I truly enjoyed fishing with Larry, but there are days when God does not like your son.
I was working for Fenwick Rod Co. at the time and had a Fenwick fly rod for bass fishing. I also had a new stainless steel thermos that I really loved. A friend of mine worked in a factory where they would dip products in thick rubber coating, and I asked him to do that to the thermos. That way, I could carry it in my aluminum canoe and it would not make noise. Plus, the stainless steel cup would not burn my lips when I went to sip my coffee. I loved that thermos. I had saved up for it.
But, as I said, there are days when God does not like your son.
We were fishing at Twin Rocks again, this time in my aluminum jon boat. Larry decided he was going to drink some coffee. When he went to open my precious thermos, it slipped out of his hands and went to the bottom of the pool. The same day, he stepped on my Fenwick rod and snapped it. And then he fell in the river, and I had to take him over to the bank and build a fire to dry off his clothes.
Well, I got through all that without killing him. We got back to the ramp and put the jon boat on the roof of my Ford. As we were driving home, Larry leaned against my shoulder. He was feeling bad so I started a little conversation with him. “Well, son,” I said, “you know, in a couple more years, you’re gonna drive this car, just like me, and you’re gonna pole the boat, just like me, and your dad is gonna sit up there and fish just like you do now.”
And he looked up at me, with those innocent eyes, and said, “Dad, does that mean I can cuss you, too?”
The years went by, and we’d go up to Twin Rocks and fish in Indian summer, those calm days in October when the trees along the Potomac were all lit up. It was a ritual for us to fish up there two or three times a year.
But then, life happens. Larry went into the Army, and he got married.
And, unfortunately, over the years, the Potomac has suffered from farming and development upstream, a lot insecticides and herbicides. Years ago, on a summer evening, millions of hatching White Miller mayflies fell to the surface where the fish gorged on them. Not anymore. We used to hear thousands of big brown toads at sunset going grah grah grah. But I haven’t heard that sound in 30 or 35 years.
Still, I continued going to Twin Rocks until I hit my 90s.
I have fished from the Amazon to Iceland, from salt flats to salmon rivers. But my favorite trip takes me to my place at Twin Rocks on an Indian summer day. I make my carp dough, my lunch and coffee – and pack some Fig Newtons for dessert – and get on the road. I get up to the pool and just sit there in the boat, and it brings back all those memories of good times with Larry.
My wife, Ev, once said to me, as I was packing my lunch: “You always go there by yourself. Why? Why not take someone with you?”
And I said, “When I’m up there by myself, I think about this place that was a secret for our son and me for so many years.” I like to go there and, even if I don’t catch fish – something that was impossible to imagine years ago – I enjoy all the memories that special place created.
It’s important that we find these special places and claim them as our own – if not in title, at least in our hearts – and that we do what we can to take care of them for the next generation.
Lefty Kreh
Cockeysville, Maryland
February 2018
Father’s Day Creek
I can hear him now: “All that for that?” I can pretty much see him, too, in his khaki trousers and white T-shirt. He’s standing in the small clearing by the honeysuckle thicket on the banks of the creek I love. My father is watching me fish in the way I have chosen to fish in the years since his death, a way that must seem odd and foolish to him: With a fly rod and tiny lures fashioned from feathers and animal hair to look like the bugs that finicky trout eat. I have been standing knee-deep in the river and casting flies for the better part of an hour. I have hooked only this one fish, and it’s small. As I play it out of the fast current in the middle of the creek, I can hear Iron Joe laugh: “Oh, boy, Danny!” I extend my wood-handle net for a trout that’s all green, yellow and white with brown spots, about 10 inches of God’s glory. I hold the trout in my hand for a moment so that Iron Joe might appreciate it on this Father’s Day, the 14th since his death in 1986. But he only laughs: “All that for that?” And when I ease the little fish back into the river, my father laughs harder, turns away, shakes his head and disappears into the woods.
***
I am the only man in the whole wide world who calls it Father’s Day Creek. You won’t find that name in any guidebook or atlas. Don’t bother Googling it. Father’s Day Creek is the alias I gave it, my way of disguising the stream to save it from an onslaught of humans with fishing rods and kayaks. I want no part of promoting the place. I just want to tell you about it because you should know that such a place exists. You will probably want to go there, especially if you enjoy fishing for trout as much as I do. But I am sworn to secrecy. I can describe the place and tell you why I like it so much. I just can’t give you the map coordinates.
I call Father’s Day Creek the Last Best Place on Earth, and if that sounds grandiose, I offer no apology, only explanation.
For the sake of sanity and soul, everyone should have a place away from The Everything Else of modern life, a spot in the outdoors that can serve as a personal sanctuary and, with a squint of your eye, provide a glimpse of the long-ago. The Last Best Place is where you would want to be if you knew the world would end tomorrow. It’s how you would want to remember life on Earth.
Don’t worry if you have not designated your Last Best Place; there’s no requirement that you do so. And unless the subject came up after a few drinks around a campfire – “So where would you like to be when the world comes to and end?” – you’ve probably never even been asked about this before.
But now that I’ve presented the idea, with the intention of telling you about Father’s Day Creek, I bet you can identify and describe your Last Best Place. I bet you know exactly what I mean – that place you visit once a year, if not physically, at least in memory, a small piece of the planet you consider your own. I’m not talking necessarily about a tourist hot spot, a spectacular canyon or mountain range in a national park. I’m talking about a more intimate place that has personal meaning – a spot beneath a tree you’ve long admired, a simple boulder along a trail with a mesmirizing view, or a quiet clearing in woods, maybe a familiar slice of lakefront, or an acre of beach you knew as a child. You don’t have to own the place – in fact, you probably don’t – but you’ve always felt a strong, oddly familiar connection to it. I’ve come to suspect that, at certain moments in life, something in the primal brain takes over and triggers a deep-rooted sensation, as if the ancestors inside us have been stirred awake by something that looks, sounds or smells familiar to them. It could be the aroma of venison cooking on an open fire. It could be the sound of wind in a treeline. It could be the sight of a rocky shore. There’s been some speculation, and even some research, about DNA holding the memories of ancestors, the idea being that we’ve inherited the effects of long-ago experiences from all those people we never knew, the ancients who rest at the roots of our family trees. Maybe something like that is at work when we visit and revisit these special places.
When I go to Father’s Day Creek, and when I’m standing in it with my fly rod, I consider it to be absolutely perfect, untouched, frozen in time – perhaps as it was in the age of the Delaware Tribe – with all the horrors of the human epoch yet to take place. No countries, no conquest, no wars, no calamity, everything as it was after the big ice receded and the trees started to grow among the boulders that the glaciers left behind.
I step through the high weeds and push through the brush along the banks