Every cast is a meditation. Who catches who? The line runs both ways and the river draws you to it as well. You hear it in your sleep.

Fly fiishing is my meditation. Away from my day-to day. Just me, the water, occassionally the fish. Someday maybe I’ll even forget to tie a fly on. Someday maybe I’ll catch a fish without a fly. I’m not even sure who catches who. Most of the time it feels like the fish and the water are pulling me to them. I can’t even pass a drain ditch without wondering where it came from and whether fish live within.

My cast is like the blind kyūdō archer releasing an arrow to to target he can’t see. Unlike the archer though, I don’t even know if the target exists until my cast strikes home. The meditation isn’t perfect. The mundane interferes. My back cast catches a tree. My feet slip and I get wet. A beer bottle mars the stream side. But like other meditations I don’t block the distraction. I observe it, then allow it to slide by a mere swirling eddy in the flow.

Somehow tired, scratched, often wet- I return from my meditation feeling reminded that everything is within an unseen river- flowing all together. I feel refreshed.