I fished Round Valley all through the winters of a few years, and parts of the winters before and after that, mostly for shorebound trout, but for bass during May, also. The recreational, or you could say re-creational, experience of fishing preserved and led to a life outside, when I could have been a shut-in. I fished the trout every other day; fishing brought me back to nature in a social respect. Mike Petrole, Dave De Lucca, Fred Matero, Nick Mattei and his father. These are just a handful of the names. Getting solitude in addition to socializing never was any problem. I never before felt spirited in my life in the arid way iron sands engendered. It was when they seemed whiter than red, as if, had they been lit, they’d be on fire at higher heat. Photo Shot with my Nikon D850.
The Book Isn’t Finished
That spiritedness at Round Valley inspired my first book on fishing. I had not only completed 300 pages of “rough” draft; I had begun revising it. Then I stopped in my tracks and let it sit on my hard drive. I believed, as a collection of essays (though they shared one theme), it couldn’t be published. Erroneous, but that’s how I was informed and what I thought.
A year or so later, in March, 2017, I began The Microlight Quest, which is really a memoir, if I can pull it off. I took a few hiatus’s as long as three years apiece, but I feel the eagerness of the guys who ask me how it’s coming. I do get impatient, but the book requires a lot of care. I want to let you know I’m working on it about four days a week, necessarily all day long, but I don’t know how long it will take. Once I’m satisfied with it as finished, I have to try to find an agent. Supposing we find a publisher, edits and revisions will be in store.
The title will probably be assigned by the editor. “The Microlight Quest” is what’s called a “working title.”
A thick woodland doesn’t necessarily suggest chaos. The presence felt in response to this portion indicates order, balance, and harmony. Shot with my Nikon D850.
The Structure
In a few words, I’m creating order out of a forest of ideas, images, and memories, all of which amount to the theme of going away, attaining enlightenment (and it never is quite the same for any two people), and then, by my tracing my way back to the ordinary world, showing readers the value. Even the Buddha came back to society to found the Sangha, a monastic community, though he was a couple hundred miles from where he grew up. Among our New Jersey contingent, you might agree that we’re fortunate for having Joe Santiago found the New Jersey Multispecies Podcast and Mayhem Fishing, to cite something I believe clearly defies the hum drum of ordinary society—for inquiry, interest, and events.
Mine is an adventure story, not just a how-to on fishing salmon eggs for stockers, but it will teach you plenty about doing that.
“The method,” as Jorge Hildago calls it. It fascinates me. It’s something I want to write about and do write about.
Microlight method.
Just the other day—Wednesday night—Steve Risavy asked me if “microlight” means more than what it designates for trout fishing. I told him it does. For one example, my son is a plasma physicist who works with matter hotter than the interior of the sun. A low-density form of matter, but not as light as a neutrino.
But somewhere—to add to the related comparisons—I wrote about microlight as spirit. And this is where I really go with the comparison. As if spirit—not a material particle—is the lightest of substantiality. Substantiality as a broader category than matter.
It’s just that I write sentences down I think really work, and then I forget where I put them.
Kittatinny Ridge at Walpack Inn. Over and beyond there are other rivers than the Flat Brook: the Paulinskill, the Pequest, the Musconectong, South Branch, North Branch … others.
The Seated Pose
The ass is meant to sit, and yet it’s meant to be ass. To denigrate the seated posture would be inhuman, unless it’s pointed out that way only on the occasion of a certain kind of contempt. People who engage outdoor recreation may sit in a boat, but even if they do, they involve an active way of physically engaging things.
I will do my best to make my book fulfilling reading for people who fish anyway they choose.