When my cousin, Dr. Terry Chapman, steps waist deep into a cold New England stream to live his love of trout fishing he becomes a living metaphor for the spiritual immersion every loving caregiver must engage every day.

Listen to the detailed way he engages his passion and how this unifies avocation and spirituality. As his essay show, he clearly knows how to spirit-fish. 

Nature, Spirituality & Fishing

  Nature is as important as life itself since it is life itself!  

   How can we separate ourselves from nature? How can I start each day without a nod to the sun or lack of it; the rain or lack of it; the snow or lack of it; my steady breathing as I begin each day and then, in the bathroom cleaning my face, rinsing my eyes, and seeing this living creature staring back at me? It is of course myself and then I smile the smile of one who is very much aware of his animal instincts and his place on Planet Earth.

   I nod in gratitude to God. At that moment I am bathed in spirituality, part of the YMCA trinity of Spirit, Mind & Body. 

   When I allow or rather enable myself to become totally immersed in nature as when I am up to my waist in cold, rushing stream water; am focused intently on all insect and fish life in my arena of influence and even perhaps the fleeting glimpse of a squirrel on the bank; have sighted a feeding trout swimming toward me; and slowly lift up my left arm and the flexible fly rod follows that arc; and the supple fly line extends sinuously up and behind my left shoulder and I almost pause at its apogee—then locking my left elbow and thrusting forward my forearm to deliver the fly, perched at the absolute tip of my fly line on a thin thread of material called a tippet—and amazingly it rides out toward the trout’s path on a straightening line and magically alights on the water, moving downstream with a gentle rocking motion and the trout turns from its angle of approach; follows the fly to the end of its ride and just before the current’s drag spoils my fly’s natural appearance; rises directly upward, the sun striking the muted red side of its body; rises and opens its white mouth which I can briefly see and clamps down on my fly and I feel a direct connection to its life force—at that very instant I am indeed one with Planet Earth and much of its mysteries; its hopes and its dreams, its fears and its opportunities; I am in touch with nature as one!

   And whether I solidly hook that fish or whether I am able to bring the fish to my net for a closer connection is beside the point. The moment most desirable has already happened.

   There is something difficult to explain about how exciting and desirable that moment is to me. Is it that I have the chance to briefly capture, hold, and look at one of God’s creatures from a different medium—water—or is it that I know that the lure, the fly I tied has fooled the trout or is it simply that at that specific moment in time nothing else matters at all?

   Its importance is my true motivation for spending so many hours in the pursuit of trout: Approximately 200 hours every winter tying trout flies at my den desk and at least 150 hours on the trout streams every spring, summer, and fall, trying to get connected to a trout. And you can also add about 50-100 hours of reading fishing books; looking at fishing books at show, libraries and elsewhere online, and poring over the Cabella and Orvis catalogues that brighten my New England winter days spent at home with the snow and ice raging outside.

   Here is a Celtic prayer from the book, “Celtic Blessings and Prayers” by Brendan O’Malley:

Deep peace of the running wave to you

Deep peace of the silent stars

Deep peace of the flowing air to you

Deep peace of the quiet earth

May peace fill your soul

Let peace, let peace, let peace make you whole”

-Terry Chapman, PhD

Photograph by Terry