In defense of trout bummery

Let us, for a moment, consider the trout bum. Wildly, these fanatics chase speckled fish like skirt chasers in a bar; plotting, executing, landing. He who emerges with the most or the biggest, as judged by surrounding trout bums, emerges victorious. But not so fast. It has been suggested that perhaps this glorious act -this floating of rivers and chasing of fish - is less than productive. This suggestion seems to stem from the notion that a trout bum, is truly a bum, a worthless, leeching individual. I hear this sentiment expressed, usually from the more classically productive segment of society. I feel that it is a misguided notion, one I wish to dispel with relating of another story, which only incidentally happens to be about pigs.

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Adobe Town

I wish to speak a word for Adobe Town, for wildness untouched, far from the culture of forest and stream, absolute in its freedom from the bounds of cliché and parameter. Like Thoreau, I wish to make an extreme statement and in doing so, be emphatic. There are enough champions of the woodlands and the mountains. Champions of the desert are rare souls. But they are there, some hidden within the folds of sandstone, some shouting from its carved pinnacles. In his essay “Nature,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of the woods as the great harmonizer. “In the woods we return to reason and faith,” he wrote. “There I feel that nothing can befall me in life— no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. … I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part of particle of God.” The woods have been long settled, their wilds subdued and tempered, their ability to strip us of civilization suppressed if not gone in places. Yes, they still heal and renew. But they do not spark the primal soul within us. In the desert, we begin to remember those things.

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The tale of the crossbill and the conifer

This particular species holds a unique niche, demonstrating interconnectedness we rarely think about, mainly that everything is as it is for a reason. Design in the natural world is not random, but rather quite purposeful – pull one string and the whole thing comes to life. Cut one, and it loses an arm or a leg. Cut too many and it all falls apart. It all seems to be a relatively obvious observation, but start thinking along those terms and birds are suddenly no longer just vehicles of poop, waiting for an open windshield. It’s a tricky road to walk, let me tell you.

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