More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
There is a quiet peace and a feeling of safety in the mountains.
I am home in these hills. I belong to the rivers.
The sun illuminates every droplet of vapor released from the falling water, creating a curtain of light that encompasses the face of the fall with a warm glow, giving me the sensation that I have stumbled through the gates of heaven.
I feel the brook trout in my soul, as I also am resistant to change, at home in the hills, and sensitive to the outside world.
Families living in the Appalachian Mountains in those days were tough, loyal to their own kind, and generally uninterested in outsiders.
Every boy claims their mom’s cornbread is the best, and I’m certain that I’m the only one who’s right.
Walker’s face lit up, and for the first time I witnessed the unfiltered joy and excitement that would sustain our friendship for years and years.
It wasn’t for several years that I realized sometimes the people most concerned with money actually have the least amount of it.
“You have to understand, mountain folk kind of live and work at their own pace. They aren’t lazy by any means, but life just tends to move a little slower.”
The mixed aroma of fresh raw milk, Holstein manure, and chemical disinfectant permeating the air grounded me in the present moment and pressed on me the feeling I was home.
For years, the only thing in Transylvania County surer than the death and taxes was Walker and Brook. They were kindred spirits joined at the hip, seemingly since the dawn of time.
In these moments, my soul was fully home. I have always loved the act of fly fishing, but something about the morning drives with Walker as we anticipated the day ahead chasing new streams, new trails, and new trout seemed to supersede even the fishing itself. The worries and monotony of life were always left at the turn off the highway. They had no place in the serenity of the mountains. Fly fishing was a sacred and spiritual experience for both me and Walker, and we wouldn’t dare stain the clear mountain water with the mire of the outside world. Once we left the highway and felt gravel
...more
“Everything in the mountains is prettier than it is in the flat country,”
He walked over and placed his hand on the tree’s trunk, as if congratulating it for its very nature.
He knelt by the edge of the stream and wet his hands, to protect the fish’s outer layer of slime as he gently lifted it from the water. A thin ray of light had broken through the canopy above to brighten the ground on which Walker was sitting, illuminating both my best friend and the colorful fish.
How many people had looked at this same moon for hundreds—no, thousands—of years? I thought mostly of the Cherokee, who had lived here not long before we did. I remembered reading stories of these Indians camping on mountain knobs, fishing for the same brook trout that captured our imaginations. I wonder if they would have accepted me and Walker as one of them. Language barriers broken by the chase for these little colorful fish.
I thought of the stories these trees would tell if they could talk. Maybe they could talk. I wondered if it was merely mankind’s fault for not being fluent in the subtle voices of nature that came dripping through the ether all around us.
In my mind, just existing in these moments deep in the woods made me feel close to my creator.
The brush strokes of God were laid upon the canvas of Appalachia in a way that made it impossible not to notice.
This book has me deeply hooked.
“Do ladies drink whiskey from the bottle?” Brook asked. “Mine does.”
“I believe there are whispers on the wind.
I think the mountains talk to the rivers and trees, and I think they talk back.”
As we leaned against one another, hoping to hear the voices of the mountains, the rivers, and the trees, I remember wondering why moments like that had to ever end. We were as much a part of the forest as the plants and animals, and we were also a part of each other.
Walker could never understand the lack of energy in most people’s souls, the lack of appreciation for the world around them, and the utter dullness of words that they wasted breath on.
I have been Baptist my whole life, spending Sundays in church since before my brain started holding on to memories. Walker’s religion, on the other hand, was trout fishing. His hymns were the sound of a mountain breeze through the morning pine needles. His communion with God took place deep in the valleys of Southern Appalachia.
To Walker, God spoke through nature, not in some wooden building constructed by the cultural elite. God was in the morning mist, the cool flowing water, the warming rays of sun, and in the movement of mountain air.
The sweet sound of cold mountain water called us down the bank like the sirens of old mythology.
