As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, they are special places. I’m drawn there… I don’t know why. What I do know is that I head down there, nearly always without preconception, and always find something different, something new.
iwo jima memorial
marines
twenty-two
“Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”
- Warren Buffett
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What should a typical upper-middle-class person in the U.S. buy to prepare for retirement?
“Equities,” Buffett answers without a moment’s hesitation.
- Fortune Interview, October 19, 2010
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Warren Buffett is my hero. There’s not a finance guy who has ever lived that comes close to him, in my book. If I could pick one person to have lunch with, Warren would be the guy.
But as hair-curling smart – to use Ben Stein’s phrase – as Buffett is, I think it’s important to understand where Warren’s strength lies. His enduring genius has always been his ability to understand the arcane numbers in a balance sheet, those circular references that so often elude others. He has always divined the nuance of underlying value. And his mantra of success has been simply to discover undervaluation, purchase it, and then to hold it long enough that its market valuation catches up with its intrinsic value.
No one has ever done it better.
Alas, we probably ought to be careful about ascribing that genius to everything else having to do with money.
Warren’s strength is not in managing companies, for instance. When he took over Salomon Brothers after John Gutfreund left in 1991, the results were less than stellar. You’d think – and I’m sure Warren himself expected – that his fabulous expertise with numbers and finance would easily translate into him handily managing an investment bank. Not so, as it turned out. What Warren learned was that running the numbers of an asset – even an asset filled with people – was a very different proposition from the arcana of actually managing those people. I suspect it sharpened his appreciation for guys who actually are good at that.
In a similar vein, I haven’t seen any evidence that Warren is particularly adept at judging the macroeconomic context we live in. Valuing a company is pretty far afield from judging sovereign risk or figuring out the implications of central bank behavior.
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When my two boys were in their late teens I sat them down and gave them a couple-hour lecture – which they still, a dozen-odd years later, roll their eyes at – on basic financial literacy. Among other things, I wanted to convey the magic of compounding. I wanted them to understand that earnest, regular saving will lead to an inflection point – a time when that pool of wealth of theirs will quickly begin to accelerate, the graph representing its growth moving swiftly vertical like a teeter-totter rising towards the sky. It’s a lovely, amazing, wonderful thing to behold.
I also wanted to convey the flip side of that – that debt has its own inflection point. That there is a time when servicing a growing debt begins to become onerous. The point where it, too, goes vertical – but this time an acceleration into financial oblivion. It’s an ugly, ugly thing, one from which few escape.
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The macroeconomic climate is simply this: We’ve reached that negative, debt-induced inflection point. Nearly all the major, modern economies have moved in lockstep to that juncture, holding hands as they walk towards the cliff.
To those who profess equanimity about the situation, I’ve long asked to hear a plausible scenario for unwinding the economic quandary we are in. Describe to me how this cannot fail to end up very badly. Just show me the math.
I’ve yet to hear it. Not from anyone.
Not even from Warren.
And that’s why I’m long gold.
There are a nearly infinite number of places to go take pictures. Some, though, are more special than others…
battle flag
kennedy gravesite
guarding the tomb
(Reflections on the Noctilux)
F1.
If you’re a photographer, those two simple characters represent a mystical place, one without peer. It speaks of lens speed so fast that light itself seems to bend in strange and magical ways. A prism through which the world is revealed via a new dimension.
The reality, for the few photographers fortunate enough to have experienced it, might be more plebian. To the optical designers chartered by their bosses with coming up with a piece of glass of such luminosity, an f1 lens is a nightmare of conflicting demands and compromises. It seems an impossibility, their very own Gordian Knot. And so what results, if they are able to build it at all – most never do – is a thing both wondrous and difficult. Like a beautiful, talented, and yet recalcitrant child, an f1 lens remains an enigmatic challenge to most photographers. It’s magic seems forever wedded to heartbreak.
