The River Why

I stayed up till 3am last night so I could finish David James Duncan’s The River Why. It took me the first 55 pages to get into it, but starting on page 56, I was hooked until the end. For those of you who don’t know anything about the book, the main character is Gus Orviston, whose mother (Ma) and father (H20) are both incredibly famous and gifted fishermen (though most likely insane as well). Gus’ life consists of fishing, fishing and more fishing. His ‘Ideal Schedule’ would include 14.5 hours of fishing per day. Where I began to get ‘hooked’ into the book is when Gus gets himself a nice little cabin on the Tamanawis and begins his solitary journey into the world of a fisherman/hermit.

Duncan’s prose is absolutely hilarious and Gus’ meanderings through fishing, religion and…well, mainly fishing are one of a kind. However, Gus begins to become numb to his lifestyle, numb to the world and through a dramatic series of events that involved a late-night fishing trip, a floating corpse named Abe, the fog and a amateur-fisherman/philosopher named Titus, Gus begins to experience life, abundant life. While Gus leaves his family in suburban Portland for the solitary life of the fisherman, he realizes more than anything else what he wants is community, companionship, meaning, friendship and, of course, love.

The transformation that occurs in Gus is intoxicating and you feel as though you are right there with him, on the vision quest, on the journey through becoming the person, the man that he wants to become. Through his transformation and journey, the reader is taken along on a spiritual journey with Gus as well - a journey whose parallels with fishing are very interesting. One of my favorite pasages in the book (and there are many) is when Titus and Gus are philosophizing…

Gus: "What’s to love? Where is the Whopper? Or the soul that jumps in the living river - where is it? And where are these sages and buddhas holing up, now that we really need them?"

Titus: "Would you know one if you met one? Have you even looked? How hard did you look? How easy should they be to find? … Look, Gus: why can’t a duffer like me catch fish? Isn’t the answer obvious? Isn’t it because at my present level of skill the fish would have to be so damned dumb and easily duped and utterly unelusive that they wouldn’t be worth catching? How much more elusive should a thing so wondrous as the soul be? It’s not a hatchery trout! And are you sure it’s never flashed inside you? What was it in you that loved to watch Thomas Bigeater fish? What healed you and made you happy the night you remembered Bill Bob’s pine knot and our elusive twins? What nearly jumped out of your rib cage and ravaged your brain the day you met the elusive Eddy?

"Fisherman should be the easiest of men to convince to commence the search for the soul, because fishing is nothing but the pursuit of the elusive. Fish invisible to laymen like me are visible to anglers like you by a hundred subtle signs. how can you be so sagacious and patient in seeking fish, and so hasty and thick as to write off your soul because you can’t see it?" (178-179)

And with that, Gus begins his search for the elusive, his search for the answer to the river’s "Why?" If you can get through the first 50 pages (which are really funny - I just was struggling a bit), you’ll love this book. And if you are at all interested in fishing (especially fly-fishing) then this book is a must-read. Sarah and I keep talking about moving out West - who knows where, but we’ve liked Idaho & Montana, and Colorado is also appealing (though neither of us has spent a significant amount of time there).

I have a tendency to say I want to do things, get real worked up, and then not really go through with it…but fly-fishing is something that I would love to get into one day. I’ve only been fly-fishing once but it was in a little creek in Sun Valley, ID and I absolutely loved the experience. There was just something about standing out in the creek…casting and casting and just doing that monotonous but peace-creating motion and being out in nature. Plus, I got 5 small fish that day as well - my first and only time fly-fishing. There is something spiritual about fishing - not something that I could put my finger on, having only had a limited experience to it - but this book points at some of the ways that fishing and spirituality meet and play with one another.