the dharma blog

On our last night in Russia, Swenson and I decide to fish after dinner, in the haunting gray gloaming of the late Arctic summer, and we hike a few miles upstream, then hopscotch our way down, fishing each pool with intensity. At midnight, I stop at Peter’s Pocket, a small pool boxed in a canyon like a present from the salmon gods, and make a short cast. I think my line is hooked on the bottom, and I throw repeated overhand casts to try to dislodge the fly. But the rock suddenly starts moving and I hold on for dear life.

For 10 minutes, the contest is a draw, with neither the fish nor me budging. I can tell that this is the biggest salmon I’ve ever hooked into, possibly over the 30-pound mark that demarcates a “serious” fish. I want to catch it, for myself and to prove something to Peter. I yell in vain for Swenson, but the roar of the rapids soaks up all noise not its own. After 20 minutes, the fish makes its move. It starts slowly upstream, then suddenly accelerates toward the rapids above the pool like no fish I’ve ever hooked. It leaps, suspended for a moment in the air, then shakes its head and my line goes slack.

I sit on a mid-stream rock, my head in my hands, dazed and exhausted.