The Promise of Adventure

 If you’ve read the title that means you’re already familiar with my favorite word in the English language: ADVENTURE. Yes, it’s a word that’s often overused and seen by many as a cliché, but for me it’ll always have an underlying electricity to it; I’m drawn to it; it pops out at me whenever I see it. Many of my favorite stories in film and literature involve characters shaking off the banality of life and embracing adventure, whether it be Indiana Jones hopping on a Pan Am flight for Nepal to begin his search for the Lost Ark, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson speeding through the streets of London towards a crime scene in a single horse brougham carriage, or Dumas’s musketeers galloping on horseback all over France to save the kingdom. The anticipation of adventure, of unknown and potentially limitless possibilities is something that has never failed to excite me in narrative, but there was a time when I doubted that I would ever actually experience it in my life.  Then came my thirties.

"It's not the years...It's the mileage."

I often joke (actually, half-joke) that I basically modeled my adult life after Indiana Jones. Indy and I are a lot alike—except for the PhD—and the whole archeology thing—and the womanizing—and I haven’t killed a Nazi—yet. But other than that, we’re fairly similar; we’re both educators and we both lead double lives split between the formally dressed, professional facade and the never ending desire to break away from it and seek out adventure. He explores ancient ruins with a whip and a revolver, I explore streams with a fly rod and net. Same thing, sort of.

Though I’m not getting into a brougham or a biplane, I still experience that palpable excitement of the “and off we go'' stage every time I shift my vehicle into gear at 3:15am to head out into nature and explore a wild trout stream. The long drive in the dark on nearly empty highways only serves to build on the sense of an unknown outcome, which is at the heart of every adventure. There’s no way to know for sure what’s waiting out there on the water and while the worst part of the day may be losing a decent fish or not netting anything at all, it could also be a wildlife encounter or other mishap that I won’t walk away from; on the other hand the best part of the day could be landing a handful or solid trout or it could be fighting and landing the one I’ll vividly remember forever. The absence of guarantees in fly fishing might be off-putting for some, but it’s inextricable from the basic idea of an adventure; surety of success would destroy the experience.

"That belongs in a (stream)!"

While some may view it as childish, I love to keep my favorite adventure stories in mind when I’m fly fishing. It helps maintain the wonder and excitement of the moment to think that I’m not just watching or reading about other people’s tales of exploration, discovery, and danger, but that I’m out there experiencing my own. Fly fishing may not be about unearthing priceless artifacts, solving mysteries, or saving a kingdom, but when I manage to bring a beautiful gem of a wild trout out of the depths of a stream after cracking the code of what it was feeding on and then safely release it for future generations to enjoy, it feels pretty damn close.