Catch and Release

About fishing, writing, and a muse celebration

To listen to me read this piece, albeit imperfectly, click above.

After dinner, we grabbed Peach and walked down to the pontoon for our near-nightly rendezvous with the lake. There is something about the water, surrounded by cranes and the swan couple and egrets, that grounds me.

It’s almost like a light switch flips and my central nervous system quiets. I notice this, and take one deep breath as I drive the boat while Mike sets up his fishing poles.

Peach is new to the lake, and is not quite as relaxed as we’d like just yet. She’s calibrating, her puppy energy bursting into the peace and quiet. And then her switch goes off, like mine.

I find just the right spot, stop the pontoon, drop anchor, and turn the key off. The sounds of the lake feel like a soundtrack crafted just for me. I hear Mike’s fly hitting the water, and without looking have learned the way the line sounds when there is a fish at the other end of it. We are catch and release people, and Mike even dulls the hook to cause the least amount of damage to the bluegill, sunfish, and large-mouth bass he often catches.

We are one with nature here.

I situate myself on the boat, notebook and pen in hand, and feel the rush of my creative muse arriving. I scribble quickly to get the words on the edge of my mind onto the page, rough swings at capturing the magic happening in that one particular span of moments.

When Mike catches his first fish, I’m up to take a photo because if there is no photo, it didn’t happen. Some husbands put the fish in a bucket to admire; mine lets me film it before giving the fish his heartfelt “thank you, buddy” while letting it return to its perfect fish life.

She allows the interruptions, my creative muse visiting with a flourish this particular evening.

I write a prayer for my friend Janet, whose husband is having a procedure the next day. I snap a photo of it, and text it to her. It comes from a sacred place, this prayer. My muse helps me craft the prose in one go-round. It feels just right. A few lines from it:

I pray for perseverance. For love to win the game, whatever that looks like.

I pray for peace, regardless of outcome, for steady faith that hands, hearts and souls are holding you all, guiding what is most true and right for soul journeys of all concerned.

I pray for strength. I pray for permission to be weak alongside your strength. I pray you have the courage to cry, the bravery to ask for help.

Words keep tumbling out, flowing like the water all around me. I notice how many shades of green Great Mother has created this time of year, and imagine how to show the hues rather than tell about them. Here is what arrived from this meandering:

Green

Is it a guitar strum?

or a bullfrog?

How green

can green get?

Grass green

Bullfrog

green upon green

Lake algae building

Green to black.

Willow, swinging

strands of light,

still another green

Circles of pale green

reflected into swaths

lake is earth’s mirror

Great Mother

would be lost

without green

Yellow plus blue

painters trick

Nature’s knowing

Without the green

of leaves

I would not take

one

breath

If not for

bullfrogs

I would

not

smile

their bugle

a love song

The words come from a place I can’t name, and with them a rush of gratitude for all that life has brought me. The heartache of humans disappointing me, the grief from death and trauma, the joy that comes with being a Grammy, the peaceful life here at the lake.

The gummy tension of today’s politics attaches itself to this deeper, unnamed source of flow and creative energy. I can write about frogs. I can write prayers with love. I will let my words be loving and kind and generous and also true and sad, witheringly painful. This evening, my muse wanted peace and beauty.

Mike catches another fish, Peach jumps up from beneath my feet to investigate. I stand for the photo, framing the setting sun just behind the husband I adore as he releases the blue gill back to its home.

The words that were about to land pause, and do not come back to me after the photo. It’s enough to know they are somewhere inside me and will live when it’s time for them to emerge.

I thank my muse as she dances on the lake with me, tempting and teasing and challenging me, bowing to her as she disappears into the great unknown, just after she gave me these words.

Symphony

Something loosens

my foot

off the gas

no brakes

no hands

on the wheel

words drift

into sentences

spirited

softened

like lyrics of a song

dancing onto a page

or a soul

or into the earth

I’m being driven

not by ambition

not by hustle

by light

headlights

just ahead

destination unknown

plunking into place

like a high C

on piano

or tinkling

like a bell

a pattern

begins to form

a symphony

gets born.

---

Come closer. Tell me what this work stirred in you. Share your story with me.

If this piece touched something in you, it’s bound to help someone else. Your sharing with your people is important, if we are to heal. We are walking each other home.

If this is the kind of writing you want more of, here’s your invitation.

I’m fifty thousand words into a memoir called Almost Free — liberation through grief, truth-telling, and becoming the woman my lineage was reaching toward. I publish here every Monday. Paid subscribers get deeper essays, audio, and early access to the memoir as it’s being made.

Five dollars a month. Fifty for the year. Come with me.