Logan River, Utah
Gallery
I did something I have never done this year. I fished the same river through 4 seasons. It was many things to me. I was humbled to be learning this hobby and to experience the tremendous tug of the current. I was ever aware of my own limitations as I waded into ice cold water in zero degree temperatures with snow falling all around. I learned patience and acceptance as I unravelled my hook from endless snags of bushes and branches. Many days I caught more of these than I did fish. I have fallen into the river with water rushing over my waders enough to be extra cautious when I fish alone and very grateful for company to keep me from being taken downstream.
I spend the weekend outdoors, and I am given the momentum to float through the oncoming work week. Not to say that I am coping, necessarily, but that I am sincerely overflowing with happiness in these moments, and I get to take that home with me. How is this so?
The author is obsessed with the notion of 'quality'. Not as a range between something of good or bad quality, but as an explanation of that which is indefinable and inherent in the universe. We can't touch it intellectually, but we are in it and we feel it. It is transcendent and beyond the realms of reason and positivism.
-Grasshopper
Gallery
I did something I have never done this year. I fished the same river through 4 seasons. It was many things to me. I was humbled to be learning this hobby and to experience the tremendous tug of the current. I was ever aware of my own limitations as I waded into ice cold water in zero degree temperatures with snow falling all around. I learned patience and acceptance as I unravelled my hook from endless snags of bushes and branches. Many days I caught more of these than I did fish. I have fallen into the river with water rushing over my waders enough to be extra cautious when I fish alone and very grateful for company to keep me from being taken downstream.
I spend the weekend outdoors, and I am given the momentum to float through the oncoming work week. Not to say that I am coping, necessarily, but that I am sincerely overflowing with happiness in these moments, and I get to take that home with me. How is this so?
Most of what I have 'learned' is tough to put to words.
I have just finished reading Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Well, 'finished' is too finite a word. I will undoubtedly revisit this book, and it would take great focus to fully realize its complexities. Even then, realizing and holding the concepts would be an utterly elusive task. I think that this is the way it was intended.
The author is obsessed with the notion of 'quality'. Not as a range between something of good or bad quality, but as an explanation of that which is indefinable and inherent in the universe. We can't touch it intellectually, but we are in it and we feel it. It is transcendent and beyond the realms of reason and positivism.
The beauty of this concept of quality, of the Tao, as I most closely relate to it, lies in its indefinability. I do not 'get it'. I do not understand the river. Yes, the river is at least attached to a physical explanation. I hear it, feel it, smell it, see it, and taste it on occasion. But it’s more than physical, because I carry it with me. The river runs deeper than its own waters.
-Grasshopper
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