Like most photographers who have fallen down that rabbit hole, I debated long and hard the merits of the Noctilux – Leica’s own fabled f1 lens – before sending along my credit card information. The stories surrounding that storied lens were legion, with as many shaken heads as there were smiling faces. I’d guess no lens in Leica’s long history has ever been sold by disappointed owners as often as has the Noctilux.
Mine arrived on a cold winter night. Dense and heavy, the thing seemed foreign to the Leica ethos – which is all about small and light. But gingerly removing the lens cap and peering at the large globe of glass was like looking at a mystery. The lens seemed otherworldly. The weight itself seemed to speak of things indescribable within it.
After a hurried supper, I tentatively mounted the pristine, new piece of glass on my M6 with its half-spent roll of Tri-X inside and climbed in my truck.
Two miles away, the bridge with the waterfall was shrouded in darkness. I knew that even the Noctilux couldn’t make that work. But the other side of the road, where the creek flowed under the fence, was lit by a couple of small sodium lights. There wasn’t much of it, but just enough light to reveal a hint, an intimation, of a beautiful scene.
The M6 felt heavy, strange in my hands. Raising it to my eyes, the single red triangle of the meter glared back at me. Click, click, click – trying to make it go away. By the time it did my shutter speed was flat on the floor. I couldn’t see the dial in the darkness, but I knew.
And so there was my first lesson with the Noctilux. Despite pulling out all the stops and injecting all the arcana that the then-current lens maker arts would allow, Walter Mandler’s magnificent creation bought only… one stop
Like I said, heartbreak.
And there was more coming. In the succeeding weeks and months, the Noctilux proved to be a challenge. The sterling images I had heard about – and actually seen on the Internet – remained elusive. Most of my shots with it were disappointingly soft. Only occasionally would I get a glimpse of the magic that was supposed to be bottled up inside.
I slowly came to see why people would sell it, wondering what all the fuss was about.
A few years later, when the M8 and Summilux 50 ASPH came along, I pretty much stopped using it. The cropped sensor of the M8 meant that images lost much of their character, the unique signature that, along with its speed, was the raison d’etre of the Noctilux. And when the 50 Lux showed up on my doorstep I was instantly smitten. Probably the best 50mm lens ever built by anyone, it was a far better all-around lens than the Noctilux. Smaller and lighter. Better image quality at all apertures, save the one it was missing. And only a stop slower. What more could you need?
Another couple years and the M9 made its appearance. Along with its other merits, it brought back to me the full-frame view that I had long loved in my M6 and M7. It felt like going home again, only with all the benefits of a modern digital camera. Somewhere in the back of my mind was the quiet, murmuring thought that the Noct had gotten its canvas back.
Ironically, it was a series of shots at work one day with that still newish and sexy 50 Lux ASPH that prompted first a worry, and then a result. You can read about that little experience here, in “Of Cameras and Lenses.” The short answer is that I discovered that that Noctilux of mine was back-focusing significantly, something I never before had suspected. It was an intriguing discovery. I had always thought the softness I usually got with that lens was simply part of the design. Perhaps there was more to the story, after all.
I’ll stop here and note that Dr. Mandler designed his Noctilux back in 1976, before digital was even a gleam in anyone’s eye. Film emulsion has an inherent depth to it – typically on the order of 120-250 microns – and the image you capture actually lives within that depth. Among other things, that characteristic has the salutatory effect of attenuating some of the minor focus errors that all camera systems invariably introduce. Said differently, the level of calibration precision that lens makers must manage was less back in the days of film. Today’s digital world imposes far stricter requirements and all the lens makers have had to up their game.
All of which is to say that the necessarily less precise calibration and quality control procedures that Leica previously employed were probably a factor in my lens leaving the factory with the back-focus it did. I’m guessing that was the case with a lot of Noctiluxes. And I imagine that it contributed very much to the mixed success that many of us had with it.
Well, in December, after nearly a year of procrastinating, I finally got around to shipping my lens to Leica’s repair facility in New Jersey. I asked simply that it be recalibrated “for perfect focus at f1.” A few weeks later here comes the brown box with my lens. The good folks at Allendale didn’t even charge me for the work.
