Hunting Flat Creek

Once, at first light, when mist still hovered above shallow wild water, I quietly waded a creek that will forever hold a part of my soul still and close. I recall the Kingfisher that followed the flow of the water, gliding quietly through the tree tops and intent on trout for breakfast. I worked the water as I always do, casting a dry fly upstream, a marriage of hand tied leader, silk fly line and living bamboo. The river was kind that morning, allowing me to dance with five mermaids, who each wore the subtle disguise of a wild brook trout. I recall the stillness, the peace and wish within that I had the ability to compose as Handel did. Surely, a morning such as this one inspired George Frideric Handel to compose his Water Music Suite.

When autumn and winter have my mountains, that same creek carries the whisper of the water married to the soft music of collar bells and foot steps on autumn’s leaves. A single grouse provides the bounty for a candlelit dinner, a dinner made sweeter by the sharing of a fine wine that tastes of autumn; and the knowing that the evening will be spent with my Lady Caroline in a log cabin far from the streets of any city. A morning in the wild grouse coverts of my hills carries always that whispering wild water and the ringing of the collar bells that remind me that my hunting is an essential element of my life, that reminder that I am no more evil as a predator than that hungry Kingfisher was so many years ago. And we each, that Kingfisher and I, have a charge to keep and a path to follow.

We all have wild hearts, and passion. The problem is that wild hearts become tame and passion fades if left to the devices of modern civilization. I was lucky, I suppose. I had a grandfather and a best friend and mentor, each who’d never been fully tamed and one much wilder at heart than the other. My Grandfather was a mentor who survived WWI and returned to America to craft a living with his hands. Joe was a mentor in the art of the wild, yet also a mentor who once secluded himself in the old Esmeralda Inn, in Chimney Rock, for two weeks of passion and lovemaking with a once famous and sultry Hollywood actress.  Joe would teach me how to tie full-dress Victorian salmon flies and then take me out for raw oysters and Single Malt Scotch. After filling me with oysters and single malt, he would see to it that I was safely homeward bound to my awaiting Caroline. How fitting it was, and remains, that Caroline and I gave Joe a proper remembrance as we toasted his too short life in the Paris Ritz, at the Hemingway Bar.

We of Scottish and Irish roots have a deep and even more dear connection to our Southern Appalachian Mountains.  Our ancestors came from those sacred islands and settled into the misty wild hollows that I crave. They carried music with them that survives in us still. Two winters ago, while on a weekend hunt, I called Caroline and told her that I had been stalked by Joe’s spirit all day long. I had heard whispers and phantom bag pipes all day as I walked the banks of a favorite stream.  That evening I sat and tied dry flies and leaders as I watched the snow falling in the evergreens around the log cabin that was my home for that weekend.

As I look back on the mentors that I’ve had in my life, the main lesson that they preached, endlessly, was to listen. Joe sensed that I would travel far and that I would one day be blessed to hear the wild howls of wolves in the West, and the deep growls of a Black Bear in the East. Each is a fellow traveler and each is one with the collective voice of my mountains. He wanted me to be able to quietly listen and freely accept the sense of being and place that each would offer. Even the rustling of autumn’s leaves is a part of the voice of my mountains. From the whispers of wild water to the deep growl of the bear, the voice of a mountain is many things blended into the one.

Our mountains are trying to tell us that all we truly need to live, we already have. They warn us not to place a price on all living things, and they forever seek to remind us that we are a living part of the chain of life; neither above it or below it. To live the Upland & Angling Life, to truly embrace it and live it, is to live life as a Renaissance Man, or Woman. It is a striving for success so that one can attain the work of the finest artists, be they makers of fine cane rods or bespoken guns. It is to choose a rare spring day for angling with a vintage Leonard from the 1800′s, or to decide that opening day of grouse season will be spent with the Purdey and a certain tweed jacket and tie. It is the reading and collecting of Derrydales and the loathing of the forsaking of traditions, ethics and history by newcomers too damned lazy to learn. It is doing it all, the whole of it, in places known only to you, a few whom you love and God.

And, once in a while, it is a long drive home as Handel plays and the promise of raw oysters and passion with the one person who knows your heart better than any other; that lady who once gave you a framed verse by Thoreau that urged you to never cease to follow that beat of a different drummer. Together we have been wild hearts, following dreams. Mountains have much to teach. Listen, be still and listen. Never forget that God is happiest when his children are at play.

