Going Native
few days pestering native brook trout in the cold, clear, gradient streams of Shenandoah National Park. I drive hundreds of miles and spend hundreds of dollars on food and lodging, not to mention snazzy fishing gear at the local fly shop, all for the pleasure of catching a fish that averages about six inches in length and is, to my eye, the world’s most beautiful creature. Why? The radiant brilliance of a brook trout's ivory-trimmed, orange belly? The peaceful beauty of ancient, wooded mountains? The dark glow in the eye of a passing white-tail doe? The temporary hiatus from a fundamentally fatuous, mean-spirited, and nasty human world? Any one of these reasons is enough to justify the jaunt. But for lunatic fishers like me, it's more than that. It's a question of "going native." These little fish, on whom I spend so much time, energy, thought, and money—these little brook trout belong here. They've finned these streams and pools since the Ice Age, their present lives flowing down a continuum from an ancient past. Brook trout in my part of the country differ, in this respect, from even their wildest trout relations, who trace their heritage back no more than a couple of generations to state-run fish hatcheries, where their ancestors were raised on trout chow and from which they were scooped up and dumped by the truckload into streams and lakes. But when I drift my fly over these small native fish, I fish back through time, earnestly searching out a brief link with something authentic, indigenous. Recently, after a week of flailing my fly rod over my favorite Shenandoah streams, I dumped my gear back into the trunk and headed home. To avoid the psychotic truck traffic on Interstate 81, I opted for the slower pace of Route 42 through the rolling farm country of the Shenandoah Valley. Yes—the scenic route. Relaxing behind the wheel, not a truck in sight, I recalled that my grandmother in Ohio, where I grew up, once told me her grandparents were buried somewhere in this region. I had filed away what information she had given me between the pages of my road atlas, just in case I was ever up this way and might be interested enough to visit the place. Well, I was "up this way" and, for the moment, I was "interested." Armed with the scrap of note paper on which I'd scrawled the names of a town, a cemetery, and two people, I took a detour to Sangerville, Virginia, and the little cemetery at the Church of the Brethren. Clutching my wrinkled piece of paper, I wandered among the headstones, old and new, looking for a match to the scribbled names I carried: Louis William Maubrey; Sarah Francis Clatterbaugh. My great-great grandparents. My people. I found it oddly intriguing to be where I apparently had people—if I could find them, that is. As I searched, I quickly realized the little graveyard was organized into distinct family plots—Bucks and Zimmermans and Karicofes and others. Not all that many different names, really. It appeared that folks stayed together and stayed put around here. But among them I couldn't seem to find the names on my piece of paper. As I was about to chuck it in, a large headstone in one of these family plots caught my eye. Clatterbaugh. How could I have missed such a name? Scanning the group of grave markers, I found her—Sarah Maubrey, my great-great grandmother. Born: 1836; Died: . . .? I couldn't tell. Her headstone had sunken too far into the earth for me to read the death date. I hooked my forefinger and gouged about an inch of dirt from the base of the stone. Died: 1918. Who was this woman? The fact was, I had no idea. About all I could safely say I knew about Sarah Maubrey was that she was probably quite glad to marry Louis Maubrey, if for no other reason than to change her maiden name from Clatterbaugh to . . . well, anything but Clatterbaugh. My great-great grandmother was nothing more to me than a series of letters scratched in stone and jammed in the dirt in a country churchyard in a place I'd never been before. And yet, somehow, I felt connected. It’s been said that you're not really from a place until you've buried your dead there. Well, here she was. I had people, right here, neatly tucked away, dead and buried. I stared at the name of a woman whose life was nothing to me, and yet from whom, in part, I came. I had a link to this place. I belonged here. I never did find Louis Maubrey's grave, but I left satisfied. Driving back to the scenic route, I should have heard the laughter of the Monacan people whose ancestors inhabited this region for centuries before my people helped displace them. They had a right to laugh. “That’s a good one, white boy,” they would have said of my puny attempt to reinvent myself as native. Nothing but a hatchery fish after all, I realized, and my thoughts returned to brook trout, cold mountain streams, and the amount of gasoline registering on the fuel gauge. In the park the day before, as I released a particularly scrappy brook trout back into its pool, I overheard a passing hiker speak to his companion. "Geez, those fish are all so small. Why does he bother?" Why, indeed, pal? For the wind through the trees. For the clarity of rushing water and deep pools. For the look in the eye of a deer. For the brief link to an ancient past when a native brook trout takes my fly. And for the fragile satisfaction of the momentary illusion that I, too, actually belong here. __________ Home / Escapee / Stories / Poems / Non-fiction / Contact / Links |