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.
Paradise Or Was It Just Imagination
By
Where I live there are hundreds of miles of trout streams within an hours drive of my house. The last trip to Yellowstone was a few years ago, maybe five years ago. In fact I just wondered over to the rod room and looked at the date written on the shaft of a bamboo rod I had made that year. Sure enough it was the year 2002. Fly fisherman have a strange method of dating or ear notching special events in their lives I suppose. It was a good trip and trout were caught. As usual, I spent some time up on a creek in its second meadow and if my memory serves me correctly caught Cutts on a size 16 yellow soft hackle that had a rabbit fur dam against the partridge hackle. On the trip back, I stopped over at a camp ground in Wyoming and fished the little creek near by and still to this day remember clearly the 12 inch rainbow trout that leaped and leaped and down stream he traveled all the while my hardy reel was screaming and I was laughing out loud like some drunken sailor on leave.
After arriving back in the Denver area I said to my wife and fishing partner, “I think we will spend the next few years just fishing Colorado. Gas prices hadn’t gone sky high at that point in time so that was not the reason for my decison. But it is a long drive in a old truck and the wind across Wyoming going to Yellowstone was head on, so I drove below the speed limit. The only good thing is I did not get a seeding ticket. State troopers like to stop “Greenies” (as the locals refer to Colorado passers though).
Life has always had a way of working out for me and so I now live in a quant little house that was initially built in 1865 that is within two stone throws of the North Fork of the South Platte. There is a small canyon that is just minutes form my house, 4-6minutes if I drive and 30 minutes if I walk there.
I admit I down play the hatches and the trout that reside on this part of the North Fork, partly because I don’t want to attract fellow fly fisherman. But there are times that, I have hooked into a trout 16inches and up. The water is fast and on my North Fork Special bamboo rod fly a 16 inch trout will give you a run for your money. So, I often drive up to the canyon and fish it in the evenings. It is close and with gas prices so high, I feel like I'm doing my part in keeping gas prices down. It is more of a feeling than a hard science reality I’m afraid.
Last night I caught a small rainbow that was 7-8 inches and it appeared to be a healthy young trout. Later on that night, once the sun had fallen below the western ridge of mountains I decided to fish a #16 pheasant tail soft hackle also known as a Flymph. There were a number of insects buzzing around the surface water, from small midges to #14 Caddis and large mayflies still dropping their eggs in the stream. I could make out a trout rising to the insects just off the main current tongue. It was a loner and often down in this section only big trout control the best feeding spots. I cast my Flymph across into the fast water and let it drift across the rising trout and bam!!!! What a strike. He took the line and we had one hell of a fight.
It took me a good while to land and releases him. I would guess he was a good solid 16 inches. I did not take my Streamwalker net along and that was a mistake because I had play him longer than if I could of guided him into the net. He was so big in the shoulders I could not steady him with only one hand. He would flex his body and get away from me and he did that on two occasions. Finally on the third time that I got him in, I was able to quickly release him. He was still strong and quickly swam away. It is a wonderful feeling to release such a powerful fish back into his world of freedom.
I did not fish any longer after I released him for my spiritual creel was over flowing. I have caught many fish in my life time and lost my share of demons which still reside in that compartment that all fisherman have in their minds. Sometimes, I think it is the ones that get away that we think about so fondly. This rings true in other areas of life as well.
As I walked back up the canyon to the jeep, I got the feeling I was being watched and so four or five times I stopped and looked back. Mountain lions are known to follow people, not so much to eat them but because they are curious by their nature. This feeling sweeps across you and you wonder if it is just your imagination or is it some Para normal feeling that mankind has removed himself from as the result of his technical evolution. None the less, the way I look at it is, it is better to have and active imagination and look back now and then and possibly stumble across a cougar following you then to be gobbled up because you just were to sophisticated to consider physic possibilities.
Once I had a spiritual teacher tell me that at any point in time there exist infinite paradises. As I pulled my hip wadders off and felt the cool night mountain air I thought about the paradise I had just slipped in and out of. It was soooo sweet.
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