One River More

Rating:
Summary: A wistful, even sad, must-read for the devoted flyfisher.
Review: "One River More," the third flyfishing book by New England novelist and short story writer W.D. Wetherell, is very definitely a writer's book. If you enjoy evocative writing, writing that paints a sense of place so tangible you feel are there, you most likely will enjoy this book.

Wetherell is a remarkable writer. A precise writer. An artist with words. One whose talent I would dearly love to have. Indeed, I can picture him mining his vocabulary and our entire literary heritage, for that mater, for the just the right word to put the finishing brushstroke on his verbal canvas. As fellow writer John Gierach says on the dust jacket, "Wetherell writes about fishing with an angler's love for the sport and a novelist's eye for detail. 'One River More' is his best yet.'"

I agree with Gierach ... except for the final sentence.

I enjoyed "One River More," don't get me wrong. But I cannot say I enjoyed it more than or even as much as either of the two earlier books in his now-complete flyfishing trilogy. The earlier books are "Vermont River," named by Trout Unlimited's Trout magazine as one of the best fishing books of the past 30 years, and "Upland Stream."

What separates this work from the earlier books? I recall them being more buoyant. They generated loads of smiles. They made me feel as if I was wading alongside the author. I felt the rod load with each cast and delighted in each fly taken whether it was sipped, attacked or just plain gulped.

In "One River More," Wetherell dishes up a tasty bouillabaisse to be sure. The ingredients include an unabashed love of flyfishing, trout, ferociously pugnacious smallmouth bass and his home water (the Connecticut River), startlingly somber reflection, and a dash or two of a cantankerousness -- about crowded rivers, flyfishing's trendiness, and newcomers ignorant of or oblivious to the sport's etiquette -- that I don't recall from his earlier books. This mix he spices up with flourishes of down-home boyish enthusiasm, especially the section celebrating recent adventures on Yellowstone's rivers. The tales of experiences on the famous rivers - the Yellowstone, Madison, Gallatin, Firehole and Gibbon - and waters previous unknown to me -- Grayling Creek, Nez Perce Creek and the Bechler -- are my favorites in this book.

So, what's there not to like?

Maybe it is the overall tone. Simply put, it left me sad. This book, in many ways, acknowledges his having entered the autumn of life and the realization that his finest days of flyfishing are likely behind him.

He writes: "As a man nears fifty ... everything takes on a burnish, a retrospective glow, and it becomes harder to that vernal kind of brightness that makes you want tot throw your hands up and shout in sheer delight. Your eyes begin noticing how the pines all seem to be dying from roadside salt or acid rain; you see the houses going up too close to the river, the wanton disregard for all you hold dear; the fishing doesn't seem quite so good anymore; rapids you would have pushed aside in disdain only a few years ago now seem dangerous; the river in little ways, seems out to get you. If you're lucky, there still enough boy in you to bull past this sunset kind of vision, but it takes effort now; it's not something your genes do instinctively on their own."

Perhaps it's that 40 grows a more-distant memory with each day, but I find this tone too melancholy. My wish is to prolong indefinitely the "sheer delight" I find in flyfishing. "One River More," however, is an all-too-sober reminder of how the meandering, irresistible river of time can erode and undercut that wish.