland Stream and One River More.

  I think an important reason for the books’ success is this: they are books written by a young man. Not age-wise (I was up in my thirties when Vermont River appeared, fifty when One River More came out), but in spirit. This is particularly true with Vermont River, where there’s an undercurrent of boyish glee running throughout. I was high when writing it—high from finally having at long last against all odds achieved the most ardently longed for of my dreams. I was living in the country, fishing as much as I wanted to, writing seven days a week . . . and, most miraculously of all, I was married to the woman I loved, this after a decade in which I thought, for reasons I could never make sense of, I was sentenced to a life of solitude.

  For Celeste, the dedication read. Thirty-two years later they’re still my favorite words in the book.

  One of the most surprising reactions the book elicited was praise from men and women who didn’t fish. “Dear Mr. Wetherell,” their letters often began. “I’ve never read a book on fishing before let alone ever caught a fish, but something made me pick your book up and much to my amazement I read every word.”

  No response pleases me more. And my guess is that, if these readers don’t fish, they have a similar passion. Gardening, hiking, birding, banjo playing, woodworking, cooking. They know what it’s like to build your life around an avocation, and how, if you do, you can find a world of interest, solace, and delight in something that, to workaholics without interests, seems slightly loony. We speak the same language, so it’s no wonder they respond. They know a passion when they see one.

  And there are no fishing theories or innovations or discoveries cluttering up these pages. I sometimes wish there were—wish I had invented a new fly or a revolutionary casting technique—but the only thing I’ve ever contributed to the art of angling is a change in vocabulary.

  “I’ve caught five fish,” I used to say, when I got home from a trip. But then I realized caught hardly does the experience justice. What about the fish I saw rising and couldn’t fool? The fish lost while playing them? The fish glimpsed in the shallows before I scared them away? The fish my friend caught and netted? The fish—and here comes my favorite new fishing word—encountered.

  A simple enough change, and my friends, to keep me happy, all use the word now, finding it a much more accurate term when it comes to describing what kind of day it’s been. I’ve have mornings on the water where I’ve caught five fish and been bored; I’ve had mornings on the water where I’ve caught nothing, but encountered dozens—and it’s those days I remember with the most delight. Then, too, it’s a change in terminology that helps the fish, taking the pressure off catching them and switching it to experiencing them. Missed that strike? Don’t let it bother you, pardner. You encountered him, right?

  So, if after reading this you’re in the mood to do me a favor, switch the words yourself. Don’t catch fish anymore; encounter them.

  When authors reread books they’ve written in the past they find themes and passages they would emphasize and themes and passages they would de-emphasize, and this is a natural part of my reaction to having these back in print: wishing I had done certain things differently.

  The last chapter of Upland Stream is
called “Why Fish.” I put Geography as the first reason—something of a surprise then, and something (though I still love to explore) I would now rank second or third. What should be number one is Water, or rather, Watery Beauty, since this more than anything is the reason I fish.

  I love everything connected with water . . . love to drink it, love to swim in it, love to skim pebbles across it, love to dip my toes in, love watching surf, love watching whitecaps, love baths, love showers, love the way watery surfaces reflect light or pull it in, with a thousand different variations I never get tired of witnessing. And while, like an art lover strolling through a gallery, I could indulge myself in much of this merely by sitting down near a river and staring, it wouldn’t be the same.

  Fishing—having a mission; asking the natural world specific questions; getting out in it under all kinds of circumstances; making it the background for a quest—serves as the entre into a world of astonishing beauty and richness, bringing it alive in a way no passive connoisseur could experience. Rivers are beautiful without my standing in the middle of one, but the only reason I ever stand in the middle of one is to cast to a rising fish.

  (I loved, as a kid, the half-rhyme of Walter with water. “Cool clear Wal-ter,” my friends would sing, and even now a letter will occasionally arrive with the “l” left out, so it’s addressed to Water Wetherell.)

  I’d list another reason just under it: Things Happen. I’m one of those novelists who leads a quiet, solitary life; I’ve learned over the years that this is what my work requires. There are days, particularly in winter, when I don’t talk to another human being other than my wife, and, if she’s working late, not even her; the only time I go outside is for short snowshoe hikes through our meadow or hit-and-run raids on the post office.

  I make up for this in fishing season. Things happen when I fish that don’t necessarily involve fish; I get at the world and the world gets at me.