An Angler Meditates On Fly Casting

The sun reflected off the lawn as if it reflected off a calm trout-filled pool, or maybe that's what I imagined, because a part of me wished that, instead of going to the park to practice fly casting, I was going to a winding, country stream to fish.

But I wasn't.

In the middle of the lawn, two people lay on blankets and sunbathed. On the far end, a blond-haired woman played soccer with a boy and girl. I walked across the lawn, grateful to live so close to an almost perfect place to practice my long-distance fly casting techniques.

I set up my fly rod and walked off about a hundred feet of line. I walked back my to rod, and cast. My tight loops unrolled back and forth. Pleased, I lowered my rod and wondered, how far will I cast today? A hundred feet, as I did yesterday? Or will I barely break ninety?

I retrieved my line, then again false cast.
My line hit the rod.
Damn! I said to myself. Instead of moving straight, my rod hand must've curved downward.
Why is it after a year of trials and tribulations, after coming to believe I've finally perfected my casting form, new defects spring up?

Or was this defect really here all along?

Calm down. If I've learned anything from casting, haven't I learned that my defects are signs I must continue my casting experiments and that, sooner or later, another technique will reveal itself?

I lowered my rod, watched the woman kick a red soccer ball, then thought back to when my casting form was so bad my front casts didn't even have loops, and the line therefore tipped over and dropped straight down.

Remember, I reminded myself, how four times a week for about three months I experimented with every part of my cast--stance, trajectory, follow-through--and still my line continued to drop straight down.

Didn't I get so frustrated and discouraged I almost gave up long-distance casting? But something, perhaps my fear of another failure, kept me going and forced me to improve my casting form, until finally I experimented with my back cast drift move: bringing the rod back to two o'clock so I could make a long presentation cast.

Then, almost by accident, I discovered that if I didn't pull my arm back so far, if I ended my drift move with my forearm in the one o'clock position, my rod hand would move straight during my forward cast.

And then, finally, didn't my front loops shoot out like arrows, leaving me wondering if not having a front loop had plagued me for a reason: to work on and improve all the other parts of my long-distance cast?

"Goal!" The woman yelled out.
"No, it was outside," the boy yelled.
"You can't tell from where you were."
"I can too."
"All right," the woman muttered. She looked at me and smiled.

I nodded, then told myself I'd continue my casting experiments until I found the perfect casting form.

Feeling better about myself, I cast again.
The line hit my rod.

I lowered my rod and deeply breathed. On the other end of the park a women and her a big black poodle looked at me.

I wondered what went through the poodle's mind when it watched me cast.

How could it have any idea what I was doing?

I retrieved some line, practiced for another ten minutes, then called it a day.

The next afternoon I marched back to the lawn. On my first back cast the line hit my rod. I my lay rod on the lawn and held up my forearm. I pretended to make a back cast. My hand curved down a few inches.

No wonder the fly line hit my rod.

I again pretended to make a back cast, but this time my hand stopped sooner, without going down.

Why? I wondered

Again and again I pretended, then I saw what was happening: when I didn't pull my elbow back during the back cast my hand moved straight.

Yes, that's it! During a long back cast the elbow moves back, but only because of my body's rearward rotation. I picked up my rod and cast back and forth, making sure my elbow stayed in place. My tight loops streaked over my rod tip. I had made another major casting discovery.

Again I was thankful for a casting defect.

I reeled in my line, lay down on the grass, and closed my eyes. I was comforted by the warm sun.

I wondered, are most of my casting failures behind or ahead of me? And why is casting ten feet farther so important to me? Isn't being able to cast ninety feet good enough?

Maybe my casting experiments are about something more than distance.
What?
Maybe they're really about seeing an almost perfect cast, and then coming to believe there must be an ideal casting form. If so, what's so important about that?

Is it realizing that, even though the world is often torn by chaos and disorder, it's also unified by an harmonious working order?

An order I can turn inward and use to transform myself? An order that will now give me a reason to again trust the world?

But if these forms, these ideals are so important, why are they invisible and so hard to discover?
Could it be that ideal forms by themselves are empty and meaningless?
If so, what gives them meaning?
My will to discover and emulate them?
To discover, to emulate: in the past haven't I instead tried to use my will to change things?
And wasn't failure the usual result?
No wonder I often doubted the existence of God and felt alone.
But just as I've learned that when all the parts of my cast are properly connected I'll cast a hundred feet, I've also learned that when my self is connected to an ideal--an ideal shared by others-- I'll never be alone.

Therefore, maybe my will has now grown into something else: spirituality.
And yet if it hadn't been for my failures, my loopless casts for instance, I would not have searched so long and hard for the ideal casting form.

Are my failures and spirituality linked together in some way?
And does it matter I still don't know where an ideal form comes from?
Or what will happen tomorrow?
No; because not knowing will also be my passion to find a way, an ideal, I can use to rise above a failure.

And isn't that the foundation of my spirituality, whether or not I bridge the eternal gap between my subjective mind and the objective casting form?

I opened my eyes, stared up into sky for a few minutes, then stood up and headed home.