Zoro's Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods

Fishing

FISHING The river rises in a deep cleft or gorge in the mountains, the scenery of which is of the wildest and ruggedest character. For a mile or more there isbarely room for the river at the bottom of the chasm. On either hand the mountains, interrupted by shelving, overhanging precipices,rise abruptly to a great height. JOHN BURROUGHS Preface to Pepacton awake from a sound spring sleep to the noise of knocking at my cabin door. It's still dark outside. In my half-conscious state, my mind immediately leaps to Poe's poem "The Raven": "While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, / As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door/' I am slow to move, and the knocking comes again before I pull myself out of bed and ramble over cold wood floors to the door. Opening it, I see Horace Pace standingout in the dooryard. "I'm goin' down to the rivertofish. Thought you might want to come along," is allhe says, slightly smiling . My mind still moving slowly,I try to make sense of the situation in order to come up with some sort of intelligent response. All I am able to mutter is: "Fish?" My mind finally engaging, I remember that I was going to spend the dayworking on the little barn I'm building on the east side of the field, and check the bees— do a first housecleaning after a long winter. "Sure," I say, still half asleepand without thinking, with Horace still standing in the doorway waiting for my response. "Give me a minute and let me get on some clothes." Horace Pace lives in Saluda and enjoys a healthy reputation as a consummate woodsman. For the past three years he has been teaching me to fish for trout in the Green River. This isn't the first time he has shown up unexpectedly at my door before dawn. Because he likes to fish down in what the locals refer to as Rocky Mountain Cove—maybe the roughest part of the whole river —he likes to go with a partner in case something should go wrong. On days when he can't get anyone else to go, he comes by here on his way down to the end of the road atJohnson's Pond, where he parks his truck and 85£*a^ where there is an old logging road, downhill, that gives easy access to the river. During the first year of my new life here in the woods, I was an aggressive student, seeking out those who could teach me the skills of self-sufficiency. Needing some kind of supplement to my mostly vegetarian diet, and with the river nearby, I thought of fish as an obvious answer. When I askedfolks in town who would be the best person from whom to learn tofish,the immediate response was: Horace Pace. I eventually met Horace one day over at Mac's place, where he was high up in a tulip poplar trimming out limbs that were hanging over the house. After he hadfinishedpruning the tree and had returned to the ground, I helped him drag the branches into the woods—a good icebreaker for questions I had about fishing the Green River. He was quick to pick up the conversation and was off and running on the subject , which we continued over iced tea on the McHughs' back porch. It wasn't much more than a couple of weeks before Horace made his first appearance at my cabin door—much like this morning, unannounced and before daylight. Those first trips to the river to fish for trout were little more than a comedy of errors. While Ihad done a minimal amount of pond, lake, and even ocean fishing, I was a true greenhorn on rivers, and especially on such a wild white-water river as the Green roaring through Rocky Mountain Cove with a vengeance. At the end of those early trips, I would usually emerge from the river and the woods wet and covered in loamy dirt and leaves—looking like the legendary Green Man as recorded in Irish mythology. And rarely with any fish. I can only imagine the kinds of tales that were told in town at my expense. But learning from my mistakes, I became a better fisherman, more knowledgeable of both river and woods. In Horace Pace, I had a learned and patient teacher. It's still earlyin the spring and...