The Way Life Should be
Excerpt from Chapter 2 of “Out of the Darkness: How a Special Operations Marine Found the Light”.
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.
Isaiah 40:3–8 KJV
Ryan (8yr), Dad and Matt (1992)
Excerpt from Chapter 2 of “Out of the Darkness: How a Special Operations Marine Found the Light”.
We also fished in Orbeton Stream, fourteen miles northwest of Strong in the small unorganized territory of Madrid. It was one of those wicked small towns that hugged the Sandy River: if you blinked a couple times, you’d miss the whole place, even at thirty-five miles per hour.
My father had fished here as a kid, and it was always good for catching your limit. He, my brother, and I had a running bet: whoever caught the longest fish didn’t have to help clean them when we landed back home. It was an excellent incentive: cleaning fifteen or more trout was no joke. Back then, brook fishing gear was surprisingly simple—no smartphones or any other of the high-tech equipment that I hope hasn’t infiltrated this traditional way of life.
The gear I used was the same I plan to use in teaching my own children to brook fish: a collapsible pole, a plastic tub of store-bought nightcrawlers, a fishing bag, and a small plastic tub containing sinkers, extra line, and hooks. A collapsible pole was essential during infiltration and exfiltration—Maine waterways are overgrown with the prickle bushes, pucker brush, cattails, and tall grass that are the mortal enemies of fishing line and long poles. A tangled line or broken pole tip might not end your fishing trip, but they could take away from the pleasure of enjoying the beautiful scenery and catching trout.
My canvas cloth bag had the traditional center pouch with its spring-closed top, as well as adjustable shoulder straps fitted with a D-ring. The outer flap, next to the opening, bore a ten-inch measuring surface with which to check whether a fish was legal to keep or whether it deserved a pat on the tail and a whispered See yah next year, bub—when you’re bigga’. Below it were two pockets, the only ones on the outside of the bag. One was big enough to hold a compass, the other a small eyeglass case. At the bottom of both sides of my fishing bag was mesh—it looked great but snagged on brush in the woods. The bigger of the two inner pockets were waterproof, letting us fill it with ice or cold water to store fish in so that they wouldn’t spoil on a hot day—not a huge concern in Maine.
A small can of bug spray fit nicely in the side pocket—mission-essential equipment in the backwoods of Maine with their thick population of insects. Dad was immune to bug bites: they steered clear, probably afraid of being bit by him instead. Mosquitos, vicious and unrelenting, might as well as have been Maine’s state bird. The black fly, the “redheaded cousin” of the ’skeeter, was notorious for flying directly toward the eyeballs, so clean hands were as essential to have as they were impossible to keep when using worms to bait and catch fish. After a while we got used to the smell of worms and fish, accepting that a little fish or worm guts near the eye was a small price to pay for being able to give a black fly what it had coming as it sat near the eyeball’s inner rim. But the insect bites were a fair trade for having the chance to enjoy the sheer beauty and excitement of catching your own food for the dinner table. Luckily the brooks in Maine are still clean enough to wash your hands in without worrying about them rotting off or growing an extra appendage on the ride home.
Orbeton Stream had multiple crossing points where an old logging track named Railroad Road—once frequented by large eighteen-wheeled log trucks that brought timber down from the mountainside—crisscrossed and hugged the stream bank much of the way down from Redington Pond. The pond sprawled at the southern base of Redington Mountain, which climbed 2,400 feet to an elevation of 4,009 feet. The mountain ranges that hemmed in the pond varied in elevation from 2,000 to 4,249 feet, and the terrain was gnarly, with small waterfalls surrounded by granite and slate cliffs whose almost vertical banks plunged down to the brook.
Navigating these tricky areas during a fishing expedition required the attitude of a mountain goat. To get to the next fishing hole, we jumped from rock to rock, shimmying across downed trees or climbing over massive boulders that had been in the path of the roaring brook for centuries, a testimony to the pure power of God’s exertion. They were just some of the massive glacial deposits of rocks and various types of earth that littered Maine from the glaciers’ journey south thousands of years before. The streams cut through rock and ledge alike, offering a study in patience and persistence: the rock at the bottom of the streambeds had been smoothed by years and years of water traveling over, around, and even under it—negligible as a single drop but able to move mountains and shape continents with time.
“I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.” –Ecclesiastes 9:11
Trees hung like ornaments from the cliffs, some growing outward to bridge the gap, then upward toward the open sky as if having just realized, after years of growth, that the sun lay in a different direction. The hemlock and white cedar enjoyed the wet ground, hugging the banked terrain as they spread their small pinecones into the water for the current to carry downstream to new beginnings.
Our hopscotch approach to finding fishing pools left little time for conversation—we saved the storytelling and the tales of close encounters with the water, or tragic spills in it, for the walk back to the truck. One of us would fish one pool while another skipped ahead to the next. We were fishing not only for our supper but also for the right to not have to clean our dinner, so there was no time for small talk. We usually didn’t stop until either we had caught our limit or darkness had snuck up on us, catching us by surprise as the piercing beams of the sinking sun cut through the trees. Sometimes we fished up the brook until we met our exfiltration criteria, then turned around. Other times we hiked up, then fished back down to Dad’s blue Dodge Dakota. It was easier to hike up and work your way back, but doing so risked leaving too little space between the truck to catch your limit. It was a surer thing to fish north until catching our limit, then climb the banks to find the skidda’ trail and heada’ south towards civilization. Exhaustion had usually set in by then, allowing us to wind down from our epic fishing adventure by explaining how we had slipped into the water off a wet log or simply by misjudging our step. We usually exited the woods in the dark, hoping to see some deer or other wild animals along the way.
I lived for the outdoors, and being active was my solace. Television and video games figured little into my upbringing—they were merely tools for occupying us during storms or for keeping us from becoming kidsicles when it was just too dang cold. I longed for days when I could be outside. Granted, Maine wasn’t for the faint of heart—it gets pretty chilly. During December 2017, while I was visiting on military leave, we hit temperatures of –26 at Full Armor farm, and on windy days the windchill quickly dropped to –40, temperatures at which frostbite threatens within ten minutes and hypothermia can set in very quickly if not properly dressed. On those days, you stay inside with a cup of coffee and the Good Book.