"... & a river runs through it."

"A river is water in its loveliest form" wrote the Canadian angler and naturalist Roderick Haig-Brown in his charmingly titled "A River Never Sleeps." He wasn't wrong either. Rivers, whether small  meandering streams narrow enough to be traversed with a single leap or mighty bodies of water inexorably pulsing towards the sea, have a beauty that no seascape, nor landscape devoid of water can come close to equalling, let alone surpassing.

This year I have reacquainted myself with water of the flowing variety, which as I consider myself to be predominantly a stillwater angler, has been a source (no pun intended) of great satisfaction. I have caught chub, dace and pike from the Trent, blanked while pursuing old esox on the Fens and landed barbel from the Severn, as well as swinging a succession of bleak, gudgeon and small perch to hand.

My teenage angling self was often to be found on the banks of the Loddon or Thames of my native Berkshire, and I several times fished a delightful little stream called the Embrook from which I plucked minnows, gudgeon and dace a plenty and the occasional chub of about half a pound. (I once caught 6 of these in a single morning, which constituted a "red letter day" from this diminutive stream of childhood memory.) It was at this young age that I first discovered, and then grew to love, the distinctive smell of a river- a composite of aromas: wet grass, wild garlic and a strange yet pleasant olfactory  oxymoron: the  simultaneous juxtaposition of freshness and mustiness. 

I like rivers for their appearance, their sounds and, as I've already confessed, their smell, but beneath their physical beauty flows a metaphysical current. Rivers run, and in that flow many have discovered a metaphor for life, a movement from source to conclusion with twists and turns, back eddies and carrier streams along the way - cradle to grave, times of being gently borne along, moments of fear as the floodwaters rise. There is a wisdom to be found in rivers, as the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow acknowledged: "Thou hast taught me Silent River, Many a lesson deep and long, Thou hast been a generous giver."

The rivers of my youth, the rivers I remember fishing and those I've forgotten, the sensation of standing in the current while trotting and feeling the gentle but persistent pull of the current, all these have become a part of me, and I and my piscatorial exploits a fleeting episode in their much grander story.
A story that will outlast mine, "and out again I curve and flow, To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever" wrote Tennyson, momentarily personified as a small stream in his poem "The Brook", or, as Paul Robeson would have it: "That ol' man river, he just keeps rolling ..."

But until I stop rolling, the river and its inhabitants will keep calling, and whenever time permits I'll grab my rod and creel and head for the door in answer of the call.