Two scottish bests at Pine Gables.

It was an old 55 gallon steel drum, made into a shop wood-stove by a frugal WWI vet that I called Paw Paw. Beside it was an old sofa that had long ago seen its better days, not good enough anymore for the main farmhouse but just right for a quiet Grandfather and the boy he loved dearly. Fill that old drum with cedar scraps and some newspaper, and a cold winter’s day became something warm and filled with projects. I still remember the sound that the roaring fire made as it burned in the belly of the old drum. My best memories go back to the year that I found my Great-Grandfather’s old hammer Parker in a dark corner of the shop. It had a broken stock and my grandfather told me that he would cut the walnut blank if I’d like to try making a new butt stock for the old gun. The old fellow knew that the project was well beyond my ability, but the days I used up, trying and filing as he whistled away the day, working on a cabinet job of his own, are days stored as diamonds in the memory of the Boy that I was. My attempts at making my very first fly tying vise, under my Grandfather’s watchful eye, were to have more positive results.

The old workshop still stands and I drive past it sometimes. Once in a great while I wonder whether I should get out and ask whether I could see the place and walk over the old farm itself. But, I long ago heard that the place was bought by a businessman who remodeled the entire farm for his new lady, a doctor from Carolina’s Medical Center. I will avoid a broken heart and remember the old shop as she was, back when that sweet old man stepped up to help a young boy who just wanted some peace and quiet. Sometimes, a memory is all we can have.

Thanksgiving and Christmas is a time for roaring fires and the best of my young years could be found in the den of my Uncle Jimmy’s Union County Farm. When the family gathered at Thanksgiving, the fire was always carefully set and fed throughout the day as old men and boys sat in the den and talked about hounds, bird dogs and football, often in that order. Christmas was a time all its own as Jimmy found a huge Yule Log each year and that Yule Log burned from Christmas Eve till the end of Christmas Day. I would sit beside my Uncle Jimmy and listen to every tale. I still remember the rich smells of pumpkin and pecan pies in the ovens, turkey done just right and ham from Jimmy’s own hogs. I remember the good years when he or one of his sons had taken a deer as these were Christmas feasts supplemented with venison loin and backstrap.

The old fields that surrounded Jimmy’s house are gone now, replaced with cookie cutter houses, void of character and all looking the same. The big old farmhouse remains and I have been told that a distant relative of mine lives there with her family. Like the old workshop that my Grandfather loved, I have driven by this place more times than I care to remember. How I would love to knock on that door and to be welcomed in to walk in a place that only holds good memories of my childhood. Uncle Jimmy, if you can see me now, the man that I have become, I want you to know that I still recall that final Christmas. It was the last year that my father was around and I was the lucky lad whose name you had drawn at Thanksgiving. I sat in your living room that year, quiet and withdrawn, and I unwrapped two boxes of Federal 20ga shells. That year, Christmas passed too quickly and I was free of my father’s torments by my 13th birthday. I didn’t know that he would see to it that I would never see the old family again. I so missed you all and I will remember those shells for as long as I live.  Every time I build a fire in the cabin or in our old house, I think of the den and the Yule Logs that warmed your family as my Aunt and the other ladies prepared a feast that sustained a small boy from year to year.

Pine Gables reminds me a lot of  Uncle Jimmy’s old place, just as Jimmy and Robin Proctor, our cousins, remind me of the people that I came to know there as family. Caroline’s family is about all I now have beyond my dear wife, children and grandson. Those who can laugh and recall my childhood days are gone, either by death or as the result of a biological abusive father and mentally ill mother. Most were no doubt pleased to see that tempest depart their homes and lives, and I became collaterial damage. Pine Gables has a large central hearth in the main living room and it is no doubt a surviving element from its earliest days as a stagecoach stop for weary travelers heading through the gorge en route to Asheville.

