It's a lovely tribute and fun to read.

And believe me, to have been in the city of Tuscaloosa in October when you were young and full of Early Times and had a shining Alabama girl by your side--to have had all that and then to have seen those red shirts pour onto the field, and, then, coming behind them, with that inexorable big cat walk of his, the man himself, The Bear--that was very good indeed.

I have learned that I am also a person who has to be able to go fishing whenever I can and for as long as I want to go. It is a silly thing, but there it is.

It's a lovely tribute and fun to read.

I stepped on a land mine named Jayson Blair.

Fly fishing is the most beautiful way of trying to catch a fish; not the most efficient, just as ballet is the most beautiful way of moving the body between between two points, not the most direct. Fly fishing is to fishing as ballet is to walking.

When I am home alone I like to scatter my tackle across the floor and play with it. I may pretend I am working on it, performing preventative maintenance, but really it is playing.