A few days later the annual DC Motorcycle Show arrived in town. Walking from my truck, I had the freshly-reworked Noct mounted on my M9 and my 35 Lux ASPH and a spare battery in my pocket. My thought was to shoot a couple quick frames of the ticket girls at the door with the Noctilux, and then switch over to my 35 for the rest of the show.
But a funny thing happened. Those first couple of shots were encouraging enough when chimping the rear screen that I left it on for a few more. And after a dozen frames I had pretty much decided to shoot the whole show with the Noct.
My reasoning was simple – venues like that are crowded with people, they have poor light, and the backgrounds are usually pretty crappy. Using the Noctilux wide open was a way to gain even more shutter speed and subject isolation than even my vaunted 35 Lux could achieve.
More importantly, it was the first time, in all the years I’ve owned it, that I ever used the Noct for more than a few frames at a time. The first time that I didn’t think of it as a specialty lens, intended for a very specific and limited effect. It was the first time I used it for an entire “shoot.”
Examining the images later on my computer, my first thought was that the Noct shots didn’t have the ‘pop’ that I expect from my 50 and 75 ASPH lenses (and to a lesser degree, my 35 ASPH). But the good news was that focusing was spot-on. Even shooting quickly – most of my subjects were of people – and wide open, my focus hit rate was very high.
And despite not having the contrast and resolution that would have been wrought by my more modern lenses, the more I looked at those images, the more I liked them. Notwithstanding the high levels of chromatic aberration and coma that join the party at f1, I found the slightly muted, slightly pastel renditions to have an enchantment all their own. There, hidden in the tapestry, was the Leica glow of legend.
2011 DC Motorcycle Show (all images taken inside the bike show were with the Noctilux, at f1; subsequent shots taken outside were with the 35 Lux ASPH).
And so begins the journey. Over the last few weeks I’ve used the Noct almost exclusively. Afternoon shots of old town Warrenton. Snow scenes of the tiny church and cemetery nearby that I love. Night shots of The Plains. A visit to Arlington Cemetery and the Iwo Jima Memorial. What I can say after three weeks is that I love this lens. I love the vignetting that darkens the corners at f1. I love its unique signature. I love its slightly dreamy, slightly breathless way of rendering what it sees.
And so what are the details, the photographer-geek-stuff, beneath this new-found love affair? The thumbnail would go something like this:
There’s no question that the size, weight, and long focus throw of the Noct make it a slower handling package when mounted to an M-body. But it’s not that much worse. Surely you can, in a pinch, use the Noctilux as an all-around, all-aperture 50 prime.
Not that you’d want to. Nobody buys a Noctilux so they can shoot it at f8. You buy it for that magical aperture that no other lens provides. You buy it for the vignetting and the falloff in contrast and detail in the corners. You buy it because of the special bokeh. You buy it because of the unique fingerprint, the texture and the micro-contrast that are written into its images. You buy it because of its razor-thin depth of field – so fragile and ephemeral that it seems if you so much as squint, the image will disappear. You buy it because of its ability to literally see in the dark – to extract the last, spare photons of light that might be there. You buy it knowing that your compositions, the subjects within your images, must harken towards the center of the frame because that’s where all those other things will pull a viewer’s eye.
In the end you buy it because of the ethereal quality that f1 wraps an image in. There’s nothing else quite like it.
And because of that, yes, you’ll want – you’ll need – a 6-stop neutral density filter. So you can continue to wield that magic in the light of day.
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I’ve long carried a Leica nearly everywhere I go. First my M6. Then my M7. Then my M8. And now my M9. And although I’ll frequently carry a bag with a couple of spare lenses with me on the weekends, the reality is that I rarely use them. I tend to choose a given lens, stick it on my camera, wrap my head around that focal length and that lens and how it interprets the world, and then leave it on there for many weeks and months.
