Native to This Stream: Brief Writings About Fly-Fishing & the Great Outdoors is a chapbook collection of short stories, essays, and poems that lifts you from your chair and puts you on the stream ready to drop a fly three feet upstream of a rising trout. Native to This Stream takes the reader from the storied waters of Pennsylvania’s Letort Spring Run to the wonders of Yellowstone National Park and beyond, revealing one angler’s love of the outdoor America we embrace and why we embrace it.
Thoughts from author Paul Weidknecht
Contemplative. Old Uncle Izaak thought so much of the adjective that he included it in the alternate title to The Compleat Angler (or, the Contemplative Man’s Recreation). He knew, as have anglers since, that the mind can’t help but be affected by time spent on the water, that our thoughts are happily nourished by those waiting moments between casts. During these times of wistfulness we can disappear on the stream, unshouldering the troubles of the real world for the blessings of an even more real one—nature. So it comes as no surprise that trying to capture our fine leisure of fly-fishing in words should follow.
This line of thinking, coupled with years of experiences, both real and imagined, led to this collection of eleven short stories, essays, and poems. Each piece explores either the contemplative recreation we’ve come to know or the environment we’re known to love. What happens when we’re on the water will certainly vary, but what won’t differ so much is why we’re there. After all, everyone knows catching fish is just a fringe benefit of fly-fishing; the real reason we’re on the water is to let nature help us think.
