- Back Cast: Fly-Fishing and Other Such Matters by Jeff Metcalf
In one of this collection's earlier essays, "Hooked," Jeff Metcalf humorously mentions that, "In a moment of absolute weakness, I made a tremendous mistake, one that I have paid for all of my life. I decided to give fly-fishing a go" (10-11). While that type of humor will be ingratiating to many an angler or reader of western literature, the collection is, of course, not simply about fishing. In Back [End Page 220] Cast: Fly-Fishing and Other Such Matters, Metcalf weaves stories that will be generally relatable to anglers and readers of western outdoors literature; however, what makes this collection unique is the way it tackles masculinity and male vulnerability in the face of a dire health diagnosis.
Throughout the thirty-two short essays arranged around flyfishing the American West (predominantly Utah and Idaho), Metcalf grapples with the turbulence prostate cancer has brought into his life. For instance, the first essay, "Bone Deep," focuses on a retreat for men with cancer, and the final essay, "The Unspoken," grapples with telling his closest fishing buddy about a worsening prognosis. In "Bone Deep" Metcalf tells of "Reel Recovery," a program where seventeen men are brought together "based on the simple idea that men, unlike women, need to learn how to talk about their own health issues. And men need to talk with each other" (1). Metcalf attends, believing he has signed up as a volunteer fishing guide but instead is enrolled as a participant. After Ed, "a tree trunk of a man even with his cancer," opens up about the pain he believes he has caused his family, Metcalf notes, "his laying out of his darkest and most intimate secrets in front of a group of strangers, was perhaps one of the bravest and most generous displays I have ever witnessed" (4-5). Additionally, in the essay "Shark," fighting a mako shark on a fly rod becomes a way for the author to relate the fear, danger, and viciousness of a life fighting cancer by using classic descriptions of sharks to describe the disease. Throughout the collection cancer comes up again and again, making it a particularly interesting example of when writing about fly-fishing is a conduit to writing about something else. Rather than just about fishing, the collection is overall about coping, about brotherhood, about masculinity, and about finding meaning in the face of one's own mortality.
There are moments of levity, though, and the essays are not all about death and loss and fear. "Mermaid," for instance, involves an unexpected sexual liaison. The thrust of the essay entails the author coming upon a naked woman sitting in a lawn chair in a trout stream. In a humorous way, the scene plays out like a more mature, adult version of when Gus Orviston encounters Eddy for the [End Page 221] first time in David James Duncan's The River Why. In "Dick Cheney, Dick," Metcalf writes of an encounter with Vice President Dick Cheney and his Navy SEAL entourage on Idaho's Snake River, ultimately concluding that Cheney's conduct on the water wouldn't even measure up to the rules of Metcalf's second grade recess.
Moreover, while never overly preachy, essays like "The Last Steel-head" do carry environmental commentary on the historic abuses the West has levied against both rivers and their inhabitants. Metcalf writes, "It is difficult now to reconcile the stories I have heard from old-timers with what I see during steelhead season. We make sloppy the value of the wild" (75), before listing the sheer number of dams steelhead have to navigate on their journey up the Salmon River to spawn. "Lay Me Down" discusses climate change through the lens of knowing a river system and making sense of a complex global crisis in the context of what a fly fisher is able to personally observe.
Ultimately, this easy-to-read collection of brief essays is suited...