In the early days of our marriage, Pine Gables was home to Jimmy’s grandmother. I remember visiting with Caroline and sitting by the old fireplace, always studying a very old print of a Colonial angler, sitting in his chair, rod and creel nearby. I am sadly not clear on the sequence of hands that Pine Gables passed through after her death, if any passing other than Jimmy was done. I only know that Pine Gables came into its Golden Era when Jimmy and Robin made the old place their own. They are perhaps the most genuine people that I know and I haved stayed many an autumn and winter night at Pine Gables, complete with my smelly bird dogs, while preparing for grouse days in my mountains. I would love, just one time, to sit in that lovely old living room, so filled with family history and memories, and talk about the day while a hickory fire blazed away in that old fireplace of stone and granite. Jim and Robin don’t know how they saved my sanity by renting me a cottage there at Pine Gables. Lake Lure, the Rocky Broad River and Flat Creek are the only touchstones that survive from my beginning. But then, for those of us who find peace and solace in rivers and wood, we know we only find true peace in that which is changeless. To be able to sit and talk to Jimmy about the Hickory Nut Gorge that existed when I was a small boy is priceless.

I know that Jim and Robin surely know that all of their old ancestors are never far from their place. Sit there, and listen to that old house speak to you and you will hear laughter and words from long ago. When I am quiet in my small cottage there this year, and in the years to come, I will sit and tie my flies, clean my guns and call the good memories home. When we lost boys finally grow up, it takes awhile to find the good. When we find it, we tend to hold tightly.

I can’t close this without telling you about the hearths of the old house that we call home while in the city. She was built in the 1920s, back when most of Myers Park was pasture and planted fields. My wife tells me that she is of the Craftsman style of architecture, but all I know is that she is a house that seems to be alive. On the Historical Records of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historical Society, she is called the Baxter Davidson Home as she was the home place of Baxter Davidson, a fellow who happened to be the largest benefactor in the history of Davidson College. She is a grand old house, hidden behind tall hardwoods and hedges, but there is no pretense here.

Baxter’s widow lived here long after his death. It was then passed through the estate to family, then to a doctor. For a time our home even served as an Aids Hospice, a last refuge for the sick and dying in an era where ignorance and hate further condemned the suffering. I am told that all efforts were made to make it a happy place in those sad days, and perhaps this is why we sometimes hear laughter coming from empty rooms.  (Oh yes, our home is haunted, but all the ghosts are good ghosts.)

One hearth is in my study, a pass through to the living room. My study is a place to work and write, to tie flies and plan adventures. My favorite guns and fly rods are always near and the books that I dearly treasure are here. The walls in my study are covered with prints and journals, history and images of the heart. Then there is the fireplace in what we call the Grandfather Room.  Here are images of grandfathers as well as a framed letter that my Grandfather Boatright wrote home to his mom and dad during WWI. Here you can build a big roaring fire, turn on the blowers and warm the house as you read and watch the day pass. This winter, I want to place a small fly tying desk in that room. There are days when I have to remain city bound and fly tying, as well as writing, take me away to better places.

I love the home fires mostly because I love Caroline. After 30 years together, she is more to me today than she was on the day we married. She stayed with me through the ups and downs of building a business, and she has supported me as I plan to pass that Company on and dedicate myself to my writing and woodlands.  Our home also has given her a safe place from which to fulfill her dream of becoming a nurse. She begins her role as an RN in two weeks. In our present day society, many our age have children in grade school and they are years away from an empty nest. I am glad we married young and started young as there is so much life left to enjoy and live.

May each and all of you keep your home fires burning, wherever they are.

A life well lived is a chain of meditations woven into a rich fabric of adventure and challenge. It is the art of finding that distant anddistinct drummer that Thoreau envisioned during his time of living deliberately in the woods, and having the courage to follow that drummer all through life. One does not have to accomplish great things to have a life well lived. What matters is to define oneself on one’s own terms. In the current issue of Sporting Classics, I very much like the following quote that was submitted to the magazine’s “Quotes” page by a fellow in Minnesota; “Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in, broadside, totally worn out and proclaiming, “Wow, what a ride!” For the most part, I have chosen to live my life inspired by eras past and to sip liberally the waters from other times.

Step with me into a time where countless hours are spent crafting classic full dress salmon flies. We will use a blind eye Partridge hook, on which we will fashion a traditional gut eye. Once this foundation is prepared, we will progress through patterns established in Victorian England, mounting tail and then married exotic feathers, these mixed with Jungle Cock eyes and Scarlet Macaw horns. Over the coldest of winter days we will fill our fly books, all working towards the spring run of salt fresh salmon. And, for our day on Scotland’s River Tweed or Canada’s Grand Cascapedia, we will bypass the synthetic rods for our set of three Hardy Spey Rods that a well known angler named Chuck Doke had the House of Hardy design early in the last Century. Mr. Doke was a fishing pal of Stan Bogdan and the rods he had Hardy create are now the only such matched set in the world. They should be in the collection of the American Museum of Fly Fishing but to hell with that. They were made for Atlantic Salmon, the grand King of the River. We will find a good beat and we will cast as Joe taught me, all for the chance to dance with the soul of a river. We will end the day with a toast of 15 Year Old Single Highland Malt, a toast into the Gloaming and a word of thanks to dear old Joe.

