Drifting into Darien: A Personal and Natural History of the Altamaha River

Chapter 11: Night Fishing with the Senator

chapter 11 Night Fishing with the Senator Any place can be deep and far away, but few are deeper and farther than the wild country of the lower Altamaha. Everything here was created on a grand scale. At its mouth, the Altamaha’s flood plain is five miles wide. It cleaves into four distributaries—called rivers too, each voluminous, startling in capacity—that empty from the continent one-third of Georgia’s water. The four channels (Darien, Butler, Champney, and Altamaha) wash through salt marsh and old cypress, unbraiding into creeks that swell with eight-foot tides and when they drain become long limbs of black mud. The mud seems alive. It bubbles and brews. Here land and water are in constant discourse. Here eagles construct their haphazard aeries. There is a fish to match the spirit of a water body. To rival the Altamaha delta a fish must be tigerish and fierce and untended. Big things live in big water. Here are the catfish. And not just any old catfish. I am night fishing with my state senator, who is Republican. I am Democrat if anything, or maybe Progressive Socialist Green. My history with my senator has not been placid. We have been friends a long time now, but that doesn’t stop us from arguing. We have more than once entered the arena of political debate with crests cocked and spurs distended, and have flown at each other. This law or that. This amendment or that. This right or that. My senator argues that poor people who can’t afford more than a quarter-acre of land should be able to install a septic system. I believe he’s using a democratic argument to further a right-wing cause, 189 night fishing with the senator which is more development. I argue pollution and quality of life: Why would people want to live so close? Why should the earth bear this burden? He wants to know what harm would be done to mine the downed cypress and longleaf, lost during the rafting days and preserved underwater in the Altamaha. I say, why do we have to take everything? Why can’t some things be left alone? Why can’t the fish keep those logs? Wouldn’t to take them be stealing? Despite our disagreements, we are bound in a tentative alliance, a wavering but undeniable friendship. In some ways we’re like siblings. Blond and boyish, Tommie Williams is a good politician, and even if he doesn’t vote my way, he listens. Tonight, Dorset Hurley is our guide. He’s a strong, lean biologist whose angular face is softened and made mobile by kindness, at the eyes and mouth, and by a freshly graying beard. He reminds me of apples, because he looks so healthy and because of his name—Dorset Golden is one of the two key apple varieties that produce in subtropical southern Georgia. The senator has won this fishing trip at a fundraiser and has invited me along. When Dorset meets us at Champney, a landing near Darien, at 5:00 p.m., he doesn’t say much, but you can tell a lot about a person from his or her boat, and his Carolina Skiff is whitewashed and spotless, organized, nothing out of place. I don’t trust just any guide in the wild, but I know immediately that Dorset won’t get into any trouble he can’t get out of. And for some reason I think that if I get in a boat that’s scrubbed clean, there’s a good chance I’ll come back alive. As we motor upriver, Dorset names landmarks, the wind snatching words from his mouth and throwing pieces of them back at us: Champney River, Two Way Fish Camp, South River, Butler Island. He is taking us to his sacred hole. We’ll try for some of the big flatheads , he says, but for sure we’ll catch channels. 190 elements State land, wildlife management area, Dorset points out. Lot of turkey. The senator is behind me and can’t hear what Dorset is saying . I turn around and repeat everything verbatim to the senator. I remember once sitting in the senator’s office in Atlanta, door closed, hollering at him about the importance of setbacks on trout streams (a law that did not pass). I’m the environmentalist, but the senator loves to...