Going Native

EXPLORATION Going Native Tim Poland Twice a year I dump my fly fishing gear in the trunk of my car and travel north from the New River Valley to spend a few days pestering native brook trout in the cold, clear, gradient streams of Shenandoah National Park. I drive hundreds of miles and spend hundreds of dollars on food and lodging, not to mention snazzy fishing gear at the local fly shop, all for the pleasure of catching a fish that averages about six inches in length and is, to my eye, the world's most beautiful creature. Why? The radiantbrilliance of a brook trout's ivory-trimmed, orange belly? The peaceful beauty of ancient, wooded mountains? The dark glow in the eye of a passing white-tail doe? The temporary hiatus from a fundamentally fatuous, mean-spirited, and nasty human world? Any one of these reasons is enough to justify the jaunt. But for lunatic fishers like me, it's more than that. It's a question of "going native." These little fish, on whom I spend so much time, energy, thought, and money—these little brook trout belong here. They've finned these streams and pools since the Ice Age, their present lives flowing down a continuum from an ancient past. Brook trout in my part of the country differ, in this respect, from even their wildest trout relations, who trace their heritage back no more than a couple of generations to state-run fish hatcheries, where their ancestors were raised on trout chow and from which they were scooped up and dumped by the truckload into streams and lakes. But when I drift my fly over these small native fish, I fish back through time, earnestly searching out a brief link with something authentic, indigenous. Recently, after a week of flailing my fly rod over my favorite Shenandoah streams, I dumped my gear back into the trunk and headed home. To avoid the psychotic truck traffic on Interstate 81, 1 opted for the slower pace of Route 42 through the rolling farm country of the Shenandoah Valley. Yes—the scenic route. Relaxing behind the wheel, not a truck in sight, I recalled that my grandmother in Ohio, where I grew up, once told me her grandparents were buried somewhere in this region. I had filed away what information she had given mebetween the pages ofmy road atlas,just in case I was ever up this way and might be interested enough to visit the 50 place. Well, I was "up this way" and, for the moment, I was "interested." Armed with the scrap of note paper on which I'd scrawled the names of a town, a cemetery, and two people, I took a detour to Sangerville, Virginia, and the little cemetery at the Church of the Brethren. Clutching my wrinkled piece of paper, I wandered among the headstones, old and new, looking for a match to the scribbled names I carried: Louis William Maubrey; Sarah Francis Clatterbaugh. My great-great grandparents. My people. I found it oddly intriguing to be where I apparently had people—if I could find them, that is. As I searched, I quickly realized the little graveyard was organized into distinct family plots—Bucks and Zimmermans and Karicofes and others. Not all that many different names, really. It appeared that folks stayed together and stayed put around here. But among them I couldn't seem to find the names on my piece of paper. As I was about to chuck it in, a large headstone in one of these family plots caught my eye. Clatterbaugh. How could I have missed such a name? Scanning the group of grave markers, I found her— Sarah Maubrey, my great-great grandmother. Born: 1836; Died: . . .? I couldn't tell. Her headstone had sunken too far into the earth for me to read the death date. I hooked my forefinger and gouged about an inch of dirt from the base of the stone. Died: 1918. Who was this woman? The fact was, I had no idea. About all I could safely say I knew about Sarah Maubrey was that she was probably quite glad to marry Louis...