While you’re reading this, I should be standing knee-deep in a quiet stretch of river in northwest New York. If not there, I’ll be sitting in front of a roaring fire; the evening temperature is still in the low 40s. Or I’ll be stopping by shops in the nearby town of Roscoe, visiting with folks I’ve known for more than two decades.
My fishing buddy, Eric Beeby, will be somewhere around. Eric is a Dallas-based executive for a communications company. Every year in May the river calls, and Eric and I respond. It is a ritual that began 17 years ago in the drawing room of William F. Buckley’s home on Park Avenue.
I was publisher of National Review at the time, and the occasion was the magazine’s bi-weekly editorial dinner, where we talked over problems, debated issues, and planned the magazine’s upcoming stories.
That particular evening, Bill had invited a young couple from Dallas to sit in on the meeting and stay for dinner. I wasn’t particularly happy when Bill did this sort of thing, which he did often; after all, it was supposed to be a working dinner. But I had learned to put up with it, grudgingly, because Bill Buckley has more friends and makes more new friends than there are blades of grass in Central Park. He likes to invite them all over for dinner, no matter what the agenda is supposed to be.
So when Bill introduced me to Eric and Kim, I was resigned, and I’m afraid it showed. At that moment, Eric reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a box, which he then presented to me. In it were some delicious-looking, hand-tied flies. He had read a piece I had written on flyfishing the Beaverkill and tied these flies for me to test on the river.
This was thoughtfulness of the most egregious sort. Standing there, holding this very nice gift in my hands, there was nothing I could do but mumble an invitation for him to come up sometime to test them on the river himself. Eric being Eric, he promptly accepted, pulled out his pocket calendar, and asked what days would be most convenient. We’ve been fishing the Beaverkill together ever since.
When I think about the things that have changed in my life in those intervening years—different cities, different jobs, a daughter born, other daughters grown, and more—I come to appreciate the power of a simple ritual of spring. Every life has its rituals. Families gather at the ranch for Christmas or at the beach for summer. Couples return like the swallows of Capistrano to their favorite places at their favorite times. Fathers and sons go hunting on land they’ve walked since both were boys.
Ritual has more force than all the armies of man. Witness the fact that there are ancient rituals alive today armies of kings and dictators throughout history have tried to crush. Those armies today are dust.
The seasonal rituals, sacred and secular, are what bring us closest to our true selves. Life has its stages, but it also has its rhythms. Mine involves some very selective trout and a friend who regards them with as much reverence as I do.
