Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/433799
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 1 7 6 sandwich or a handful of cookies. So I walked off into the forest and found a spot where I could sit with my back against an ancient cedar while Billy began swinging his line. It was a perfect place to relax, with soft green moss to cushion my tailbone and sunshine drifting down through the overhead limbs, and I couldn't help but enjoy the absolute peace of the moment, along with the subtle music of the river. Ten years later I honestly don't remember if Billy shouted just before I turned my head, or if I turned my head just before he shouted, but in one of the more magical moments of my life, I happened to be looking back through a picture frame of cedar boughs as a 25-pound steelhead shot up from the pool's icy depths— Billy's fly in its mouth—and launched itself into a golden shaft of sunlight. Gravity would suggest otherwise, but that fish seemed to hang there in the light for far longer than I had any right to expect, throwing little jewels of spray, creating a prismatic halo—a rainbow aura—that still, to this day, makes me shake my head in wonder. It was so surprising—so amazing—that for a second I wasn't sure it was real. Real it was, though, and Billy actually landed that fish. Sometimes the Good Lord decides to smile down on us. Which, in retrospect, is why I was so touched by Kian's comment on the way to school. The veil is starting to lift for my son, who has the potential to be far smarter and kinder and wiser than I'll ever be. He's seeing that there's more to angling than the fish we catch; he's starting to notice the gifts that come with wading deep and casting a line upon pure mountain water. As Henry David Thoreau said all those years ago, "Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after." It doesn't sound like Kian is going to have that problem.