Connections

I think I've had something of an epiphany. I've realized - at least I think I've realized - why I've maintained for nearly two years, a blog that few people read, and fewer still would consider of any genuine value. The Rusty Spinner isn't particularly informative. My readers won't learn much about equipment, casting, tying or conservation. Not here. The Rusty Spinner is hardly a money making proposition, and I'm not one of those fortunate few bloggers who are sent the newest products to test and review. Any motivation I have, to do whatever it is I do here, is entirely intrinsic.

So what precisely is my motivation?

The simple fact is that I like to talk fishing, even when I cannot be sure that someone is listening - or reading as it were. I like to tell a story. I like to play with words and manipulate language. I enjoy the act of creation; to watch as I give shape to an idea. To steal a phrase from Whitman, moving my hands across the keyboard is, "To indeed be a god."

And perhaps this is the connection. Perhaps this is why I am both a blogger and a fly fisherman (although always a bug chucker first). As a fly flinger and perhaps even as a writer, I have an opportunity to bring together form, function and style, and sometimes - I think with a little help from both God and nature - to create something beautiful.

Whether it be in the flies I tie, my fumbling cast, or the knots I hastily assemble at the height of a hatch, there is a beauty in all these things. I suppose my flies must appear amateurish when juxtaposed with the creations of more talented tyers. My cast won't win any competitions, but every year I do the job a little better than I did the previous season. I'm a fine tyer of complicated knots, but even so they'll occasionally come undone and pigtail at the most inopportune times.      

But these hurdles and trifling disappointments are of little consequence. Fly fishing and writing about fly fishing  each provide me with a satisfaction I have never experienced in another endeavor. When I am fishing or writing, I am involved. I am invested. I am not concerned with the product; instead I focus on the process.

Once again to steal from Uncle Walt ... "I exist as I am [and] that is enough."