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About the Image
Austrian schwarzfischer and amateur scientist Johannes Schoffman fishes a mountain stream. (photo: James Prosek)
Staff Blog
SOF Observed
What we've blogged about in the past week:
» The Music Angle
SoundSeen: Our senior producer gives a behind-the-scenes look at one of the music choices for "Fishing with Mystery."
» Fishing as Metaphor
Rob reels in a great Thoreau passage about fishing.
» How to Draw Anything
No stranger to "making a mark on paper," Shiraz shares some drawing tips.
» Tesfaye = "My Hope"
Video: The story of an Ethiopian man reclaiming his land and his memories.
» The Fastest
Pitch-to-Interview Ever
A book about fly-fishing rescued from our "dead books" pile five years ago resurfaces as a show.
» Rick Warren and the Presidency
Krista's commentary on the Saddleback event generated a lot of discussion. Let's hear from you.
Last Week's
Transcript
Words matter. Read an online transcript of last week's program with Rick and Kay Warren in "Rick and Kay Warren at Saddleback." Free for you to read online, at your leisure.
Upcoming Broadcasts:
Stress and
the Balance Within
(September 4)
The American experience of stress has spawned a multi-billion dollar self-help industry. Wary of this, Esther Sternberg says that, until recently, modern science did not have the tools or the inclination to take emotional stress seriously. She shares fascinating new scientific insight into
the molecular level of the mind-body connection.
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Recent Broadcasts
» Rick and Kay Warren at Saddleback
» The Power of Eckhart Tolle's Now
» Living Vodou
» The Business of Doing Good
» Play, Spirit, and Character
About Speaking of Faith
Hosted by Krista Tippett, the public radio program is heard weekly on radio stations around the country, bringing a wide range of intelligent religious ideas and voices into American
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This week on public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas:
Fishing with Mystery
James Prosek, is a 33 year old artist, fly-fisher, author, and environmental activist who has always, as he puts it, found God through the theater of nature. From a young age he has been fascinated by trout and now eel — which he sees as "mystical creatures" — and he's captured
them literally and artistically, by way of both angling and paint. We explore the sense of meaning and mystery he has developed along the way, including his concern with how we humans limit our sense of other creatures by the names we give them.
Contemplation, Ritual, and Fly-fishing
We've been producing Speaking of Faith for over five years, and we've covered a far-flung spectrum of topics. But my colleagues — and you — keep reminding me that we still have worlds to cover.
Fly-fishing is not something I have thought about much in my life. But it turned out to be a perfect subject for these waning days of summer. James Prosek, admittedly, is an unusual person, not just an unusual fly-fisher — a young man of many interests and talents. He published his first
book, Trout: An Illustrated History, while he was a sophomore at Yale. He's since published seven others, ranging from a novel about his parents' divorce for young adults to The Complete Angler, about two summers he spent in England tracing the legacy of a 17th century
classic of fishing, theology, and philosophy.
These days, James Prosek says, his primary calling is to art. Some of his paintings of trout have appeared on a line of Patagonia t-shirts that helps support conservation of fresh water trout habitats globally. He spoke to me on a stormy day from the area of Connecticut where he grew up, and to
which he has always returned. Thunder intruded into our conversation, and that seemed somehow fitting. He had just been to Micronesia, researching his book-in-progress on eels. He has become captivated by the eel, he tells me, as a rare creature that has kept a large part of its mystery from human
beings.
I sense that James Prosek's original passion for trout anchored the contemplative mindset that has endured through all his accomplishments. Part of his secret, it seems to me, is a passion for ritual that suffuses the act of fly-fishing (as, of course, religion) and that quietly supports his steady
creative output.
So I've now been introduced to contemplating life by way of fishing. I've learned, as well, that this pastime is abundant in history and literature. I leave you with a few examples below. You'll hear me read some of these in the show; the others I offer here for your private meditations:
James Prosek
From Trout, An Illustrated History
The instructive nature of the trout stream is not forced upon its visitors, but held candidly by the water and the trees. The angler must make an effort to hear the stream's messages and see her beauty. I had learned superficially how to catch a trout — first with a worm and then
by tying and casting flies… But my education really began once I'd spent enough time near my local stream that I could begin to understand her language. Only after I'd become comfortable with her modes of speech — winter silence, springtime growling roar, lazy summer trickling, and
autumn calm — did I begin to understand that the stream was not only a place where I fished but also a living breathing celebration of hardship and joy.
Henry David Thoreau
From Walden
Sometimes, after staying in a village parlor till the family had all retired, I have returned to the woods, and, partly with a view to the next day's dinner, spent the hours of midnight fishing from a boat by moonlight … communicating by a long flaxen line with mysterious
nocturnal fishes which had their dwelling forty feet below… It was very queer, especially in dark nights, when your thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal themes in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk, which came to interrupt your dreams and link you to Nature again. It seemed as if
I might next cast my line upward into the air, as well as downward into this element, which was scarcely more dense. Thus I caught two fishes as it were with one hook.
Herman Hesse
From Narcissus and Goldmund
For a while Goldmund sat on the embankment. Dark, shadow-like fish still glided by down there in the crystal greenness, or were motionless, their noses turned against the current. A feeble gold shimmer still blinked here and there from the twilight of the depths that promised so much
and encouraged dreaming.
Alfred Tennyson
From "The Brook"
I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.
I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.
I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;
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.
I Recommend Reading:
Trout: An Illustrated History,
The Complete Angler,
and A Good Day's Fishing
by James Prosek
James Prosek's Trout: An Illustrated History is visually and narratively lovely. He also has a fascinating book on fly fishing for children called A Good Day's Fishing, with drawings of everything you need for a tacklebox. I also very much enjoyed his The
Complete Angler, which merges reflections on fishing, the meaning of life, the pure core of Christianity, and the eccentricities of British culture past and present.
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