Now it’s the Noctilux’ turn.
a good woman is hard to find
come in we're open
antiques
the rail stop
We’ve been fortunate so far this winter. We received a dusting or two of snow from previous storms, but nothing to be concerned about. A couple of the storms actually tracked a weird right-hook-loop such that they clobbered the folks to south of us, to the east of us, and then big-time to the north of us. We’ve been spared.
At least until this week.
It wasn’t a surprise. All the meteorologists called it. And sure enough, on Wednesday here it comes, roaring out of the west. The Federal Government (the guidance of which my company follows) released employees two hours early. I’m not sure if that was a blessing or a curse. What it meant was everyone and their brother was on the road just as the storm broke hard upon us.
It was a fast, heavy, wet snow. Traction disappeared in a hurry. Those without 4-wheel drive quickly found themselves unable to make it up even the slightest grades. And traffic very soon became deadlocked across the region.
I was okay. I had my truck. And even though the last five miles took two hours – making my total commute four and a half hours – at least there was electricity and a warm wood stove waiting for me once I finally made it. A lot of people had the worst commutes of their lives – eight, ten, and twelve hour sagas. And some people never made it home at all.
The next morning, upon discovering that the Federal Government was only on a two-hour delayed arrival, I took a vacation day. The wet, heavy snow had brought down lots of trees and there was plenty of work to be done before my driveway would be passable again.
Here are a triplet of images. The first was taken during that long drive home Wednesday night, during the storm itself.
sanctuary in the storm
This image gives an idea of how heavy the snow was, and how it weighed upon everything it touched.
the morning after
And finally, a day and a night later, after all the angst and weariness had mostly washed away, what was left behind was just a quiet beauty.
heflins store
Like clockwork, the alarm commences its buzzing at 4:25am. The reason is because I live not far from the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and work in Washington, DC. If I waited any longer my easy one-hour morning commute would double into a mirror of the ugliness that is my evening penance.
But I’m not complaining. I was once unemployed for fifteen months. Spending three hours a day on the road isn’t so bad.
Life’s blessings come in many forms. When I began to reintegrate with the workforce after that 15-month involuntary sabbatical, the thing that most struck me was the frenzied energy I felt all around me during that morning drive in. Everyone was in such a hurry. The feeling of it washed over me like a strangling, angry tide. Seeking respite from it, I sought what quietude I could find. I put my pickup truck in the slow lane and kept the radio off and tried to find a measure of calm within my own thoughts. And so it was that my daily trip up I-66, years on now, has been my own regular soliloquy.
Walking out of the Foggy Bottom Starbucks just a couple blocks from my office, first coffee of the day in hand, my eyes sweep down New Hampshire Avenue. It’s the very same view I see every morning – a lazy, still-dark city only yet beginning to stir. The construction workers are walking up the street, their breaths blooming in front of them on this cold January day, and I nod as I climb back in the truck. In two minutes I’ll be in a warm office.
Turning the key, my mind drifts backward. It wasn’t all that long ago – really just a spit in the wind – that much of the city was just a miserable bog. No wonder the man after whom it was named wanted to go back to Mount Vernon after only two terms.
And before that… the mental images spin backwards like one of those old black-and-white newsreels, until it quickly runs out of film and the screen goes white.
To a man with maybe three score and change given, two millennia seems like such a grand sweep of time. But if you lift your thoughts and squint at it, you quickly realize it’s not. No, the march of the Roman legions and the dusty streets of Jerusalem and that first Easter really weren’t all that long ago.
And before that, add in just a few hundred years more and you’ve watched Alexander do his thing and the Greeks start to see the world in a different way and the Persians invent a whole bunch of stuff. There’s that little tete-a-tete at a place called Thermopylae.
And then it all gets misty and mysterious. Add in another couple of millennia – back to the age of that Ice Man they found a few years ago up in the Alps – and suddenly there’s most of the whole nut. Nearly everything man has accomplished – the utter transformation of the planet – has happened across a measly five thousand years.
There’s your bull market. The backdrop to everything.
Which is why I smile when people joke about me being a doom-and-gloom kind of fellow. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s just that I recognize the hubris that also frequently attends our otherwise impressive rise from the marshes and the caves. Our beneficent ascension has not been an unbroken line.
