Photo by Tina Hensel
Small
By
Bamboo Bill
Most of us have followed the wrong Gods home at some time or another. Reflection upon ones own mind can be paralyzing in as much as enlightening. Freedom becomes something definable in the material sense of the word but indefinable when one couples the “mind” into the question.
Having spent most of this life wondering around inspecting the nuts and bolts of my own existence I have had to draw upon humanity as a frame of reference, namely the American society. Spending a little time on bent knees in your own yard can be one hell of an adventure.
When ones ego grows rapidly and starts to displace the essence of God some pretty strange behavior can manifest. The I begins to be Self Righteous and seeks to dominate the material world around it. This fits nicely into the capitalistic engine that we all seem to fuel. The word BIG becomes the operative word. It has an entire family of words, such as Biggest, best, fastest, swiftest and so on.
What we don’t realize is that we, along with most of our neighbors tend to glorify all the Bigness of our life. Yet as a society we are seemingly void of happiness. The treadmill of having more, consuming more than another eats at our very souls like a slow cancer.
This treadmill provides for bigger government which cuts us deeper so the taxes can be extracted. When you finally see the truth, you either jump into the fire and die happy with all those material possessions or you run to high ground. Once you reach high ground your country, fellow man and big government define you as a misfit.
I had four karate studios that ran full time and I was known as one of the few karate instructors who turned their love for the martial arts into a vocation not just a hobby. As time went along, my ego grew and grew , daily I struggled magnificently to be caption Kirk of the Star Ship Enterprise, metaphorically speaking. My body worked well and my mind seemed clear as a mountain stream in mid August. All was well in my BIG life.
Then one day I left it all for reasons that are only clear to me now years later. My ego had gotten to Big, to heavy and therefore I knew I must cast off the material world that I had attached myself to. I spent a few years working on bamboo rods living frugally sometimes on the edge of invisibility. There was a sense of loneliness but at the same time a quite calm entered my life. I delt with the loneliness because I knew it was self imposed. One is born into this life alone and certainly dies alone.
Years after my journey, I met an old time friend and past student. In conversation he said, “Bill you have a little life”. Those words have never left me. This friend of mine is a warrior and has fought many battles that successful self employed people always do. I respect him for the man that he is for the total sacrifice for his family. His life has been hell the past few years and I won’t get into it. He has the Big life that he fights to maintain everyday and I have a Little Life that is relatively simply to maintain. But let me say now, the Small life is not easy, the words simple and easy somehow don’t always equate in our throw away society that is laced with instant gratification.
Now I seek not the big fish, not the holly waters, the big money, the big title, the big toys, the newest gadget or the big house. I seek the small in almost everything I do. I’m happier on this journey of being a pilgrim traveling along the road of life that society would define as a minimalist. It is kind of like realizing that a Zen Koan has no true meaning other than it is a tool to get the Zen student to recognize the foolishness of involving the mind in activities that are meaningless. For some of us once we figured this out we left the temple.
When I was thirty my body was fast, strong with the libido running high and my teeth were all there and white. Time went at a slower pace. Today at 55 my teeth are leaving me at an increasing faster rate and time is traveling faster also. Interesting comparison isn’t it. Life is coming to an end like a stream meandering down through a valley always moving always descending. A blink of the eye and I will begin another journey.
The Small is found everywhere: the red wing Black Bird with its song at dusk, my dogs excitement for the wild nature around her as we walk along a stream, the cry of a mountain lion right before dawn, a trout’s wink before he takes my fly, a crescent moon that reminds me just to smile, a Golden Eagle in flight, the sound of silence embedded in the deep woods, that feel of a plan in my hands, a gentle poem that I wrote so many years ago when read it touches my very own soul as if I read it for the very first time. The small is found in the void of the big and the finger of God is there.
