Free Treasure

Epsilon Theory Unplugged is an ongoing series featuring a rotating cast of authors. Each Tuesday, a new note is published. We cover a variety of topics, all focusing on our relationship with technology and ourselves. Sign up to keep up to date on the latest Unplugged notes.

To read more from Dave Nadig, check out ETF.com and Nadig.com.

“Just think about how much time we have spent right here paying attention to the sunset.”

Barry and I just pulled up to Leen’s Lodge, a fishing and hunting camp amid 57,000 acres of protected wilderness in northeastern Maine, perched on one of the best fishing spots — West Grand Lake — in the world. It’s been the home of “Camp Kotok,” an annual fishing trip/economics retreat hosted by Cumberland’s David Kotok since shortly after 9/11.

Pristine water. Hundreds of miles of rarely hiked trails. Lakes full of fish. Eagles so huge and healthy they’re a threat to steal a prize catch right out of the boat. Over almost two decades, we’ve stood on this same porch: bathing in stillness as we watch the sun explode in cacophonous light.

We stand there silently for a time. Breathing. Listening to the loons. Transfixed and at peace.

It’s 1976, give or take, and I am, also, on West Grand Lake. My grandfather has asked me to fish with him today. Yesterday, I’d gone out paired with my hangover-addled Father, my sister with my Mother, each pair matched with an antediluvian guide. We had dropped shiners on hooks over the side, caught perch, and had a picnic on the beach back at the lodge.

Today is different. I go out with Popop and his guide. He is a serious fly fisherman.

My composite memory of him isn’t large: He was quiet and tall and imposing. I saw him on a few family trips like this, which almost always involved fishing or some other outdoor adventure. This is my inheritance: a monogrammed powder horn from the Revolutionary War, a few bugles, some portraits, and a hunting knife handed down from his Grandfather, an unmet proto-woodsman of the 1800s. It’s still sharp enough for surgery.

By the time I knew him as a boy, he was less human than icon: he represented access to certain aspects of reality like “how to fish.” He valued his family, and was not without warmth, but when push came to shove — he waded off down his own stream, not trailing two generations behind him.

So, when I say he wants to fish with me it is not lost on me it is a unique moment. So this is a gift — his time and attention — rarely doled these out to us younguns.

(My memories of that afternoon on the boat are so clear that they are almost certainly an imaginal amalgamation of movies, photographs, magazine articles and perhaps some bits of neuron-stored truth.)

We fly fish, casting into the weeds for small-mouth bass. We fish from a Grand Laker canoe, the preferred platform of the Maine Guide. It seems like an aircraft carrier as a child. I stand up and try to cast while my grandfather sits next to me, roll casting from the front of the boat.

He fishes. He watches me fish. Silence, but for some coaching on my cast.

“Tip up.” “stop your back cast sooner.” “You need to have patience Davey. Don’t look at the line behind you, feel the weight of it tension the rod.” “Relax.” “You need to be stiffer on the lift.”

(I was a larval, uncoordinated little human, and more than a little “weird.” I was not good at any of this. His instruction made me nervous as I struggle to please him.)

I very, very much want to please him. I grip harder, furled brow and tired eyes focussed on the patch of weeds in front of me.

“OK, just stop.” he says, laying his own rod down the gunnel of the canoe. I’m on the verge of tears. He leans forward in the seat, getting quite close. Closer than I’d ever been (He isn’t a hugger).

“Close your eyes.” He says.

“What?” I turn and look at him, jostling the boat, regaining my balance.

“Just do it.” So I do.

I feel his cavernous, leathery hand wrap around my right hand, pinning it to the cork of the grip. I feel his other hand grip my bicep, completely surrounding my arm with his fingers. He puppeteers my body through the only absolutely perfect cast I have ever made.

(When I have a rod in my hand, I re-remember this moment, every time.)

The tension in my fingers as the line loads the rod, while at the same time, completely embraced by his hands. The tight, confident movements that set the line aloft, the subtle but deliberate changes as more line goes into the air, all while being firmly held under his absolute focus.

And then, in the final arc forward, as the last of the line trails behind us with a not-quite silent “wish,” everything about my grandfather changes.

The check cast.

As the rod crosses directly overhead in that final cast, getting to perhaps “2 O’Clock” above me, his hand tightens, holds fast, with the rod immobile. I hear the line swish over my head and, just as I feel it pull ever so slightly forward, the line now shot forward from the rod … the world disappears.

He is gone. Everything about him is empty and still.

His hand still covers mine. I feel warmth. I feel held. But all stiffness and strength are gone. Every part of him that is full of pain and past and desire and tension leaves. I can feel the stillness move through him and into me.

And I am calm.

“There. Like that.”

I open my eyes to see the fly land like dandelion fluff in between a few lily pads, the barely visible leader falling gently to the water in a perfectly straight line leading back to the tip of my rod. It is as if god himself has exhaled it onto the lake. I stand, motionless. Transfixed and at peace.

I met Pete at church, which for me, is an “all are welcome” itinerant street church we call the “Cathedral of the Beloved.” We meet outside, on whatever Church lawn the organizers have been able to borrow. While I “know” a few dozen of our community by face and name, I know hardly any of their stories. But Pete is a talker.

“See that building? I put every pipe in that building in 1983!” he tells me one day. He beams with pride when he talks about his plumbing career. Somewhere along the way though, he got hurt enough to fall through the cracks, and never quite got back up. He has family, estranged over unretold grievances. When Pete misses a Sunday, I worry.

Last Sunday, Pete made it, but he seemed a bit more disoriented than usual. His usually cheerful-despite-it-all demeanor worn down.

“Let me get you some coffee and a seat Pete!” I say with genuine joy for seeing him. He sits in the folding metal chair under the shade of an ancient tree on the church lawn, visibly relaxing as he exhales. I go back to my spot behind the music stand and play guitar awhile.

The rest of the musicians aren’t here yet, so I play stuff I’m working on from my own songbook:

Do you wanna go to the river?
I know this spot so deep and green
With wild raspberries and apple trees
And rocks to climb between
Water like a washing machine

It’s “Free Treasure” by Adrienne Lenker, which I’ve been learning a bit each week.

I watch the community gather: Angie is at the coffee table, and she doesn’t seem high today. there’s a new teenager I haven’t seen before sheepishly filling out a name tag. Margaret rolls past me on her mobility scooter, which miraculously always seems to work, no matter how rough she looks, and leans into the “stuff” box and grabs a packet of clean socks someone’s donated from Walmart. Volunteers are getting lunch set up. The Priest is laying out a quilt on a plastic table to put the bread and wine on. I’m deep background.

But Pete’s listening. He looks at me, a little blankly as I stumble through the verses (there is no more forgiving audience) and finally land on the chorus.

You show me,
Understanding
Patience and pleasure
Time and attention
Love without measure
The Eleventh Dimension:
Free Treasure.

And I see his face light up, and small smile cross his weathered and lined face. His lips repeat the words “time and attention” a few times over. “Love without measure.”

He catches my gaze, and I weep.

Time and Attention. Love without Measure. Transfixed, and at peace.