Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/641958
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 5 5 I f you live long enough, you're most likely going to die. And evidently, I had been living longer and pushing the limits farther than I realized. It had been five months—five long and interminable months— since I had last fished the Watauga. Twice during that period I had struggled, alone and damaged, down to the river's edge, pausing there below the Hunter Bridge for a few stolen moments of blissful diversion while on my way to see the cardiologist as he tried to determine just how much of my mangled heart I still had left following my sudden and unexpected detour out to the edges of the Infinite. On one of those wistful diversions, I had watched longingly from shore as a solitary fly fisherman out in the middle of the river worked what I considered to be my run, there where the old snag used to lie buried in the streambed, back before the big flood took it away. I knew every bump and tick and swirling hydraulic that spun and twisted around and beneath that snag, and all the secret places the trout preferred. It had been good watching the stranger's fly line as it elegantly scribed the winter air—cold, grey, bone- and heart-chilling air that I had been emphatically warned by the doctors to avoid. But I couldn't resist watching as the stranger did what I wondered if I would ever be able to do again. I was late getting to the cardiologist's office that day. And the results from his most recent tests weren't all that good. But three months later I had another echocardiogram, and this time things had improved considerably. Enough, at least, for me to keep the only real promise I have ever made to myself. Y ou see, the last fish I had caught, just a few days before that random blockage had lodged stubbornly in my left anterior- It certainly wasn't the biggest fish he ever caught. But none has ever been more significant. he first trout the author caught following his journey to the edge came from the Hunter Pool on Tennessee's Watauga River (below). T Michael Altizer a m b l i n g s R photograph by alan altizer THe HunTeR Pool by Michael altizer