example

There are plenty of sports out there that will get you up and out, and some that will keep you inside as well. There’s bowling, darts and pool for the indoor crowd. If you’re more of an outdoorsy sort you can climb mountains, play rugby or go hunting. Motorheads have auto racing, snowmobiling and jet skiing. There are even indoor-outdoor sports like basketball and tennis. In short, there’s a sport for you no matter what your fancy. I have friends in the Special Olympics and friends who play wheel chair rugby, so there really is no excuse not to do something. I myself have quite a few sports I enjoy, but my favorite is a borderline sport, not one that requires pads or training and one you’re never too old or young for. I like fishing. There are different types of fishing, fresh water, salt water, even frozen water. You can fly fish, troll, surf cast or just use worms and bobbers. Fishing is an excuse to go someplace quiet and just be, or it can be a group activity involving beer and boats. Here are a few examples of fishing trips I have enjoyed.
My friend Alex had a twelve foot homemade boat with a twenty-five horse Nissan outboard. I knew how hard it was to get parts in St. Lucia so I had shipped down a lower unit a few months before when I found it in Florida (Nissans aren’t very popular in the states) and it had cost about eighty bucks to get it to him. Of course for the ten days I was down there we fished all but one, and caught more Barracuda than I thought possible. As a thank you for the parts, Alex and his father fed us breakfast and dinner each evening, and showed us places very few people have ever seen. We saw St.Lucian mountain men, used a zipline in the rainforest and climbed the Pitons. We had the best vacation anyone could ever ask for, and my wife even discovered she liked fishing or at least being on the boat.)
My brother lives in Massachusetts and is able to fish more than I because he lives around Gloucester, where the lakes hardly ever freeze completely. Once in a while I visit him and we fish the surf with bloodworms, hauling in Stripers and chucking them back. The water is warm there, and shallow and sandy so you can wade out twenty or thirty feet and still be knee-deep. The moon was out and we had caught quite a few fish, small-talking our way to a larger thing, something he wanted to say or ask. My wife had recently passed away and we talked about loneliness and how to fill the void and I still couldn’t figure what he was getting at. I finally said something to the effect that I was fairly thick and couldn’t understand what he was getting at. I remember the Hollywood timing when he simply said “I’m gay” just as his reel sang out with a fish. I’d like to tell you it was the biggest fish either one of us had caught and it was glowing with a golden light, but it was just a fish.
In Columbia Falls there’s a big old camp that was once Arthur Godfrey’s, but is now owned by the Downeast Salmon Federation. If those walls could talk they’d cough and mutter. Once upon a time Ted Williams fished there with Jackie Gleason. That’s in the logbook. We usually go two or three times a year and do some serious fly-fishing. Last summer there was a visitor who came down to check on his eel traps. I went over and struck up a conversation and found he was a Maine Guide and specialized in fishing trips on the river, having lived here all his life. I told him I’d like to hire him for a day to point out my family’s old camps, I remember them from when I was young but they got sold a long time ago. All but one he said. Turns out he was my cousin Dean I hadn’t seen since I was about five. Dwayne at the Downeast Salmon Federation had told him I was there when Dean asked who was using the camp. For her birthday my mother got copies of pictures from her youth to her twenties. She cried tears of joy and we visited some graves afterwards.
Some people say fishing is a Zen experience. That is a fact, when you fish you aren’t anything other than a man holding a stick hoping food will come to you. But fishing is also Gestalt. Consider the scenarios described and decide if the wonderful results are the result of fishing or part of fishing. A man holding a stick can have more happen to him than a shot at dinner. Because you go places and meet people you may not otherwise, fishing becomes a door to a wonderful world of opportunity. Or a darn good chance for a good nap.