The Fishing Trip

I am not a fan of fishing. I am especially not a fan of sport fishing. In comparison there is nothing my husband loves better than spending six to eight hours floating around on the water with a fishing pole. I wanted to know what was it about fishing he enjoyed so much.

“Why do you bother when you don’t catch anything?” I had asked him one day out of curiosity.

My husband smiled and shrugged. “It’s not about the fish,” he replied cryptically.

That struck me asan odd statement. Cryptic answers always annoy me. I mean, after all it was called “fishing”. Therefore you fish. Thus I failed to comprehend the logic or the sense behind his statement.

 That all changed in the spring of 2010. My husband had purchased a new fishing license and he had found out that he could take me fishing with him for a day without having to purchase a license for me.

I was still unsure of the value of the trip as I was not a ‘sit still’ kind of person. I am notorious for being constantly in motion and restless. My brain is often described as a tree that is full of a flock of birds and they are very noisy creatures. It is a wonder I get anything done.

In any case I went along on the trip. I wore my life jacket because I was not the world’s best swimmer. Soon my husband and I were in his little boat and motoring out to the middle of the reservoir. I guess the difference between a lake and a reservoir is that one is man made and the other is Mother Nature made.

I had taken a book along with me to read as I expected to be bored. I have said in the past I was not much into fishing especially if I was not catching anything. My husband kindly baited my hook with a live minnow to attract the bigger fish with its death throes. There are few things I am squeamish about. This was not one of them. The reason I didn’t do it myself was simply because I had never done it before and I didn’t want to rock the boat chasing a minnow around the bottom.

As time passed something became very clear to me. Gradually I began to relax. The constant chatter in my head had dropped to a soft murmur. Instead of my mind constantly jumping form one topic to the next my mind went ‘still’. My body relaxed. The only sounds I heard were the breeze, the rippling of the water and the faint calls of birds in the trees on the shore. I settled into a peaceful state.

After nine hours with my husband during which we spoke little to each other, I had the most wonderful meditative experience I could imagine. We barely spoke the entire time but the silence was never uncomfortable. I was not aware of the passage of time. I never took out the book I had brought with me.

Finally my husband decided we were done for the day. The breeze and the currents had dragged the little boat most of the way across the reservoir. I didn’t catch any fish but I did manage to cruelly drown some defenseless minnows.

I helped my husband unpack and load the truck up with the boat and we were on our way home. My husband glanced over at me and smiled.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Sorry for what?” I asked puzzled.

“You didn’t catch anything,” he said.

I smiled and relaxed in my seat for the drive home. “That’s okay,” I said. “It’s like you said. It’s not about the fish.”