If there’s one thing that can keep my focus these days, as it has for the last seven or eight years, it is fly fishing.  Whether I catch any fish or not.

It’s probably my favorite meditative activity.

Everything else in my life—trying to figure out how to survive financially, living with my aged father who struggles to be happy, my cats whose primary focus seems to be their next meal, trying to understand my relation to my environment in its many guises—recedes into my subconscious for the time I’m on the water.

Yes, I know there’s plenty of writing out there, including “zen” books on fly fishing, addressing the positive clarifying effects of such re-creating moments.  Those when the spirit, whatever that is, is renewed, invigorated, cleansed. Continue reading →