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Keeping a Journal: What's In It for You?
By Larry Gavin |
I'll know, for example, that on the Pecos River, giant stoneflies fished in the shade take trout even during the heat of the day. But I'll also know that there's a Benedictine Monastery that has rooms for a few dollars a night right on the river, and that the truck stop in Pecos has the best enchiladas I've ever eaten, and if it's Saturday night I can go into that back ballroom of the same truck stop and enjoy the band hired for some wedding--sit in the back booth sipping a Tecate, and make guesses to myself about how long the marriage will last based on the fact that the bride has been making out with the best man for the last 15 minutes in a darkened corner and no one but me seems to notice.
Besides the practical, and after all trout fishers are not known for being practical, as anyone who owns a bamboo rod or has priced a trip to Christmas Island lately can tell you, there are other benefits.
Here's how to get started.
MATERIALS
The materials, it seems, would be pretty easy to figure out, but as a fly fisher one knows that the way something is done is as important as the results, otherwise we would all fish with worms. Let me offer some advice on this matter. I like to feel the paper. A pencil works great when the weather is dry. They are also cheap, biodegradable, and reliable. I use a Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 5/10. However, pencils are tough to use in the rain, and they fade with age.
I've stumbled on what I think is the perfect outdoor note-taking implement. I use a Fischer Space Pen. These pens have a nitrogen charged cartridge, and come in medium point that is much tougher than the fine points that are so much in fashion these days. Space Pens write upside down, in zero gravity, and under water, because the ink is under pressure and not solely dependent on the movement of a rolling ball. The ink cartridge will not freeze, so the pen works in extreme cold. Its feel, because of the medium point, is almost as satisfying as a pencil on paper. The ink won't run or fade, and the pen writes on almost any surface.
Paper is another story. Field notes need to be easily carried, so the size depends on the pockets in my vest. I like small notebooks with extra thick cardboard backing and yellow paper. "Cambridge" makes real good ones and I get mine from a local drugstore. I usually put them in a zip-lock bag so that's another size consideration. I find that the bigger my paper the bigger my thoughts.
METHODS
I begin every journal entry, like my fish-trap buddy, with facts: weather, water conditions, date, which excuse I used when I called in sick. Beginning is the most difficult part of any writing and having a "frame" to fill up--a stock beginning makes writing easier. Think of letters with Dear... or monologues: "It's been a quiet week in lake Woebegone ". All writers need a way into the writing--facts help.
Remember field notes are guides. The writer can always do more later so one wants the notes to trigger memories. What triggers memories for one person may do nothing for someone else. I find that using images sometimes works best. I'm not the artist of the century but I try to use sketches to 1) capture the energy of a scene 2) capture a scene's movement. On close-ups--images of birds, plants, or insects for example--I concentrate on markings that field guides use: mouth parts, wing shape, colors, legs, breathing and movement apparatus.
I rewrite my field notes later. I think Wordsworth said poetry was "Emotion recalled in tranquility." The same can be said for rewriting notes. A word of caution, however. Wordsworth set records for the use of the word "still" and had an unusual attraction to his sister. The rewriting of the field notes is where creativity really blossoms, and where details really get fleshed out.
WriterS also can use techniques to alter the way they observe or rewrite material. Try these for awhile:
• go overboard on detail for a few entries, forcing yourself to really see.
• write in the third person instead of "I" use "he" or "she".
• write like Hemingway. Use short direct sentences.
• get rid of forms of "be".
• write like you talk.
&Ma write about a fishing memory.
&Ma name things. Research the proper names for things and use them.
Journal writing helps me see more completely. It allows me to internalize experience and make sense of the events of the natural world and their meaning. Writing provides a cognitive context for experience and by doing so makes the experience deeper. It's like the difference between fishing a dry fly and a nymph. Both experiences are satisfying but with a dry fly one sees the fly, the fish and the take--two worlds are united in the consciousness of the observer. It seems to me, the more senses involved, and the more actively engaged the participant, the more complete the experience. Try keeping a journal for a month: you'll be hooked for life.
Larry Gavin is a freelance writer, a poet and a teacher who lives in Faribault, Minn. This article appeared in the December 1995 edition of Midwest Fly Fishing.
My brother is down the basement cursing at me. The sound of his voice is almost ghostly as it seeps through two pine doors up to where I sit at the kitchen table.
The circular fluorescent tube above my head offers a halo of terrible light. It's a flat light that forces the world into one dimension by eliminating all contrast except for an incredible glare on everything I really need to see. It was the light of choice for modern kitchens during the fifties.