If the Atlantic Salmon has a flying brother, it is surely the grandest of all game birds, the Grouse. And, with all due respect to my friends who cater to Scotland’s Moors, my heart belongs to the Ruffed Grouse of my mountains. I do not want him driven to me, I want to hunt him, with my dogs, taking in every whispering brook and smelling the sweet smells of autumn. Grouse days are tweeds and double guns, a lovely MacNaughton Bar-in-Wood or perhaps the Dickson. On the rarest of days we will carry the Purdey that I have called “Lady Caroline” from the day that she was delivered. Like my lady, the gun that I have named after her is a thing of understated elegance, crafted by the same artists who build for the Royals of England. As my lady loves roses, it is fitting that Lady Caroline is engraved with Purdey’s classic house style of engraving, rose and scroll. Grouse days with the Purdey transcend time and I am walking quietly in the crisp, sherry scented, woodlands, blessed with the soft muted ringing of collar bells that tell me that the dogs are running and not yet on point. Purdey days are tweeds and tattersall shirts, a tie and breeks. To end such days casting a #18 Royal Coachman, to a rising brook trout, is to end the perfect day by dancing with a Mermaid.

Driving back to the cabin we are likely to pass by a turnoff that will take us along the Davidson River. If we opt for this route, I will have a wicker basket packed in the boot of the Range Rover. Dinner will be spread out on one of the picnic tables that the Park Service maintains along the river.  There will be grilled salmon, cheeses and a selection of smoked trout and rainbow trout caviar. There will be no rush, no hurry and Caroline will have time to chill a bottle of Pinot in the river as dusk arrives. If there is a fire ring, I will build a fire and I will hold court, telling stories about adventures that Joe and I once had and I will share a few tales about the old fellows who once befriended Joe along this very stretch of the Davidson. Theirs was a quiet dignity and their sporting ethics on the water were without compromise.

The best days are days afield in my mountains, working the dogs down on the farm in Cherryville or angling for wild trout in Lost Cove, Wilson Creek or the Davidson. I am simplistic in my river dreams as I imagine that all of the world’s rivers indeed flow from the basement of time that Norman Maclean wrote about. As his father heard the words of God from beneath the stones, so do I. And, while I have visited some of the grandest Chapels, nothing rivals the Cathedral of the Wild that dwells hidden in every river. In the second half of my life, I have elected to live the life of an Angler and Upland Gunner.  I have elected to give liberally of my time to the issues of conservation and protecting gamelands, and I will share the whole of it with Caroline, my friends and family

Whether ending a day on a salmon river or on Appalachian home waters, the traditions once Back at the cabin or lodge are always the same. I will gently remove the rods used from their respective tubes and lay reels beside them. All will be wiped down and reels will receive a touch of light oil. If the day has included grouse, I will unroll a canvas and sheepskin cleaning mat and lay out the same cleaning rods and brushes that I’ve used since my early days of shooting. The smells of autumn are not complete without the delightful aroma of Hoppe’s #9. Add to that various stock oils and waxes, as well as Rangoon Oil and I am lost to a quiet meditation that can take most of an evening to complete.

The most beautiful thread in the fabric of my life is Caroline herself and the passion that she brings into all things. Not only has she always given me free range to follow my dreams, she has added her own passion for life. The power of our union was evident on an evening in Paris, when my lovely lady and I toasted Joe’s life in the Hemingway Bar, at the Ritz. The pictures around us, which showed Hemingway hunting and angling with his friends and family reminded me of Joe when he was young and full of trouble. Before he found out that he was dying with cancer, Joe told me that a member of the Hemingway family had asked him to travel to Florida to evaluate the purchase of a quail plantation for them. It’s a damn shame that the old boy died before that adventure could unfold.

Live life fully my friends, and compromise your life for no one. Live boldly.