Got great at the end

Navigations: One Man Explores The Americas And Discovers Himself

Ted Kerasote's Navigations starts off weak--in my opinion, only--but ends very, very strong. Masterly strong. My issue with the first few essays--travels, really--is that they skimmed the surface. My surface. I have to keep pointing out that an opinion of a book like this is highly personal. A different person could have opposite and equally valid feelings.

But even when I didn't feel the connection with the author, I much enjoyed reading his adventures. His quest for A Record Snook is simply a fishing tale--hooking the fish, crashing through the surf, feeling his fish's indecision and then realizing with a hopeless determination it had decided to swim into the river where following it would require wading through a log jam and climbing the roots of a huge snag. Sometimes, when you're reading such adventure, you get a better feel for the countryside than if the author was simply describing it, from a high vantage point. It's a whole lot different thing to see a massive tree fallen in the river, gnarly roots exposed in a hideous snarl, than it is to climb over such an obstacle. Kerasote takes you with him.

Later on he described some years spent with his wife--a time when two people were greatly in love with each other but eternally pulled apart by their passions--dancing and climbing, for her; travel and writing, for him.  I could see a lot of guys being turned off by this section--where's the sport?  Where's the record fish, the sub-three-hour marathon, the search for the perfect, trophy Line?  (that's a skiing route, best I can understand.)  What's with all this emotional crap?

I didn't mind. But I have to say my favorite stories are ones like "Neva Hurry" where he confronts the contrast between his schedule as a working author of short stories, which involves deadlines, airline schedules, endless meetings, and his need to slow down and feel life...to dabble in a river for trout, get a hit at the eleventh hour, slowly release his catch, a breeding-sized female, then hold his hands in the freezing water until they ache.

It was a  dark pool, dark as the bridge shadow over which I had stood the evening before, dark as a slow brown smile of Carib Billy Joe and as smooth, glossy, and continually moving as one's life in retrospect--when all the mindless hurry, inscrutable hurry, and senseless ambition have passed into what we kindly call wisdom. Into this pool, with a delicate plop, I dropped my hare's ear nymph.

[skipped a bit here, sorry...the nymph stopped moving.]

I gave a tremendous whoop, which stampeded the contentedly grazing cows, and of course I also immediately fell into the fiver, shipping water over my starboard hip wader.
"Man, neva hurry."
Yes, Billy Joe, yes.