I’m the first one in the office. I start the coffee and settle down at my desk. Pulling up Outlook, I quickly scan my inbox. Thankfully, there are no crises yet. I can concentrate on the reports and meetings that await me later in the morning.
The hours pass quickly. At ten o’clock I take a quick break and log onto Fidelity. The buy order for a thousand shares of Silver Wheaton I put in last night was executed. I nod, satisfied with the price. Added to the thousand shares I bought on Monday, that gives me just enough stake in Sonny’s favorite company to make it interesting. Just a little gambit.
I wrestled last night with where to put the limit. Just like I did on Monday. Just like, it seems, I do with every position I’ve ever bought.
Until I remembered half a dozen years ago. Mentally debating the entry price of my first gold position and anguishing over fifteen bucks – the difference between $435 and $450. In the fullness of even just a handful of years, how can you not laugh at that? And so, shaking my head at the memory, I just plugged in fifty cents over the closing market. Just to cover against one of those flash things.
Long before Sonny coined his “Trade of a Generation” moniker, I made basically the same call, labeling mine “The Financial Bet of a Lifetime.” I like Sonny’s description better. Seems to have a hint of cultured gravitas to it, whereas mine sounds rather more like a craps game your alcoholic brother-in-law would be playing back in the alley.
But same difference. After twenty years of being a hundred percent in equities, fully bought into the notions of long-term-buy-and-hold and stocks-never-lose-in-the-long-run, I began to see things that gave me pause.
It was hard at first. A secular equities bull is perhaps the loveliest thing in all finance. It makes you feel like a genius. Letting go of it must be something like what addicts endure when they knock on the door at the rehab center.
I succeeded, though. Over a few months I pulled everything out and went to cash. Treasuries, where I could find them. And then, after that, slowly, I began to think about gold.
The first step into a pool is the hardest. After that it gets easier.
Years on now, 75% of my investment portfolio is gold. No miners. No leverage. Just plain old bullion.
I know, I know. That’s just insane.
And so, of course, the last thing I need is a middling position in a silver streaming company. Especially one that brings a fair bit of leverage and volatility to the table.
But you know what? People don’t change. You can read any of those ancient texts, those earliest bits of written insight into our forbears, stretching back across those five millennia, and it’s all there. All the wonders that we people bring. And all the foibles.
The financial landscape is one we’ve seen before. I won’t say I know with certainty what the exact details will look like. Or the exact timeline. But I do know what the endgame will be. I know that with absolute certainty. It will rock our world.
I know saying that sounds incredibly arrogant. Like I’ve been blessed with some sort of omniscience or something. That’s not it at all. It’s just a math problem. Not a particularly hard one.
And then that too shall pass. Gold will blow up. As will Silver Wheaton. And maybe then, finally, we can get back to another one of those lovely secular bulls in stocks.
I surely do miss it.
I don’t much care for winter. Once my week of hunting is done I’m ready for spring – and warm weather.
But I do like the New Year. The turn of the calendar always seems such an opportune time to reflect on things both in the past, and in the future. To start with a clean slate.
Here are a few images from the last day of 2010.
Peyton Place Christmas
first night in Warrenton
girlfriends
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And, finally, the first image from 2011….
train to the future...
The twinkle, the flickering pinpoint of light, isn’t easy to see. Like the subtle flash of an antler on a distant ridge in the November woods. But it catches my eye.
I’m on the Blue Ridge Parkway, tracking north, and am on one of those rare sections where a snippet of the road far ahead of me is visible for a few seconds. That’s all the time it takes me to resolve the specs for what they are – a small line of motorcycles. They are north of me, perhaps a mile, traveling in the same direction.
In the November woods you’d study the distant ridge for some time, lifting the riddle and working to answer the question. You’d test the wind once again. And then you’d rise, lifting from your squat. You’d shift your rifle to your other hand and set off along the route that would, perhaps hours hence, have you meeting that buck.
