Late in an Angler's Life: Essays on the Sport

Rating:
Summary: almost as good as his 1st book
Review: If you like literate fly fishing books, pickup this one along with Gordon Wickstrom's 1st book. The author opines on sundry topics trout and fishing related. Shakespeare. Yeats. Fly Patterns. A very idiosynchratic book. If you like Frank Mele, Bill Barich, Mcguane at his most academic - you will like Wickstrom.

Rating:
Summary: Standing in the River
Review: In several of these essays, Wickstrom has stepped out of his niche as a writer on fishing to a position as a writer who uses fishing as a ledge to stand on whilst observing life its own self. I felt myself in the company of a first rate mind that has lived vividly and (much, much more important) thoughtfully in the great world beyond the banks of the stream. Melville knew that we are all drawn to the water, and that it needn't be a grim November to find us standing at the edge of whatever island we're on, looking out. Bill at the Canon City flyshop says that we go fishing because we need to stand in a river. And I think he's right. But most of us go stand in the river so as to build a cocoon of focus that excludes the great world, and so find rest and solace from its busy wounding and exhilarating interference. Wickstrom, from his ledge in the river, looks out on that great world and makes up thoughts about it. Those thoughts are refined and purified by the action of the river and his passionate attention to its denizens, but never do they use the river as a palliative or hiding place. Instead they use the river as a source of clarity and gravitas.
"Gravitas, the heavy tread of moral earnestness, becomes a bore if it is not accompanied by the light step of intelligence." So says the Oxford Dictionary, and they ought to know. Wickstrom's light step draws us in to relish and consider of his ideas.
What a fine book.