What Should it Profit a Man?
By lex, on December 4th, 2011
Some among you – admit it – would like to know how many fish I caught today, on the Little Truckee. What species they were, their length and weight. How long they fought for their freedom, their bodies writhing in the waters and shimmering in the sunlight. The bending of the rod, the reel screaming, the water flecks making transitory gemstones of the light.
But what would it matter if there were one, or four, or seven? Or even none at all? What would it matter ten thousand years from now, a decade even? Even tomorrow? What against the inexpressible beauty of God’s creation? They metronomic benediction of the rod moving from ten to two o’clock? The river burbling at your feet, the waterfowl making their low, mad dashes? The ephemeral beauty of a hatch, the waters boiling momentarily in the winter sun, the cycle endlessly repeating itself, day after day, year after year.
So, yeah: I got skunked.
But it was a grand day anyway.
“Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?” – Melville, Moby Dick, Ch. 24.