BIG SKY, Mont. _ There had to be a little magic in play that rainy September day on the Gallatin River when I first felt the fly line arc behind me just right and then sail back as if in slow motion. Sailing, sailing _ out over the river to deposit my fly precisely at the top of a riffle where we'd seen a trout jump moments earlier.
It was my first time fly-fishing, and I was learning from a pro named Rick Fancher, with Gallatin River Guides.
I'm no athlete. I've never hit a baseball out of the park or thrown a winning touchdown. But while those things might bring crowds to their feet, this felt like a little bit of poetry being read quietly in the woods.
I had totally expected to be a klutz at this.
Once I caught on to the arm motion, the softly buzzing "whoo, whoo" of the rhythmically swirling fly line was a soothing complement to the constant "krishhh" of the wild river that swirled around my wader-clad ankles. By day's end, the ending line of "A River Runs Through It," Norman Maclean's autobiographical paean to Montana and fly-fishing, started to take on new meaning to me.
"I am haunted by waters," Maclean wrote.
There's just some quiet bliss out there.