Today, on the Harley, the thought flashes in my mind, a question. For a moment there is no change. But then there’s that crystallizing of intent, and the burden of debating it is lifted. The guttural sound of the big V-Twin deepens, the sound resonant, angular in the clear mountain air.
It doesn’t take as long as I thought it might. I’m running through a corner as hard as the Road King will allow, when suddenly they’re there, right in front of me. I roll out of the throttle, letting my speed fall to match theirs. I glance at the Zumo. An even 50mph.
There are five of them. All sportbikes, knotted together like bikes often do. The fellow in the rear is running a paper temporary tag. A couple of them carry backpacks. All are wearing gear. Standard fare.
Except for me, now bringing up the rear. Wearing my black t-shirt and jeans and engineer boots and Ray Bans and do-rag and shortie helmet.
And a grinning devil on my shoulder.
This is one of my favorite sections of the Parkway. Jay and I were here thirty years ago, having ridden down the day before and having spent the night at my grandmother’s. She saw us off the next morning, on a similar fall day where the air was so clear and the sky such an azure blue that it felt like an ache. It seemed you could cut it with a knife. I led Jay back to the Parkway that morning, through the tiny hamlets at the base of the Blue Ridge, along one of my favorite trout streams, and I remember thinking that morning as the wall of the mountain rose up in front of us he must be stupefied by the utter ruggedness of it all. And, of course, right there is where the road turns narrow and tortuous and deadly and there is no more time for thinking about anything else.
We stopped that morning and took a few pictures. Taking turns riding hot through a corner while the other snapped the camera. Trying to emulate the guys on the covers of the magazines.
Now, riding behind these five sportbikes as we enter that favorite section of mine, I’m conflicted. I hate the impatience that too often wells up inside of me when suddenly stuck behind a vehicle. Like the three Harley riders I came upon this morning, running 35mph, on this very same road. Ten miles below the limit. Twenty below what the cops would give you. And thirty less than I wanted to go. And a car and a truck, themselves stuck, behind them.
How embarrassing.
Not being able to stand it, after half a mile I double-yellowed first the car and truck. And then, a quarter mile later, the Harleys.
My Road King doesn’t have the powerful acceleration of my other bikes. You don’t blow past people with a whispering slash and an imagined middle-finger salute.
But what it does have is a motor that speaks to the world. One that, wound up, leaves no doubt about its displeasure. It lingers there in the air, strung out behind it, an aural reflection of its disgruntled owner.
I’m sure the three couples on those Harley’s were suitably indignant. I plead guilty.
But if I felt justified with umbrage at a rolling chicane running ten under the limit, how does one raise an argument against one running five over?
That was my debate as we rolled modestly past, like chaste schoolgirls, that spot where Jay and I took those pictures lo those many years ago.
If Ginny had been around she’d have smiled sagely, shaken her head, and suggested that I “be an adult.” But she wasn’t there. The only one there was that fellow on my shoulder, nattering in my ear. The one who had been enlivened by that run up the road to the Parkway. That road from thirty years ago. The one that holds twenty of the most challenging, difficult, technical miles in Virginia. The one that will kill you if you make a mistake. The road that – against all odds – I love more on my Harley than on any of my other bikes. The road that, having run it well, leaves you in a different place.
Riding the Parkway afterwards always seems like child’s play.
And so it’s all rather anti-climactic. One long pull on the throttle, the Road King bellowing like a cape buffalo as it rolls past the boys crouched over their heavily muscled machines.
By definition, a double-yellow straightaway means a dearth of space. You have but the space of a few heartbeats to make things work. Sometimes the cord gets stretched thin.
That’s the way it is here. As I pass the third rider I’m already judging time and space. Deciding whether I can make them all. A second later, as I pass the forth guy, I decide to go for it. The calculus leaves little left over. But the numbers work. It just means running a little deeper into the rapidly approaching corner than most Harleys ever get a chance to.
No worries. Mikey likes it.
