Fly-fishing was my first love. It seemed that my life would be completed, or almost complete, if I was able to fish the places that were featured in popular fishing magazines of the time. I wanted to cast a deceiver like Lefty Kreh and double-haul in the face of a Patagonian breeze like Joe Brooks.
As a fishing journalist, I was able to fulfill many such dreams: Christmas Island bonefish on Christmas Day, Atlantic salmon in the aquamarine waters of Iceland’s Midjfardara, tarpon at sunrise in the Marquesas. It wasn’t until the quarantine brought on by the pandemic of 2020 that the realization hit me that such lists are often esteem-boosting scorecards, the theory being that the more places you can check off, the closer you come to fly-fishing satori. If the world were to shut down, I would have to put off my trip to New Zealand in order to see the mouse hatch. I could watch big browns smashing salmon flies against the Madison, but not be there. My long-held fantasy of eating a sandwich with an onion à la Papa…