My brother is down the basement tying flies for me. He's cursing me because I tossed him down the stairs and locked the door. See, I'm the big brother, five years older than him and home from college. The flies I tie look like dust bunnies; his are beautiful. My flies only catch chubs with vision problems; his catch trout--big, smart trout.
I'm figuring a couple dozen Adams and a few Tricos (after he's done shaking with rage) then I'll let him up. It's a brother thing.
Right now he's suggesting I do some things that I think are impossible. In fact, I think they defy the laws of physics. I like the laws of physics even in today's world of the Hubble space telescope, and the revelation that the universe may actually be younger than I once thought by a few billion years, a fact I find startling and somewhat less than reassuring. The laws of physics are like religion to me, my personal salvation has been that I was 'the stuff of stars." I like my universe incomprehensible in both space and time; shaving of a few billion years off the thing has me shook.
I think my brother had other plans for the evening. Here's a bit of my past.
One night in July 1988, in the gorge of the Middlebury River in Vermont, I caught a 17-inch brook trout on one of his flies; an Adams parachute size 14. The trout was feeding rhythmically next to a boulder--slipping into the current to take the emerging insects and then dropping back to slack water. Night was rushing in. I could hear music in the distance coming from a barn dance. The insistent melody of a fiddle filtered through the hills and down the valley. The air smelled of bruised ferns, fly floatant, and insect repellent. The brookie had these clearly defined halos along its side that seemed to reflect the emerging stars. I let it go.
I didn't just remember all this--my brother's profanity or the brook trout that night in Vermont. I looked both events up in my journal. Reading the Vermont pages reminded me of a lot of things I'd forgotten. I also fished the Battenkill, the Mad River and the White River that summer. There were times of no fish and time of fish in abundance.
I'm the kind of person who scoffs at the idea of keeping a diary. I did, however, keep track of my dreams for awhile in a notebook by my bed. Then I came to the pathetic realization that my dream life was just as dull as my waking life. Diaries I thought were for school girls, or worse yet, writers that thought the universe revolved around them. My opinion has changed.
Because we're both adults now, I can no longer toss my brother down the steps and lock the door until he ties me a dozen flies. Now I just ask him nicely and give him money. I also keep an outdoor journal. This is what changed my mind about the journal.
Not long ago I lived in a small (less than 500 people) town near the Minnesota River. My neighbor was a locally famous cat fisherman. He was there that summer at Big Eddie when the catfish went wild. He caught five over 25 pounds in three nights. It lived in local legend like the Musky rampage on Leach Lake, except with a less glamorous fish. The neighbor died. His wife gave me his notebook. It seems he'd kept a fish trap in the Minnesota River, an illegal activity to be sure, but one that provided lists for his notebook.
At first, in 1932, there were just lists of things he found in his trap. Then, slowly, the lists changed. Around 1940 he began to add observations about the weather. December 12, 1944, for example, the water was still open below the Belview rapids despite the unseasonably cold temperatures. That day he trapped three walleyes, a smallmouth and a painted turtle that was hibernating. He took the turtle home and put it by the fireplace and it thawed out. His wife thought he was crazy.
By the 1950s there were notes about his family, his business, and comments on the world scene. What I saw in his notebook was a one-man history of a watershed's decline. The other thing I saw was the development of a writer. His notebook made him less afraid of words and with practice he went from the world of lists to the world of thoughts. Real-world tasks described with loving detail: language doing work. The notebook even had a character other than the narrator. The local game warden made several cameo appearances when he confiscated the trap. Or staked it out.
Today "journaling" as it is called is heralded as a cure for everything from losing a job (see "Fired To Write" in the April 1994 edition of Psychology Today) to spiritual bankruptcy. Most of those doing the heralding are the kind of people that turn nouns into verbs: journaling. I can see their point. Try adding an "ing" to diary and the result sounds like something one gets from bad water. But seriously, I've found writing helps my fishing in a variety of ways. Writing helps me make cognitive sense of events, conditions and details. My outdoor journal allows me to gather facts on which to make logical inferences, and to plan future trips.
It's details that can make the difference between success and failure in many fishing situations. Take that summer on the Middlebury River for example. The water was low, and therefore the temperature was high. I was fishing the gorge that night because the water is shaded from the sun all day by the gorge walls.
Before the water enters the gorge it is made up of three branches and they flow through thick woods. It stands to reason that the coldest water in the whole river was in this section. The gorge, although technically tough to fish, had a river's worth of trout, too. Who knows when that information may be useful again? Perhaps next summer. So journals can have a practical application.
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copyright Midwest Fly Fishing Magazine 1999
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