Afterwards you can always sense the umbrage. Exiting the corner, I let my speed continue to bleed off. 80… 70… 60 – whereupon I roll back into the throttle. Let’s see if the boys want to play.
And sure enough, the lead rider has bumped his pace, the rest following in his wake. Smiling in my mirrors, I hold the pace for a moment, letting them close, letting them get their sea legs around that indignation they feel. Then the note of the V-Twin hardens once again, guttural and obdurate.
Rolling into the corner ahead, I wind slowly into the well of that motor. Searching for the edge, the berm, the place where it all hooks up. The place where all the energy flows to the same place, the tires and the frame and the suspension and the motor all coming together like molten sex.
And as quickly as I find it, they’re gone. Seems they don’t want to play after all.
Fifteen years ago I read a book called The Writing Trade, by John Jerome. It depicted, journal-style, a year-in-the-life of a writer. I loved it because it spoke to all those writerly things to which I had long aspired, ever since I was a teenager. Here was someone doing what I so very badly wanted to do – write for a living.
A few days ago I pulled it off the bookshelf and began reading it again. And very quickly, just like fifteen years ago, I was pulled into that world of of the minutiae of writing. What it meant to be a writer on a full time basis.
Halfway through the book, I decided to see what John Jerome had been up to. To see what other stuff he might have published since that 1992 publication of The Writing Trade. Google can be a wonderful thing.
Alas.
John Jerome was dead. Thirteen years after the year he depicted in his book, twelve years after he wrote it, ten years after it was published, and seven years after I read it – John Jerome had died. Lung cancer had come calling.
It was a sobering context with which to finish the book.
One of the things John came back to frequently was the financial struggle. Writing had afforded him the luxury of a lifestyle that many of us – and he himself – would consider blessed. But it had not graced him with much financial certitude. He lived pretty much week to week, depending upon the next freelance-work check to arrive in the mail.
I can empathize with that. After writing for Sport Rider for eight years I can attest that anyone who does it for the money must have rocks in their head. I certainly appreciate the check that follows a story submission – and I’ve always joked that those checks pay for my tires (and they do) – but the notion of actually trying to make a living from such a relative pittance is laughable. I don’t write fast enough that, even were there enough similar monthly gigs, I could manage even a lower-middle-class living.
John Jerome was a good-to-excellent writer who, despite a lifetime of work at it, never really made it. There are few that ever really do. Even Hemingway lived well not because of the remuneration from his writing, but because of his penchant for marrying rich women.
Doesn’t seem quite right.
But then again, as I finished the last half of The Writing Trade, aware that John Jerome was no longer with us, I was more aware than ever of the immediacy of the words he had written. That the voice he laid down on paper back in 1990 carried down over two decades, until now, even past the grave.
Maybe that’s why we do it.
Out of the entire lexicon of fly fishing, “gossamer” is probably my favorite word. It conjures images of a placid pool in the falling half-light of dusk, on a late spring day. The hatch is coming off. And there’s a fisherman standing there, tying a speck of a fly onto a wisp of a line. A hair’s breadth worth of tenuousness.
Raising the rod, the fisherman false casts once, at an angle to where that trout is rising, and then, turning a few degrees, he gently sends the tight curl that is the line back towards where it needs to be. The leader unfurls with a softness that speaks of women and dainty things. And if he is either lucky or good, the fly falls to the water with an almost preternatural lightness. In doing so it encapsulates the hope of everything.
.
I’ve been away too long. Don’t ask me why. I don’t have a good answer. All I know is that I’m back.
First the half-start of a nodding thought one morning a couple weeks ago. The remembrances, coming slowly at first, but then gaining strength. And then the casual click over to the Orvis site.
They were having a sale: Buy a new rod and they would throw in the reel and line and backing for free.
That old 6-weight Limestone of mine was pushing 30 years old. I wondered what had changed while I was away. What might one of those new 5-weight Helios be like?
And then yesterday, the ride over the mountain on the Harley. I hadn’t been to Harry Murray’s shop in 25 years. It was good to sit and chat with him again.
