This morning I got
up and walked out of a meeting full of people who spent most of it talking of
things they really know nothing about but think they do because they watch HGTV,
took a DIY wall papering class at Home Depot and got a 17 piece kitchen tool
set for Christmas last year. The real world works differently. Come on people,
we’re constructing an office building not a lollipop barn on a unicorn ranch.
On the way back to
the office I passed by a small creek and stopped to look at it for a few
minutes. Along the edges of it where there was still water thin patches of ice
had formed over night. Small pieces of the ice periodically broke free and
drifted along with the current disappearing around a bend into the woods and
out of view. I wondered what was out there.
In Walden,
Thoreau said of going to the woods to live deliberately, “I wanted to live deep
and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to
put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to
drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
I’ve read that passage
a hundred times as this piece has wandered and meandered while I try to write
it. Two friends of mine keep coming to mind. I met them several years ago
through fly fishing and though we really only get a chance to hang out a few
times a year at the winter fly shows, they have become good friends and people
I just like being around. They are an example of how hard work, passion,
sacrifice and constant honing of one’s craft result in success. Success not as
others might define it but purely as these two brothers choose to.
To me, Dan and Tom
Harrison embody what Thoreau was writing about. If you spend a little bit of
time with them talking about what they do, you realize quickly they feast on the
marrow of life every day. They have reduced life to its lowest terms: being on
the water or not on the water.
Brothers
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| Photo courtesy of Harrison Anglers |
Dan and Tom own and
operate Harrison Anglers based out of Northfield, MA. They are two of the few fishing
guides in New England who operate year round. They grew up in the area fishing much
of the same water they now guide and then like all explorers went west. After
spending four years guiding in West Glacier, MT and a stretch guiding in the
Patagonia region of Chile they returned to the Commonwealth in 2007. Since then
they have been guiding full time for browns, bows, brookies and pretty much
anything that swims in the rivers of the western part of the state.
Over the years I’ve
seen a lot of pictures and video of their trips. Many of my friends have fished
with them and told me tales of their days on the water in the front of Dan or
Tom’s raft. Dan and Tom have told me some of the same tales but from their view
in the middle of the boat. What I’ve taken away from it all is that the
Harrison brothers are two of the best out there. They know the water, they know
the fish and they know how to give their clients a memorable day on the water. I
think that maybe what makes them, or drives them to be the best is that they
still take time to wonder what is out there.
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| Photo courtesy of Harrison Anglers |
I haven’t fished
with them yet. We’ve talked about it. I’m a saltwater guy. I’ve never fly-fished
for trout or floated a river. I think it’s time this winter to do it.
Because I wonder
what’s out there.
Stay tuned…
North River, MA
1 December 2015
Amen to that, Mike! I've floated with both Tom & Dan, Tom got me into my first trout and 6 years later, Dan showed me my best trout day ever (http://gin-clear.blogspot.com/2015/05/new-england-spring-float-with-harrison.html).
ReplyDeleteI would love to join you on a winter float. Definitely two of the best out there doing what they love.