Russ Beck2013-05-18T16:13:28-04:00Russ Beckhttp://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=russ-beckCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Russ BeckGood old fashioned elbow grease.The Truth About Fishingtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.24114602013-01-04T15:22:26-05:002013-03-06T05:12:01-05:00Russ Beckhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/russ-beck/
Of all the sporting ventures, fly fishing -- and, particularly, river angling -- must be the most romantic. And I get it. Rods whip back and forth like a drunk conductor's baton. Lures are constructed out of thread, feathers and lead wire. Special gear allows you to feel like you're getting wet when you're actually staying dry. And the fish.
On good days, fish seem like they are conjured instead of caught. But here's the truth: fly fishing -- no matter how pretty Brad Pitt makes it look -- is about people pestering animals for their own pleasure. Harold F. Blaisdell said in The Philosophical Fisherman, "All the romance of trout fishing exists in the mind of the angler and is in no way shared by the fish."
Even though I know this fact and feel its weight every time I angle, I still can't go a day without thinking about fishing. I've taken up hobbies connected to angling so that I can think about fishing when I'm away from the river. I tie my own flies (my wife calls it "man crafts"). I furl my own leaders with a jig I constructed out of cheap pine and dowels. I fall asleep watching fish porn (the only thing naked are the fish). On YouTube, men in Montana clutch trout; their teeth grit as they heft fish for photos.
Most of the adages and folk knowledge about fishing must apply to spin anglers, because they aren't talking about the people I fish with. The idea that fishing is about patience is laughable. When working a river, if I don't catch a fish within five casts I move up to the next hole. The saying "That's why they call it fishing and not catching" seems off too. If I go fishless for over a half hour I get itchy.
The only stereotypes I've found that are true relate to anglers being secretive, superstitious and liars. I've taken oaths to keep secrets related to flies and fishing holes that make the Russian mafia look like the Girl Scouts. The same streams fish different from day to day, so anglers turn to superstitions to explain the changes. Anglers lie because the sport itself necessitates it.
If you were to chart catching a fish into a traditional story arc (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action), it would be all exposition and climax with no rising action or falling action. Even on those great days when you're not sure if it's late summer or early fall, when the riffles boil, when it seems like any well-placed cast produces a fish, anglers have to imagine what happens under the water because they can't see it. Anglers lie because even when it's done with other people, fishing is a solitary act. They have to patch over the holes in their own stories while they're happening. Fly anglers place the fly in the right current. They get the perfect drift. They see the fish turn and take. And, sometimes, it actually happens.
Once a stray mayfly (a staple of a trout's diet) bumped into my office window as I graded student essays. I watched as he forced his haloed wings to smash his body against my window over and over again. I tell my students to just write about something they love -- about something they can't not write about. I tell them that I'll read essays about video games, about music, about old MASH episodes, about pocket lint or My-Little-Pony collections.
I ask them what they look up on the internet when they have five minutes (and, sometimes, I regret that). But they won't pick topics they're actually interested in. They write about things that they think I'm interested in: Dickinson poems, politics, even fishing. Their essays fall flat. I go home after teaching, eat dinner with my wife, and put my daughter to bed. Then I pull out my fly bench and try to reconstruct that mayfly.]]>Change My Mind: Should Big Boys Cry?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14179262012-04-11T11:58:37-04:002012-06-11T05:12:02-04:00Russ Beckhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/russ-beck/reported on Huffpost (where you can also watch the video of Bubba blubbering):
Rather than let out a defiant sequence of yells like Tiger Woods did after winning at Bay Hill recently, Bubba Watson's reaction to winning the 2012 Masters was tender and poignant.
After sinking his second putt on the 10th green to win the playoff against Louis Oosthuizen, Watson bent down to pick up his keepsake from the cup. By the time he had risen, his eyes were watery with tears. He turned into an embrace with his caddie Ted Scott, his shoulders heaving with his emotion. While he shared that moment with Scott, Watson's mother came trotting out onto the green. The pair shared another touching moment.
For our ongoing debate series, "Change My Mind," we've asked two Huffpost contributors to duke it out, in a gentlemanly way, as to whether this scene creeped them out -- or if they welcomed this show of male tears. Who do you agree with?
]]>Russ Beck- On Crying in Sports and the Mormon Churchtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14172282012-04-11T08:39:28-04:002012-06-11T05:12:02-04:00Russ Beckhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/russ-beck/
Once a month in the Mormon church, members are invited to testify of the things they believe. This usually results in tears--tears from toddlers, mothers and men.
Remember, Mormonism is a religion that leans heavily on patriarchal order. Women aren't allowed to hold the highest positions in the church (or even the second, third or fourth highest positions). And yet, many men still monthly do something that is viewed by most as being unmanly, even womanly. Because I was raised in the heart of Mormondom (in the geographic center of Utah) it took TV years to teach me that crying wasn't manly. The Duke Boys didn't cry. The Fall Guy didn't cry--but the Vietnam Vet who lived down the road did cry.
We've had two criers in sports lately that have received a fair amount of flack: Bubba Watson winning the green jacket and Vernon Davis catching the winning pass to progress the Forty Niners past the Saints in this year's NFL playoffs. I watched the Niner's game with a buddy and when Davis ripped off his helmet and sobbed, we both looked at each other, then looked back to the screen and avoided eye contact. Later we admitted to holding back emotion. Emotion that, for some reason, we were ashamed to have. I talked with another friend who has worked as a butcher, played hockey, and has substantial facial hair about the catch. He said it was beautiful. He watched it over and over again. Then he wrote a poem about it. A poem might be the most appropriate response to this kind of emotion. Maybe we are finally letting men be more than just men, but humans too.
I remember crying twice during church: once when someone hurt my feelings (I ran to the parking lot and hid) and once when I was leaving on my two-year Mormon mission. I hoped that I was crying because of belief, because I had a burning desire to teach people about the truth I was raised with. But, thinking on it now, it probably had more to do with the fact that I was leaving girls, basketball, fishing and everything that was familiar to enter a foreign land to do something I had never done before. I was scared. I cried because I hoped I was going on my mission for the right reasons. I cried because I didn't know what else to do.
Even though I didn't cry often in church, I never thought those that did cry should be ashamed. And I don't think Davis or Watson should be ashamed either. It seems that two camps have cropped up on the Watson/Davis crying issue: those who think the athletes should be praised for showing feeling, and those who poke fun at the athletes for crying. I'm not sure either are right. We should look at these moments for what they are: significant. We should feel grateful that we were able to witness these things with them. When your profession hits extreme highs or lows, you're going to show more emotion than a shrug or a high five. Athletes should be allowed the same, even though they're playing in very public venues. David Foster Wallace wrote about why memoirs written by athletes usually weren't very good. He said because athletes train themselves away from their emotions when it counts, they can't really get back to the emotion when they sit down to write. They step up and sink puts, catch passes, hit balls, then they move on emotionless so they can quickly do it again. Perhaps Davis and Watson will initiate a new kind of athlete.
When I didn't cry in church, I thought I was the one who should be ashamed, not the ones crying. Although I never remember it being explicitly stated, I believed the more someone cried in church the more they believed. And that's all I wanted. I wanted to believe what my ancestors believed. I wanted to know what made my great-grandmothers walk across a continent, what made my great-grandfathers sell successful business and farms and move to a desert. I wanted to shake in those uncontrollable sobs, to have my speech awkwardly punctuated by gasps, but it never came.]]>