.
And now today, standing in this pool with water up to my knees, a 3-weight in my hands. I’ve never fished with a fly rod this light. And at 6’10”, I’ve never fished with one this short. I have brought many questions with me today.
I don’t yet know it, but this will be the best pool of the day. I stand at its tail, after having climbed carefully over the rocks which bound its nether end. My stealth won’t matter. Having tied a #18 ant onto a 6x tippet, my first attempts are ugly. Pulling the tan line out the rod’s tip, I false cast to gain some length, and then attempt to shoot it the twenty feet upstream to the riffle I have in mind. The line falls short, the leader collapsing back upon itself.
Lifting the rod, I try again. Stripping two more arm’s lengths worth of line from the reel, I make the distance this time, but the presentation is anything but clean. I shake my head, wondering if it’s the years of rust or this tiny, new fly rod.
“Slow down. Let it load,” I remind myself as I try a third time. There’s only a single, narrow tunnel of space behind me within which to make a back cast – one of the reasons for the diminutive rod – but this time it all comes together. The line floats back behind me and, like a sail suddenly catching the wind, I can feel the rod filling with energy. When it comes forward the line has that tight curl that is expected of it and the leader unfurls with a graceful beauty.
Having already lined the trout and splayed the water and generally made a mess of things, I already know I won’t catch any fish in this pool. Not today at least. But having found something of the measure of the rod, I decide to stay awhile anyway. I quickly come to enjoy casting the little 3-weight.
.
It’s funny the little things we forget. It’s supposed to reach over a hundred today. And although it’ll be a few degrees cooler here in the shade and elevation of Shenandoah National Park, there’s no doubt that this is a hot, late-July day. Yet despite wearing long pants and hip waders and a fishing vest, sliding slowly into the water brings an instant, almost blessed relief. A little bit later, edging forward in the pool, I feel sudden coldness on the thigh of my left leg. Glancing down, I confirm that my waders have reached the limit of their protection. I’ve always marveled at how a little creek which at first glance seems to be so boringly shallow can hold water of such surprising abundance.
After awhile my back cast fails me, my fly finding a thick clump of vegetation on which to attach. After retreating to the rear of the pool to rectify that, I sit down on one of the rocks. Snipping off the ant, I pull a #16 Adams from my fly box. Even with my reading glasses and a splash of direct sunlight providing illumination, it takes a dozen stabs with the end of my tippet before I find the eye of the hook. That part of things is certainly very different.
.
Thirty minutes later I’m half a mile up the trail, looking at other pools. Gazing down into one large pool I see a young woman sitting in the middle in water up to her chest. Her back is to me and my initial disappointment at seeing the spooked pool is given pause when I don’t see bra straps or a bathing suit top. My first thought is that she is skinny dipping. Ginny – who knows me far too well – would probably shake her head and wryly observe that I tend to be overly optimistic. A few minutes later the girl swims towards the ledge where I now see a young man standing. Her boyfriend I suppose. No, she’s not naked after all.
.
I haven’t seen another fisherman all morning, but my solitude has slowly given way to an increasing murmur of other human voices and the occasional sight of people walking past the stream. The couple swimming in the creek was the last straw and has finally prompted me to turn around.
Working my way slowly back to the truck, I pause as I pass a slot in the trail. Breaking off the path, I drop down through the woods to where I can hear the water. There’s a small pool there. Studying the approach, I discard the direct route down, the one marked by the dull path and the flattened vegetation. Skirting to the lower side, the one hidden from the water by the large rocks in the way, I pick my way carefully through the poison ivy. Bent down among the rocks, I intuit the shape of the pool more than actually see it. Stripping ten feet of line out the rod, I flip the Adams in a tight curl to the side of the pool I cannot see.
The brook trout hits without hesitation. And in an instant my rod is alive, holding within it the vibration that is life itself. Bound to me by a gossamer thread.
The thudding joy I feel, the lift in my chest, is all remembrance. The one I had forgotten.
I think I won’t forget again.