I was going to say
something about the infamous Signal meeting (Emojis! Reacting to bombings with emojis! And name calling the editor of The Atlantic “scum,” Just like high school! Like the words of Logan Roy addressing his offspring in “Succession,” these are not serious people.)
And something about Free Speech (ICE arrests a Fulbright Scholar at Tufts for co-writing an article about Palestinians! And so on.)
And attacking diversity, and law firms, medical research, eliminating international aid, attacking everything that doesn’t praise what the administration likes, having imperialistic visions...and OMG, there’s so much more.
but then I came across this:
The Nissitissit
K. Norland, 5/13
Some years ago I was fly fishing the Nissitissitt River* at the border of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. It was early summer, a soft and delicate day, the freshness of spring not yet lost, but a feeling of the languor of warmth to come. The fishing was good by my standards. Two small trout had been tricked by fur and feathers wrapped on a little hook to believe a small insect was careless enough to be their lunch. In the best fly fisher tradition I gently slipped the hook out of their jaws, an action made easier by having pinched down the barb on the hooks. It has been years since I kept and ate a trout. Indeed, I am not clear about why I fish. I do know why I am in the water. I love to wade streams through meadows and brushy places and the deep woods. I like what I see. Very much. Small sand bars where currents are slow, rocks and moving green grass in faster flow, and water roiling and boiling over stony rapids, around large rocks. The stones show texture and color, and they glint when wet with the cold clear water I have had dreams where I am a trout in this water enjoying the feel of the current as I hold station against the flow, looking at sand and rocks and gently waving long green grass underwater; sometimes with trees arching overhead. Happy dreams these; I am pleased to be a fish in my next life.
In this life I am expensively protected from the wet cold by waterproof chest high waders. I wear a vest with fishing gear and carry a long flexible rod balanced to a carefully tapered floating fly line attached to a nearly invisible leader, at whose yet further tapered end is a small creation of fur and feathers: an imitation insect designed to touch gently down on the moving stream and be carried to a waiting hungry fish. Deceived by such a perfectly cast creation the fish will strike, be hooked, and then expertly played by the angler, then he will tire until he is released from the barbless hook or quickly killed for later eating. Unfortunately for me, the fish usually ignores my offering and may smack it with his tail to show what I take as contempt.
No matter. I enjoy the day, the air, the water. But on this day I would see something I had never seen before – the disconcerting sight of a large trout, the largest trout I had ever seen in this river. In deep fast moving water it looked for all the world as if it was broken nearly in half, upright with its head facing downstream but with the center of the left side of its body missing. The rear of the body and the tail were bent at right angles to the head and white flesh showed in the gap. With no sign of blood or entrails, the fish seemed in control of itself for the brief time it took to sweep by. I thought it must have been attacked by a predator not far upstream and would soon lose its apparent control and whatever life was left. It was an unsettling experience, and I wondered a little uneasily about how big the predator might have been. There was a sizable piece of fish to be accounted for.
It took an hour or more of very pleasant and tranquil downstream wading and casting for me to forget about the trout, and as noon approached, the increasing warmth of the day made me reflective and pleasantly fatigued. This stretch of river was not deep and there was a low grassy bank at water’s edge with a few pleasantly spaced small bushes and trees. I lay down on the bank, my booted feet nearly touching a shallow rapids, and I half dozed, half daydreamed in the long grass until some instinct alerted me to a presence. I slowly rose on an elbow, and upstream, over the top of the grass, I saw movement in the water, something coming down towards me. It disappeared behind the trunk of a tree, and then behind the streamside grass, but reaching the rapids it arose and I was surprised to see a slim creature at least three feet or more tall, apparently sitting on hind legs, in profile, with a keen gaze; staring not at me but directly downstream. I did not move, nor did the animal, for what seemed a very long time. I was struck by the intensity of the creature’s gaze and elegance of form. Then it was back in the water, eyes and tip of nose showing briefly as it swam through the pool below. It was an otter, the first and only wild otter I have ever seen. I would never be sure of is mission but I choose to believe it was the predator who maimed the trout I saw earlier.
Looking at what I have written I see I have not captured what I felt about the experience. I’m not surprised. For the few seconds I spent in the company of the otter –oblivious of me so intently absorbed in its world – I saw it in a special way. I felt I briefly shared that world, but I cannot articulate that sense, even though I can recall it. After a few attempts I gave up, until I recently recalled reading Sally Carrighar, more years ago than I want to remember. I’ve always enjoyed nature writing, and have some favorites. There is a biology professor at the University of Vermont, Berndt Heinrich, that I particularly like to read. One book especially, Winter World, has given me much pleasure. He is probably the best example of what I normally choose, but he is no Sally Carrighar, nor is Sally a Berndt Heinrich, even though I believe they would each appreciate the other. Heinrich is an excellent student of animal behavior, but Carrighar inhabits the world of her subjects in a unique manner. She becomes the animal in a way no naturalist I’ve read can do. The feelings of the creature appear as she describes behavior, and this is done seamlessly; observed behavior with imagined, intuited feeling, in a way that to me is intensely real. There is not much more I can say than that, you’ll have to read her yourself if you want to know. I will conclude with a small example, In her book One Day on Teton Marsh, Ms. Carrighar has a chapter on the activities of a scud, a kind of fresh water shrimp She makes you appreciate what it feels like to be a scud. Along the way you learn a lot about how the scud lives. And then, after the scud, you can read her chapter about otters.
*The Nissitissit River is a 10.5-mile-long river in southern New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts. It is a tributary of the Nashua River, itself a tributary of the Merrimack River, which flows to the Gulf of Maine. This river is part of the Nashua River Watershed.
