It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.

If our father had had his way, nobody who did not know how to fish would be allowed to disgrace a fish by catching him.

...life every now and then becomes literature...as if life had been made and not happened.

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

I knew that, when needed, mountains would move for me.

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.