Photo by Tina Huffman
“Where it begins I can’t begin to know it”
Two Stories About Bamboo Fly Rods
By
Bamboo Bill
Bamboo rod makers know well where a rod begins. It starts somewhere in his mind and then the physical manifestation begins when his fingers touch one of his simple hand tools. He touches this bamboo thousands of times before it is tuned into a fly rod. Of course he takes notes and records information about the rod. I suppose the most intimate nuances are lost in his memory. When I die there is information about my rods that will dissolve into chaos with me. I plan it that way…because there is something about collectors of bamboo rods that I simply dislike. What it is I do not know.
I have made a fair number of rods over the past ten to twelve years. Each rod I have made, I wished was mine. So it is safe to say that these rods are like children to me. I often wonder if the owners take care of them and value them beyond the money they paid me for the rod I crafted for them. I suspect many of them don’t.
Last summer I got two phone calls from Pawn shops. One shop was down in Denver and the other in Idaho. Each call was from the owner of the shop and they wanted to know how much the rod was worth. All I could tell them is how much it would cost them to have me make them a rod. The funny thing is this. Every time I get one of those open ended questions, I think of a rod collector in Denver who owns over 500 cane rods. He would approach me now and then and say, “Bill I want you to make a rod for me”…I would say “are you going to fish it?” he would say, “Probably not, as you know I want to own one rod from every Colorado rod maker”….I would say
“Nope their for fishing”.
I can’t stand Pawn shops because I get a strange felling inside of them. I know lots of people fall on hard times and that’s why their plunder is in there. But, a hand crafted fly rod in a Pawn shop is a pretty sad statement about the realities of life. One I would prefer not to think about.
Here are the two stories, each one different and yet the sad hard realities of life are present in each one. Often some of the best of times are when we are out on the water with our favorite fishing rod.
Idaho:
The owner of the little 6’6” Lost Creek had his wife leave him for a friend. So he shows up at the Pawn shop with everything he owns and pawns the stuff. He spent a couple of hours talking to the owner about how sad he was and then left the shop with the idea that he would come back and renown his stuff again. Only he never came back. The Pawn shop owner calls me and tells me this story. It hurts because I know that this man and he was a good friend of mine, he had a heart of gold. I ask the owner if the man had brought in his Guitar and sure enough he had. I told the pawn shop owner that he was a good song writer and had even spent some time trying to make it in Nashville but left Mecca because of some corruption he had run into.
With the added information about this man the Pawn shop owner told me he would keep the Bamboo rod for himself and stow the wooden guitar away and if my friend ever showed back up he would give him the rod and guitar back. At least I felt better ecause I knew the little rod had found a home. If you go up on my web site www.bamboobillrods.com it is the rod where the moving line moves across the rod.
Denver:
A man had me make him a rod and introduced his son to me. His son was attempting to make a living as a fishing guide. Out of pure kindness I made the son a rod and gave it to him as a gift from my heart. Again it was the 6’6” Lost Creek model….I refer to it as a Guides Choice because it only has one tip and my standard models have two tips.
The owner of the Pawn Shop wanted to know the same information. I told him the same thing I told the Idaho pawn shop owner. I have no information on the young man I gave this rod to, but perhaps his life made some hard turns and his rod ended up as just another material object that was reduced to “Frog green dollars” as the Late Harry Middleton liked to define money. (I have a hand crafted letter from the young man thanking me from the bottom of his heart for the rod.)
I was left with a bad feeling. So I e mailed a friend of mine that the rod was up on E bay and he ended up buying it. I have the little rod in my possession and have revarnished it leaving the kids name on it. The new owner wanted the kids name left on it.
The little rod was fished hard and abused in my opinion but it came back to daddy and daddy has the rod looking good once again. I have decided not to give anymore rods away as gifts. People simply don’t respect what they don’t pay for. Even some of my owners don’t take care of my rods….but I can’t follow them around making sure they treat them right.
I just never know where one of my bamboo rods will end up let alone knew what fabled waters it has fished. It is probably just as well I don’t know.
This one is for : Bruce
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