When I come to the rare eye of the storm in the persistent hail of schoolwork and busyness, I am more than eager to savor such an opportunity, for an hour or so, to escape to the stream with my rod and tackle. Upon reaching the water, I feel a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders as I leave the books, the essays, the lab reports behind at my desk. Taking a worm, a bit of sausage, a kernel of canned corn, I drop the steely hook into the water as it murmurs over worn pebbles. Or I tie a green drake to the leader of a fly line, pull my waders up to my hips, and shuffle out as deep as they will permit.

As I wait for the ever-curious fish to inspect my offering to them, I begin to watch my surroundings in silence. I observe the aria of the dragonflies around my net, and the up-down flight of the mayflies above the water, like a thousand pistons. I welcome the clouds of insects; would it be nature if their constant hum fell silent? I stare into the vast sky towards the birds in flight, or at the creatures in the woods all around. I hear the hammering of the woodpecker and the chatter of the squirrels. On a rare day, I may see an eagle soaring regally above me or a deer prancing through the ferns. Then I remember the fish around my line and consider their microcosm of sandstone and babbling, cool water. Some days I may forget the catch altogether and shuffle around the worn stones below me in hopes of catching a crayfish, or pick through the craggy plates of red shale along the eroded bank and stumble upon an ancient fossil of some mystery creature.

    Most days, I fall into an endless maze of my own uninterrupted thoughts, as the only sounds around me are the stream, birds, and wind. I wander among this maze without a planned course; quite often I find myself contemplating the grand scale of nature and its interconnectedness as I watch the mayflies, the blue jays, the cumulus clouds. I stay away from dwelling on schoolwork, career plans, or politics-there will be time enough for those once I leave. I instead prefer to consider things that I value personally—relationships, things I hope to do one day, God and how to be a fisher of men. Some days I may catch seven fish of two species in the space of an hour; some days I go home with only a lure lost in the greenery after a poor cast. Somehow I have found that often the lost-lure days are the more enjoyable of the two; they show me that I still have much to learn to challenge myself.

Eventually, the sun sets below the horizon, and I must retreat out of nature for a time. I pack away my rod and hooks, and chuckle to myself, “Ah, it was a good trip, even without a catch.” The owls arise to bid me farewell, and I walk back into reality...

And I would not have it any other way.